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FACTS ON POLICY: Nuclear Power
July 1, 2008
The United States is the largest producer of nuclear electric power.
In 2007, the United States produced 806.6 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of nuclear power, roughly 30 percent of the world’s total nuclear power generation.
The first commercial nuclear power plant in the United States opened in 1957. Currently, there are 104 fully licensed nuclear reactors in the United States. That is roughly one-quarter of the world’s 441 nuclear reactors.
Although the United States is the top producer of nuclear power quantity-wise, as a percentage of total energy production, nuclear power’s share is small, accounting for only 8 percent of total energy production and 19 percent of electricity generation.
The percentage of nuclear power as a proportion of total electricity generated increased from 1.0 percent in 1970 to 19.5 percent in 1988 and has remained relatively constant since then. The share of nuclear power as a proportion of total energy generated was 19.4 percent in 2007.
In 2004, the United States ranked eighteenth in the share of electricity generated by nuclear power. The five countries with the largest nuclear share of electricity generation were France (78 percent), Lithuania (72 percent), Slovakia and Belgium (55 percent each), and Sweden (52 percent). Most of the top 20 countries (those with the highest percentage of nuclear power generation) were in Europe; outside Europe and the United States, Korea and Japan had relatively high shares of nuclear power generated for electricity: 38 percent and 30 percent of total electricity generation, respectively.
Figure 1
Nuclear Energy Generation and Share of Total Electricity Generation, 1957–2007
Sources:
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U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2007, “Chapter 9: Nuclear Energy” (June 2008).
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U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, “International Energy Outlook 2004.”
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U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, “World Nuclear Generation of Electricity.”
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U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, “Table 9.2 Nuclear Power Plant Operations, 1957-2007.”
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