How Much Energy Do Nuclear Power Plants Produce In The World

Nuclear power provides 55 of america s clean energy.

How much energy do nuclear power plants produce in the world.

The first commercial nuclear power stations started operation in the 1950s. It s kind of a lot as you can tell from the infographic above. While all the commercial reactors today use nuclear fission energy there are plans to use nuclear fusion energy for future power plants. Just how much power is that exactly.

The united states leadership came from its historic role as a pioneer of nuclear power development. Nuclear power plants do not emit greenhouse gases while generating electricity. The united states is the world s largest producer of nuclear power. Several international nuclear fusion reactor experiments exists or are being constructed including iter.

Presently the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by nuclear fission of uranium. They produce power by boiling water to create steam that spins a turbine. Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions that release nuclear energy to generate heat which most frequently is then used in steam turbines to produce electricity in a nuclear power plant nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear is the world s second largest source of low carbon power 29 of the total in 2017.

Nuclear energy now provides about 10 of the world s electricity from about 440 power reactors. That s 32 of the 2 5 trillion kwh of nuclear power produced worldwide. Over 50 countries utilise nuclear energy in about 220 research reactors. In 2017 it generated 805 billion kilowatt hours of electricity.

Nuclear power met 11 7 of the world s electricity demand in 2011.