![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Nevertheless they still represent a substantial capital investment. It is considerably cheaper to extend the life of a reactor than build a new plant, and costs of extensions are competitive with other clean energy options, including new solar PV and wind projects. Given their age, plants are beginning to close, with 25% of existing nuclear capacity in advanced economies expected to be shut down by 2025. However the nuclear fleet in advanced economies is 35 years old on average and many plants are nearing the end of their designed lifetimes. In emerging and developing economies, particularly China, the nuclear fleet will provide low-carbon electricity for decades to come. In the absense of further lifetime extensions and new projects could result in an additional 4 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions, underlining the importance of the nuclear fleet to low-carbon energy transitions around the globe. It recommends several possible government actions that aim to ensure existing nuclear power plants can operate as long as they are safe, support new nuclear construction and encourage new nuclear technologies to be developed. This report identifies the even greater challenges of attempting to follow this path with much less nuclear power. It requires large increases in efficiency and renewables investment, as well as an increase in nuclear power. Achieving the pace of CO2 emissions reductions in line with the Paris Agreement is already a huge challenge, as shown in the Sustainable Development Scenario. It is shown that, without action, nuclear power in advanced economies could fall by two thirds by 2040.The implications of such a “nuclear fade case” for costs, emissions and electricity security using two World Energy Outlook scenarios are examined in the New Policies Scenario and the Sustainable Development Scenario. This report focuses on the role of nuclear power in advanced economies and the factors that put nuclear power at risk of future decline. However, in advanced economies, nuclear power has begun to fade, with plants closing and little new investment made, just when the world requires more low-carbon electricity. Over the past 50 years, the use of nuclear power has reduced CO2 emissions by over 60 gigatonnes – nearly two years’ worth of global energy-related emissions. Together, they provide three-quarters of global low-carbon generation. If Japan restarts nuclear, the country's utilities could resell spare liquefied natural gas to Europe, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Nuclear power and hydropower form the backbone of low-carbon electricity generation. "There is a strong tailwind for nuclear power at this moment," Nobuo Tanaka, a former executive director of the International Energy Agency, said in an interview Monday. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has pushed up energy prices globally, however, and a recent tremor in Japan took several gas- and coal-fired plants offline, leading to the first-ever electricity supply alert for Tokyo. Japanese public opinion moved decisively against atomic power after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami resulted in the meltdown of three reactors at Fukushima, with most of the country's operable nuclear reactors remaining shut. The newspaper has been conducting semiregular polls on the issue for more than a decade. ![]() That's up from 44% support for the restarts in a similar survey in September. Some 53% of people said nuclear reactors should restart if safety can be ensured, while 38% said they should remain shut, according to the poll conducted by the Nikkei. It comes amid surging power prices and warnings of electricity shortages in Tokyo. From a report: The survey result marks the first time since the Fukushima disaster in 2011 that an increasing role for nuclear energy has been favored. For the first time in more than a decade, a narrow majority in Japan now supports restarting idled nuclear reactors, according to a poll in the country's top business newspaper. ![]()
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