Tolling the death-knell for nuclear power

Press, 17 June 1982, Page 16

Tolling the death-knell for nuclear power

From “The Economist,” London

The O.E.C.D. is tolling the death-knell for the nuclear power industry. Estimates of future non-communist generating capacity have been sliding for 10 years (see chart) and the organisation’s Nuclear Energy ■Agency (N.E.A.) said last month the downward trend goes om Officially, but improbably, O.E.C.D. nuclear capacity, which accounts for 98 per cent of the existing non-communist world total (120 gigawatts), is supposed to increase to 350 gigawatts (one gigawatt is IM kilowatts) in 1990 and 500-680 gigawatts ,by 2000. To fulfil those forecasts will require a stark . reversal of current trends. In the past decade the industry completed plants at an average rate of 10 gigawatts a year. Up to three times that rate would be needed for the next , eight years to get to the 1990 target, which means at least 20 new stations a year — still leaving the ailing nuclear industry with a surplus in reactor manufacturing capacity of over 75 per cent. - There were only 56 nuclear power stations on the. O.E.C.D.’s books last year,down from 62 in 1979. Growth in electricity demand has fallen to about 2 per cent a year in the United States, which accounts for almost half the O.E.C.D.’s nuclear generating capacity. In March the Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimated that 19 Ameri- . can “power plants, in various stages Of construction, were being cancelled. Many of those would have come on stream between 1986 and 2000.5 . They join pothers already .cancelled in America .and throughout Western

Europe. Ohly France, which produces 23 per .cent of its electricity from nuclear power, seems intent on keeping most of its big nuclear programme intact. It aims to get that figure above 70 per cent in 1990. Britain has abandoned its plan to order one nuclear power station a year from 1982 for 10 years.'Opening shots are being fired by its declining' industry in favour of the controversial proposal for a.first American-desigfied- pressurised

water reactor. A public inquiry begins next January. The O.E.C.D. is afraid that the steepness of the decline may crush the industry. If it does, nuclear design, engineering and manufacturing talent could .soon dissipate rapidly' into other businesses. That, it says, would make it impossible to meet the .O.E.C.D.’s energy needs This, in turn, would limit economic growth and bring about new... pressures on oil supplies — ■ and. prices. O.P.E.C. is watching;