A total of 181 nuclear power reactors around the world have been retired as of July 1, but only 19 of those have been fully decommissioned, according to the 2019 version of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report.
The number of shuttered reactors rose by eight from the 2018 version of report. The United States, Japan, and Russia all had two new retired reactors, with one each in South Korea and Taiwan.
Those numbers appear slightly outdated – In the U.S., for instance, reactor Unit 1 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania closed on Sept. 20.
Overall, the closures are heavily focused in Europe, representing 108 of the depowered reactors through June 2019, with 42 in North America and 31 in Asia. These plants “are awaiting or are in various stages of decommissioning,” the report says.
Figuring that reactors will on average operate for 40 years, another 207 are due for retirement by 2030 and 125 more as of 2059, according to the authors.
The number of decommissioned reactors – those that have been defueled, deconstructed, and dismantled – remains the same as reported in the 2018 report. The United States accounted for 13 of those reactors, Germany five, and Japan one. Other early adopters of nuclear power, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada, have yet to completely decommission any reactor.
“In the U.S., there was no tangible progress in reactor decommissioning [since the prior report], but it seems that the new organizational model of selling the license to a decommissioning contractor, identified in WNISR2018, gains popularity,” it says.
