An Interactive Map and Guide to the World Nuclear-Power Producers

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 11/21/15

For the first time since the Fukushima nuclear non-disaster in 2011, the nuclear industry reports that it has something to celebrate. In October, the U.S. licensed its first new plant in 20 years, in Tennessee, and Britain took a step further towards building its first nuclear-power station in a generation at Hinkley Point. Japan has recently restarted two of its 43 reactors that have been shut since 2011. And China, which put some of its nuclear building plans on hold after Fukushima, has unveiled plans to triple its nuclear capacity by 2020. But the nuclear landscape is divided in half. In parts of America, by far the biggest user of nuclear power, the talk is of economic issues, not celebration. In the north-east, very reliable nuclear-power plants are being shut on economic grounds. France, the backbone of European nuclear industry, plans to reduce the share of nuclear used to generate electricity from 75% to 50% in a decade. Germany intends to shut its remaining eight reactors by 2022, and this month Sweden closed four reactors in a week, but I2M Web Portal editors suggest that they will changes their minds when reality dawns on them. The places where nuclear is more promising are those where it can find an ingredient almost as essential as uranium, that is state support. China is the obvious example, and South Korea too has a powerful pro-nuclear lobby. The Watts Bar plant in Tennessee will be in the regulated south, where bureaucrats set the price. The British government has promised sky-high electricity prices to the builders of Hinkley Point. The shale revolution in the U.S. has caused the price of natural gas there to tumble, making some nuclear-power stations noncompetitive. Subsidies for wind generation in America and Europe are further driving down prices. And though it emits no greenhouse gases, nuclear is gaining ground with environmentalists and public-relations hype is promoting renewables heavily without justification.