POWER PLANT PERFORMANCE |
Reporting nuclear performance
The World Nuclear Association has published a special update of the sixth edition of the World Nuclear Performance Report for the UNFCCC COP26 meeting. Jonathan Cobb shares some highlights
THE SIXTH EDITION OF THE World Nuclear Performance Report is the first in which total annual global nuclear generation is lower than in the previous year. Overall, nuclear generation produced 2553TWh of electricity in 2020, down from 2657TWh in 2019. As World Nuclear Association director general Sama
Bilbao y León said in her introduction to the report, in any other year an almost four percent decline in nuclear generation would be an unequivocal disappointment. With climate change the key concern for world leaders in Glasgow, it would also be fair to say that such a fall in generation would have been an environmental disaster. Since coal-fired generation is still the leading source of electricity worldwide, the 104TWh of generation lost from nuclear could have avoided the emissions of up to 80 million tonnes of CO2
. However, in 2020, with overall electricity demand falling
by around 1% and nuclear reactors increasingly being called upon to provide load-following support to the growing share of variable renewable generation, it was the resilience and flexibility shown by the global nuclear fleet that told a positive story. With global electricity demand reducing, the output from nuclear reactors still represented a share of just over 10% of electricity supplied globally — similar to recent years. Nuclear reactors worldwide continued to maintain a high
Jonathan Cobb
Senior communication manager, World Nuclear Association
average capacity factor, despite the growing requirements for load following. The average global capacity factor in 2020 was 80.3%, maintaining the consistent performance seen over the last 20 years. The progress required to achieve this high level of
performance can be seen in Figure 1. In the 1970s, fewer than three out of ten reactors had an annual capacity factor above 80%. Since 2000 it has been more than six out of ten. This improvement has been achieved with many reactors built in the 1970s still in operation. So the higher capacity factors seen in 2020 have been reached not only through good performance from newer reactors, but through improved performance of older reactors. The age of a reactor does not appear to be a barrier to achieving high capacity factors. The chart shows capacity factors for reactors of specific ages averaged over the last five years (or as many years as data is available, if less than five years). The data in the 2020 Performance Report are consistent with what has been observed in recent years: there is no apparent age-related decline in the capacity factors achieved by reactors. One of the least cost — and most immediate — ways of
producing additional low-carbon electricity generation is to ensure that existing reactors continue to operate if they can.
26 | November 2021 |
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The potential of extended operating lifetimes should not be underestimated. Figure 2 shows the age of reactors operating in any one year since 1970. (These are the capacities of reactors that have produced electricity in any one year, and does not include those reactors classed as operable, but which have not produced electricity, for example, some of the reactors in Japan over the last 10 years.)
With each decade the first major wave of nuclear build
in the 1970s is reflected in the growth of reactors over ten, twenty, thirty and forty years old. The first reactors to operate for more 50 years have emerged recently. The fall in the rate of construction of new reactors from
1990 through to 2010 is reflected in a decline in subsequent decades. From 2010 the number of reactors in their third decade decline sharply, and over the 2020s we can also expect to see the number of reactors in their fourth decade of operation decline. Some reactors in the US have applied for 80 years of
operation, and 60 years is the base-case for reactors being built today, so it is clear that there is great potential for decades of additional generation from reactors in operation today, which have a mean age of just over 30 years. A reactor at the fleet average age of 30 years would reasonably be expected to operate for longer than a new offshore wind turbine or solar panel just entering service.
Expansion is necessary If net zero is to be a realistic target, a substantial expansion of nuclear capacity is urgently needed, in addition to retaining the existing fleet. We can see the beginnings of such an expansion in Figure
3. In 2020 there were more reactors in their first decade of service than in their second or their third decade of service. These early promising steps need to be followed by a concerted effort to accelerate the pace of new nuclear construction. There were just four construction starts in 2020, one in
Turkey and three in China. This has already been exceeded in 2021, with first concrete poured on seven new reactor projects, four in China and one each in Russia, India and Turkey. There were five reactors connected to the grid in 2020,
two in China and one each in Belarus, Russia and UAE. This has already been matched in 2021, with two reactors grid-connected in China, and one each in India, Pakistan and UAE. More than five years ago, the World Nuclear Association launched its Harmony Goal, for nuclear generation to be supplying 25% of the world’s electricity before we reach
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