WNA produced its 2022 report on world nuclear performance, which provides an up-to-date picture of the nuclear power industry, both for generation of electricity from reactors in operation today and reactors currently under construction.
Sama Bilbao y León, Director General, of the World Nuclear Association wrote in its Preface that Nuclear generation bounced back from the pandemic-related decline seen in 2020, increasing by 100 TWh to reach 2653 TWh in 2021. However, this positive development must be put into the context of the
upheaval there has been in global energy supply over the last 12 months.
While governments redoubled their commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions at COP26 in Glasgow, the recovery of economies following the
harsh impacts of COVID-19 led to a surge in energy demand that outstripped the growth in production from clean sources such as nuclear, resulting in more
reliance on fossil fuels.
The war in Ukraine has made vividly clear the fragility of the fossil fuel supply chain, underscoring concerns that were already exposed as a consequence of the pandemic. In many regions energy prices are rising, fueling inflation and worsening energy poverty. Fearful of losing access to gas imports and facing blackouts and energy shortages, governments are calling on coal-fired power plants to restart. While such short-term actions may be necessary in the midst of a crisis, they are unsustainable. It is therefore welcome that many governments are now realizing that nuclear energy can propel the drive to net-zero emissions and be the foundation of a more secure energy system.
The challenge now is to take the concrete actions needed to turn those policy aspirations into operating nuclear power plants. The increase in nuclear
generation in 2021 flatters the fact that there has been a decline in global nuclear capacity over the last two years. In other words: more reactors are
being closed down than are starting up. To reverse this trend, two things need to happen. First, reactors that are operating successfully today need to operate for longer. Too many of the reactor closures of the last few years have been motivated by political reasons or by dysfunctional markets. Long-term operation of nuclear reactors is the lowest cost form of additional low-carbon generation and helps reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
Second, the pace of new nuclear construction must increase. In 2021 first concrete was poured for ten new reactors. Although that is better than in recent
years, we still need to see twenty, thirty or more new reactor construction starts per year soon, to ensure that nuclear energy plays the role it should in
delivering a secure and sustainable net-zero future.
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