Finished watching “Chernobyl.” Decided to check the figures for Russia and the USA.
“As of January 2019 in Russia, there are 35 power units operating at 10 nuclear power plants, totaling a capacity of 29 GW.” “In the next 10 years, 21 power units with a total of 13 GW will be shut down”, but about 17 nuclear power plants with a total of 20 GW are being constructed.”
“In the USA, 98 nuclear reactors are in operation with a total capacity of ~100 GW, generating 20.05% of the country’s electricity.” “There are plans to decommission 12 reactors with 11 GW of capacity within the next seven years. In recent years, they’ve been closing one nuclear power plant per year.” A total of 35 reactors have already been shut down. As far as I understand, two are being built. I found no plans.
I also found it interesting to learn that the cost of building a station in the USA is about $2 billion, and complete dismantling is $1 billion. Well, money aside, what’s intriguing is that a station can be built in a few years, but dismantling one can take up to sixty years, and that’s if it was anticipated in the design (just freezing is faster, only seven years, but it’s a temporary solution). Essentially, this is why the issue of decommissioning arises (as many countries in Europe, starting with Italy and Germany, have already done).
On the other hand, everything is going well with solar energy. While solar panels are still ten times less efficient than nuclear plants, a 1 MW farm costs $1M, requires minimal maintenance, does no harm to nature, and dismantling it is almost free (all the equipment can be sold since it has minimal wear). In the States, already two percent of energy is generated from the sun. But nuclear power plants are still ahead of everything in terms of the cost of energy, of course. Sadly, economic reasons overpower ecological ones.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 