Global nuclear power generation is set to reach an all-time high next year, according to the International Energy Agency. That will aid “efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions,” notes the Financial Times.
Power generated by nuclear power plants is expected to rise by about 3 per cent in both 2024 and 2025, and by an additional 1.5 per cent in 2026, according to the IEA. By contrast nuclear power production fell in 2022 as nuclear power plants closed in Germany and some other places that have a phobia of nuclear power. The Financial Times reports:
Growth will be driven by new reactors in China and India as well as the return of plants in France that were shut down last year for maintenance….It marks a revival for nuclear power after the disaster in Japan in 2011, when reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were damaged by a tsunami, prompting Germany and Japan to pull back from the sector.
The industry has been helped by the global push to cut carbon dioxide emissions, as well as widespread concerns about energy security in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which disrupted gas markets.
At the UN’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai last year, more than 20 countries, including the US, the UK and France, agreed to try to triple global nuclear power capacity by 2050.
However, the growth until 2026 is set to be concentrated in China and India, which are expected to account for more than half of the 29 gigawatts of expected new capacity, the IEA said.
The rapid growth of the technology in China means it now accounts for 16 per cent of global nuclear generation, up from 5 per cent in 2014, while the country is aiming to increase its installed capacity from about 56GW to 70GW by 2025, according to the report.
Meanwhile, both China’s and Russia’s influence in the sector is growing, the IEA added, with the two countries providing the technology for 70 per cent of the reactors under construction.
Projects in China face fewer delays than those in Europe and the US, the IEA noted, warning that construction delays for large nuclear projects are a “major global concern”.
On Tuesday, France’s state-owned nuclear developer EDF announced further delays to the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant it is building in Somerset, England.
A recent study found that nuclear power is best for the environment. Yet green activists in places like Germany have still forced the closure of nuclear power plants. And they have done so even though “every major study, including a recent one by the British medical journal Lancet, finds the same thing: nuclear is the safest way to make reliable electricity,” says a long-time environment activist. “Solar panels require 17 times more materials in the form of cement, glass, concrete, and steel than do nuclear plants, and create over 200 times more waste,” such as “dust from toxic heavy metals including lead, cadmium, and chromium.” Unlike wind farms, nuclear power plants don’t kill birds. And “wind turbines, surprisingly, kill more people than nuclear plants.” “Nuclear power is the safest form of energy we have, if you consider deaths per megawatt of energy produced,” notes Yale University professor Steven Novella.
Nuclear plants generate most electric power in countries like France and Slovakia, but in the U.S., nuclear power plants provide only about 18% of all power. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission makes it very expensive to construct a nuclear plant — even the application process is incredibly expensive and usually takes years of unnecessary delay. Even when nuclear plants are already operating safely and providing badly needed power, anti-nuclear activists sometimes get government officials to shut them down. Recently, however, the NRC approved the construction of a nuclear plant with an innovative design and a non-water cooled reactor.
