CONSULTING

the past two decades, nuclear power lost a small part of its share in every single year, except for the
years 1999 and 2001, and probably in year 2015 (+0.05 percentage points), should the figure be
confirmed in the coming years. The main reason for this is the stagnation in the world's power
consumption (+0.9 percent, slightly below the modest increase in nuclear generation of
1.3 percent).
In 2015, nuclear generation increased in 11 countries (down from 19 in 2014), declined in 15 (up
from 9), and remained stable in five. 18 Five countries (China, Hungary, India, Russia, South Korea)
achieved their greatest nuclear production in 2015, of these, China, Russia and South Korea
connected new reactors to the grid. China started up a record eight units (see Figure 2). Only the
two leading nuclear countries in the world, the U.S. and France have ever started up that many
reactors in a single year, the U.S. in 1976, 1985 and 1987, and France in 1981. Besides China, two
other countries increased their output by more than 20 percent in 2015—Argentina as it started
up a third reactor in 2014, and Mexico that brought the second unit back on line after uprating. Two
countries saw their nuclear generation drop by over 20 percent—Belgium that is struggling with
reactor pressure vessel issues, and South Africa that has steam generator issues.
Figure 1: Nuclear Electricity Generation in the World
%
20%
15%
10%
© Mycle Schneider Consulting
Nuclear Electricity Production in the World 1990-2015
in TWh (net) and share of electricity production (gross)
max 17.6%
max 2,660 TWh
2,441TWh
10,7%
TWh
4 000
3 500
3 000
2 500
2 000
1 500
5%
1 000
500
0%
0
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
2015
Sources: IAEA-PRIS, BP, MSC, 2016 19
The “big five” nuclear generating countries—by rank, the United States, France, Russia, China and
South Korea—generated over 70 percent of all nuclear electricity in the world and two countries
alone, the U.S. and France accounted for half of global nuclear production.
Seven countries’ nuclear power generation peaked in the 1990s, among them Belgium, Canada,
Japan, and the U.K. A further eleven countries’ nuclear generation peaked between 2001 and 2010
including France, Germany, Spain, and Sweden. A remarkable 14 countries generated their
maximum amount of nuclear power in the past five years, these obviously include nuclear growth
18 Less than 1 percent variation from the previous year.
19 BP stands for BP plc; MSC for Mycle Schneider Consulting.
Mycle Schneider, Antony Froggatt et al. 20 World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016