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The World Nuclear Association (WNA) has projected that global production of nuclear energy will double from current levels by 2050, especially with new countries actively pursuing nuclear power programmes.
It feels that public acceptance of nuclear energy has come back to levels prior to the Fukushima incident, with more stringent adherence to safety standards.
According to the World Nuclear Industry, the combined production of 427 operating plants is 364 giga watts by the end of 2013. Nuclear energy constitutes 11 per cent of the global power production.
Agneta Rising, Director-General of the association, said the Fukushima accident has not slowed down the nuclear power programmes in most countries. “Baring a couple of countries, the rest of the world was pursuing its new (reactor) building programme. China is going ahead and so is Russia,” she told mediapersons on the sidelines of the 25{+t}{+h} Annual Conference of the Indian Nuclear Society.
She said currently about 70 reactors were under construction in various parts of the world, with 30 of them being in China and five each in the US and Europe.
New countries pursuing nuclear energy programmes is seen as a positive development by the world body . “New countries such as Vietnam, Turkey, Argentina, Malaysia and Africa were taking up projects. Turkey could start production in five years, while the others will take a longer time,” she pointed out.
Rising said only Germany had opted to pull out of its nuclear energy programme after the accident. “It is hard to assess what Germany’s nuclear power programme would be,” she said, adding that it was not for safety reasons that Germany was closing down its nuclear energy programme, which was a “political decision”.
A fallout of this decision is that Germany is falling back on its targets in reducing carbon dioxide emission, as the country was going in for more thermal production. “They (Germany) were on track in regard to carbon dioxide emissions prior to its decision on nuclear energy, but now it was not meeting its target,” she said.
Experts estimate that Germany would require 38 new coal-based power units of 1000 MW each to make up for the shutting down of its nuclear reactors – each of these plants will be generating about 1.2 million tonnes of fly ash every year.
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