| |
Operating |
Under construction/planned |
| WORLD |
438 |
202 |
| China |
11 |
57 |
| Japan/Korea |
74 |
26 |
| Russia |
32 |
24 |
| India |
19 |
24 |
|
| European Union |
143 |
19 |
| United States/Canada |
122 |
16 |
Human civilization runs on a half-quintillion British Thermal Units of energy a year.* Oversimplified a bit, this breaks down as follows:
- 175 quadrillion BTUs from oil, burned in various refined states to run the world's transport industries.
- 130 quadrillion BTUs drawn from coal for electricity.
- 110 quadrillion BTUs from natural gas to add electricity, heat homes and run kitchen stoves.
- 30 quadrillion BTUs from hydro power for electricity.
- 8 quadrillion from wood, wind, magma and sun, for home heating, electrical generation and some transport.
The final 29 q's, or about 6 percent of world energy, comes from nuclear power. Most of the world's 438 operating reactors are in wealthy countries: Europe (including Russia) draws 11 q's from 177 plants. The United States and Canada get 10 q's from 122 plants; Japan and Korea 2 q's from 74 plants. France is the world's most intensive user of nuclear power, drawing 80 percent of its electricity from 58 operating plants, and three other countries -- Lithuania, Belgium and Slovakia -- are above 50 percent. America's 20-percent rate is a bit above the 14-percent world average.
The count of nuclear construction sites and approved plans, though, suggests a big shift towards Asia. America's last new nuclear power plant went on-line in 1996; the next generation is underway after a long hiatus, with construction underway on a plant in Georgia. But 108 of the 202 nuclear plants now planned or under construction are in Asia, with 57 in China alone and 24 more in India. Korea will add 12, Japan 14, and ASEAN members eight. (The busiest non-Asian country is Russia, with 24 new plants planned or underway.) Thus by 2030, the world's use of nuclear energy will grow by about 6 quadrillion BTUs to a 35-quadrillion total, with about 3 quadrillion in developing Asia countries, 2 quadrillion in wealthy Asian states, and 1 quadrillion everywhere else.
* One quintillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. One BTU, in the defiantly non-metric world of energy weights and measures, is the energy needed to heat a pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. Current forecasts suggest that humanity will pass the 1-quint BTU milestone between 2040 and 2050, making energy use the first human activity ever measured in quintillions.
The World Nuclear Association's count of operating nuclear power plants worldwide: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html
International energy data from the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration. Overall, EIA's forecast suggests energy use rising from 510 to 722 quadrillion BTUs in 2030, with oil use rising by 45 quadrillion BTUs, gas by 50 quadrillion, and coal by 67 quadrillion. Absent a major cut in fossil-fuel use, the forecasts suggests that the nuclear and "other" (hydro, solar, geothermal, wind, wood) shares of world energy use will fall slightly. The forecasts, 2010-2030: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm
And a quick one-page PDF summary of power consumption by source, 1947-2008: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec11_3.pdf
The Nuclear Energy Institute reports on nuclear power use (as a share of total electricity generation) by country: http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/worldstatistics/
Builders and regulators -
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on new reactors: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors.html
The Chinese Atomic Energy Authority: http://www.caea.gov.cn/n602670/index.html
And Russia's Rosatom, now building 15 plants: http://www.rosatom.ru/en/
Apart from nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines, American off-rail transport -- trucks, planes, container ships, etc. -- runs almost completely on oil. Are there alternatives? The "Nucleon," a 1958 Ford concept car with a reactor in the trunk, never quite worked out. Ford fondly recalls the ultimate muscle car: http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=3359
A better approach -- hybrid cars will use gasoline (or gas and solar) but also plug into national and local power grids, using energy from nuclear power, coal, hydro and wind. The Energy Department's Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center explains: http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/vehicles/hybrid_electric.html
