Seven nuclear reactors, five of them in Japan, were permanently shuttered in 2015, the World Nuclear Association said Tuesday.
The list encompasses Grafenrheinfeld in Germany, declared closed in June; Genkai 1, Mihama 1 and 2, Shimane 1, and Tsuruga 1 in Japan, closures dating to just after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that were formalized in March 2015; and Wylfa 1 in the United Kingdom.
“It is noteworthy that of these only one (Wylfa) was due to business-as-usual engineering and economic reasons,” the association said in its World Nuclear Performance Report 2016. “Grafenrheinfeld in Germany was closed for political reasons and the five Japanese units have been offline since soon after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011 and their status as permanently shutdown was made official in 2015 as an accounting change.”
The seven plants represented 3,934 in megawatts capacity, the report says. By contrast, a total capacity of 9,875 megawatts was added globally last year, primarily in China.
While the number of operable reactors increased from 436 to 439 in 2015, the industry faces a number of challenges, including low natural gas prices and continued repercussions from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, according to the report. Capacity additions at plants last year could not keep up with premature retirements in the United States, where power companies have said natural gas, poor market designs, and other pressures have forced them to shut down reactors before their life cycle ends.
“Considerable experience has been gained [globally] in decommissioning various types of nuclear facilities,” the report says. “About 90 commercial power reactors, 45 experimental or prototype power reactors, as well as over 250 research reactors and a number of fuel cycle facilities, have been retired from operation.”
No less than 15 of the roughly 140 retired power reactors have been completely disassembled, with more than 50 undergoing disassembly, a similar number in SAFSTOR, and three entombed.
