Nuclear power is not a new technology. With over fifty years of commercial operation, nuclear power reactors are now an established part of global electricity production. Critics of the industry tend to overlook the significant, and in many countries quite indispensible contribution existing nuclear power plants already make to energy production.
It is the excellent performance of the operating reactor fleet which forms the solid foundation for the expansion of nuclear power in the years ahead.
In 2007 there were 439 nuclear power reactors operating in 30 countries. The proportion of nuclear electricity to total electricity production varies, but 19 countries are dependent on nuclear power for more than 15% of their electricity production and several countries are more than 50% dependent.
Worldwide, nuclear power produced 16% of total electricity production, a factor that has been almost constant over the past 20 years.
While it is true that reactor building slowed down considerably during the nineties, especially in Europe and the USA, this did not significantly reduce nuclear power’s share of electricity production because many reactor operators were able to systematically raise output from existing plants. The most graphic example of this is in the USA where improvement to reactor output in the period 1990 to 2002 was the equivalent of building 25 new power plants.