The IAEA makes two annual projections concerning the growth of nuclear power, a low and a high. The low projection assumes that all nuclear capacity that is currently under construction or firmly in the development pipeline gets completed and attached to the grid, but no other capacity is added. In this low projection, there would be growth in capacity from 370 GW(e) at the end of 2006 to 447 GW(e) in 2030. (A gigawatt = 1000 megawatts = 1 billion watts).

In the IAEA´s high projection – which adds in additional reasonable and promising projects and plans – global nuclear capacity is estimated to rise to 679 GW(e) in 2030. That would be an average growth rate of about 2.5%/yr.

“Our job is not so much to predict the future but to prepare for it,” explains the IAEA´s Alan McDonald, Nuclear Energy Analyst. “To that end we update each year a high and low projection to establish the range of uncertainty we ought to be prepared for.”

The IAEA´s other key findings as of the end of 2006 are listed in the article. For example:

Of the 30 countries with nuclear power, the percentage of electricity supplied by nuclear ranged widely: from a high of 78 percent in France; to 54 percent in Belgium; 39 percent in Republic of Korea; 37 percent in Switzerland; 30 percent in Japan; 19 percent in the USA; 16 percent in Russia; 4 percent in South Africa; and 2 percent in China.