Percentage of Electricity from Nuclear Power: We’re Number 6

The first US commercial nuclear power plant went online in 1957 and most of the subsequent plants were built in the 1970s through the 1990s. At its peak in 2012, there were 104 nuclear reactors in the United States; many of them were built decades earlier and were approaching the end of their useful life. Since 2012, about twenty reactors have been decommissioned and only two new reactors, Vogtle Unit 3 and Unit 4 in Georgia, have gone online. In 2021, there were a total of 93 nuclear power plants, generating nearly 20 percent of America’s electricity.

In 2011, following the nuclear power disaster in Fukushima, Japan, the German government determined that it would close its nuclear facilities. Eight of seventeen units were closed in 2011, and in 2021, six units were still operating. Then by 2023, all such units were shut down, despite protests that the Russian invasion of Ukraine might put Germany’s energy supplies at further risk.

One of the major, unresolved issues for commercial nuclear power plants is the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act (1982) had authorized the Department of energy to determine a geologic repository for a permanent disposal; after much political wrangling, the remote and geologically inert site of Yucca Mountain in Nevada was chosen as the permanent disposal site for the entire commercial nuclear industry. This did not sit well with Nevadans, many of whom called the legislation the “Screw Nevada” bill. About $7 billion had been collected from energy companies for nuclear waste depository fund, and most of that had been spent preparing the Yucca Mountain site. But when President Obama took office in 2009, powerful Senate majority leader Harry Reid from Nevada convinced the administration to abandon the Yucca Mountain plan. Congress has not come up with a plan for a permanent storage site since. Meanwhile, some 72,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel, and growing every day, was stored at 80 sites scattered about in thirty-four states.

The United States is not alone in failing to solve the spent fuel problem. “No country, including the United States, has a permanent geologic repository for disposal” of spent nuclear fuel, according to a 2020 Congressional Research Service analysis.

The United States generates 771 TWh of electricity through its 93 nuclear power plants; this accounts for 19.6 percent of all electricity generated throughout the country. China is second with 383 TWh from 55 nuclear power plants, accounting for 5.0 percent of its electricity. France is third with 363 TWh from 56 nuclear plants; but France comes in first place for the percentage of its country’s electricity (69.0) coming from nuclear energy.

Sources: Lance N. Larson, “Nuclear Waste Storage Sites in the United States,” Congressional Research Service, US Congress, April 13, 2020, https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/IF11201.pdf.

World Nuclear Association, https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx