POWER November 2011 - 30

TOP PLANTs
2 provides another interesting perspective.
It is fair to say that the number of plants
that have begun construction over just the
past two years shows the intensity of a
country's nuclear program today.
We can also compare the quality of
operations at existing plants, country by
country. After all, building many new
plants doesn't guarantee electricity will
reach the grid in the future. A well-trained
workforce of engineers, technicians, and
operators, and a robust logistics infrastructure,
are all required to support plant
operations. The data seems to indicate
that those same emerging countries that
are building new plants are also operating
their existing plants reasonably well,
while others are on the steep part of the
learning curve. The data show that U.S.
remains a global leader (after Taiwan)
when it comes to operating a fleet of nuclear
plants (Table 1).
Table 2 shows the list of countries that
have begun construction of a nuclear plant
over the past two years. As expected, the
countries that have the largest number of
plants under construction are also those
that have begun construction of the most
plants over the past two years. The West
hasn't see a single new construction start
over the past two years.
Plants Starting Operation. The history
of the nuclear power industry reveals
that beginning construction often does not
result in a plant that completes construction
on time-or at any time, for that matter.
Therefore, an interesting statistic is
the number of nuclear plants that actually
entered commercial service over the past
two years. A similar list of countries appears
in Table 3.
Plants Recently Shut Down. In the
past, the annual list of plants that were
permanently shut down was short and usually
included units that had reached the
end of their economic life. This time the
list has only two old, small nuclear plants
that were in the process of being decommissioned.
Not surprising, four of the six
units at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant
are on the list. Those four represent 2.7
GW of lost capacity (Table 4).
In the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi
accident, Germany's government elected
to begin the process of closing all of its
nuclear power plants. To date, eight plants
have been permanently shut down, representing
8.4 GW. These eight represent
the oldest of Germany's 17 nuclear power
plants. Another six plants are scheduled
to be taken offline by 2021. The remaining
three are scheduled to stay open until
2022 as a grid safety buffer. Before the
30
Table 2. Plants that recently began construction. Construction began on 18 new
plants, representing 14.45 GW, during the past two years. Source: IAEA
Plant name
Ningde 3
Taishan 2
Lenningrad 2-2
Changjiang 1
Ohma
Angra 3
Rostov 4
Haiyang 2
Fangchenggang 1
Nindge 4
Yangjiang 3
Changjiang 2
Kakrapar 3 & 4
Fuqing 3
Fangchenggang 2
Chasnupp 3
Rajasthan 7
Total
Country
China
China
Russia
China
Japan
Brazil
Russia
China
China
China
China
China
India
China
China
Pakistan
Pakistan
Rating (MW)
1,000
1,700
1.085
610
1,325
1,245
1,011
1,000
1,000
1,000
1,000
610
2 x 630
1,000
1,000
315
630
14,447
Table 3. Nuclear plants that recently began service. Ten new plants, representing
6.16 GW, have been synchronized to their nations' electricity grids over the past two years.
Source: IAEA
Plant name
Rostov 2
Rajasthan 6
Lingao 3
Qinshan 2-3
Shin Kori 1
Kaiga 4
Chasnupp 2
Lingao 4
CEFR
Bushehr 1
Total
Country
Russia
India
China
China
South Korea
India
Pakistan
China
China
Iran
Rating (MW)
950
202
1,000
610
960
202
300
1,000
20
915
6,159
shutdowns, Germany received 23% of its
electricity from nuclear power.
Other countries-such as Japan, Italy,
and Switzerland-are also backing away
from nuclear energy. The U.S. nuclear
power fleet is not immune. Several environmental
groups joined to petition the
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on
October 8 to " freeze our Fukushimas, " a
reference to the 17 nuclear power plants in
the U.S. that use a General Electric Mark
I reactor.
Left Behind
Overall, the IAEA data seem to show that
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countries with fast-growing economies
have fully embraced nuclear power for
the long haul. Is that because their economies
are growing thanks to the increased
use of nuclear power, or is nuclear power
increasing because their economic growth
provides capital for investment in nuclear
power? Whatever the reason, each of those
countries believes that nuclear power will
be economic for many years to come and
has decided to invest heavily in that electricity
technology.
China, India, and Russia have been
constructing new nuclear plants for some
years and are fully committed to conPOWER
| November 2011
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Date began construction
1/8/10
4/15/10
4/15/10
4/25/10
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6/16/10
6/21/10
7/30/10
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POWER November 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER November 2011