The stats: At the end of last year, the global operating nuclear power capacity totaled 392.1 GWe, comprising 443 operational power reactors in 30 countries, according to a June 25 IAEA news release. Overall, capacity since 2011 has shown a gradual growth trend, the IAEA noted, including some 23.2 GWe of new capacity added by the connection of new units to the grid or upgrades to existing reactors.
Less encouraging were data from 2019 showing a global capacity decrease of 4.5 GWe compared with 2018. That figure, the IAEA said, reflects Japan’s decision to permanently shut down five reactors that had not generated electricity since 2011. By the end of 2019, however, 54 reactors (with a potential 57.4 GWe of capacity) were under construction in 19 countries, the agency reported, including four that are building their first nuclear reactor. Near- and long-term capacity growth prospects are centered in Asia, which at the end of 2019 reported 36.5 GWe of nuclear power capacity (35 reactors) under construction, the IAEA said.
The source: The PRIS public website can be found here. For registered users only, there is also PRISWEB, consisting of the Web-Enabled Data Acquisition System, which is used by PRIS data providers for inputting data on their nuclear power reactors to the database (the data are verified and approved by PRIS administrators before being used in PRIS reports), and PRIS Statistics, a web-based reporting tool used by registered users to produce reports and statistics from PRIS.
