NRG Expert has recently launched an updated version of its Nuclear report: The Global Nuclear Industry Historical, Present, and Future Generation Statistics to 2025. Find out why this report is what you need today!
Nuclear energy is used for a variety of purposes. The most important are power generation, as a military weapon, ship propulsion, space travel, medical treatments, and the production of hydrogen for fuel cells. There are many less important applications.
Nuclear science was developed during the first half of the twentieth century and this stage culminated with the nuclear bomb in 1945. Other uses then followed, mainly ship propulsion, electricity generation and to a lesser extent medical use. Since the first industrial sized nuclear power plant was commissioned in Britain in 1956, nuclear power generation has been the prime focus of attention.
There are three large nuclear power producers today; the US, France and Japan (in terms of capacity0. By far the greatest concentrations of nuclear power plants are in Western Europe and the eastern states of the US. There is some concentration in the small land area of Japan and increasingly in China and India, but otherwise, nuclear plants are widely dispersed throughout the world.
Nuclear power plants are operated by several different types of utility. In some countries one or more central organisations have been created, dedicated to nuclear power, such as Rosenergoatom in Russia and Eletronuclear in Brazil, and similar organisations in a few other countries. In other countries either the dominant national utility operates the nuclear capability, or where there are many large utilities such as in the US, they are owned by the relevant operators in the same way that they operate other facilities.
