The Year Germany's Nuclear Output Hit Zero, China Supplied All the World's Growth

The Year Germany's Nuclear Output Hit Zero, China Supplied All the World's Growth

Four lines, four kinds of country. The United States is still the world's largest producer of nuclear power. France sits steadily in third. Germany has dropped to zero after completing its phase-out. And China is the only one still climbing.

The interesting shape is the American line. It reached roughly today's level around 1990 and has been close to flat for more than thirty years since. Over that period the US built barely any new reactors, yet output never fell away.

■ With no new reactors, where did the electricity come from

Older plants simply run harder. Almost all the cost of a nuclear plant is paid when it is built, and the extra cost of generating one more unit of electricity is very low. So for three decades the American effort went into shortening refuelling outages and uprating existing reactors rather than pouring concrete. That flat line is not stagnation. It is a fleet finished before 1990 being squeezed close to its practical limit.

China took the other route. A decade ago its nuclear output was around a quarter of the American total, and today essentially all of the net growth in global nuclear generation comes from this one country.

One caution: different databases differ by tens of units for the same year, so the trend is more reliable than any single figure.

Source: Historical statistics on nuclear electricity generation (Image: @MichaelAArouet)