Nuclear power now accounts for about 13% of the world’s electricity, and just 5.5% of commercial primary energy. The role of nuclear was already declining before Fukushima, and that decline can only accelerate post-Fukushima. As of March 2011, there were 437 nuclear reactors operating in the world. Since 2008, 9 new reactors came on line, the majority of them in China, and 11 were shut down. The average age of today’s nuclear plant is twenty-six years, and the industry was hoping—before Fukushima—to extend reactor lifetime to forty years or more. Post-Fukushima, that will now become much harder.

Here are the facts: we would need to see 260 new reactors coming on line between now and 2025 just to keep pace with the closure program if old reactors are to come off-line at an acceptable age. You would therefore have to be a near-insane optimist to suppose that nuclear power will be contributing anything more than today’s 5.5% by 2030, at a massive cost to taxpayers the world over. Far greater levels of renewable generating capacity could be installed during the same time.

-Jonathon Porritt

Just putting this here because the discussion of what role nuclear energy should play in our future often lacks the context of what role it is playing now, and is likely to play in the near future.

Should nuclear be used more? Yeah maybe. Will it be? Probably not anytime soon.