Just when we thought that would be it for nuclear energy, some whole countries are not listening...
Here we present a simple round up gleaned from the news of nations not interested in turning back nuclear energy, but to the contrary, are expanding it. This is not argue one way or another but a simple statement of facts.
Das Rollbacks
To date, nuclear roll backs have been announced in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and some in Japan.
Germany: was never planning to build new nuclear plants but put off their phase out last year, now reversed since Fukushima.
Switzerland announced a 20 year or so phase out to see if they can really get rid of 40% of their baseload electricity and replace it with more hydro, solar and wind.
Italy, which only announced their phase out was ending last year reversed it in a stunning 95% vote not to reverse it, but continue to receive French nuclear energy.
Anti-nuclear Italy and Spain (which hasn't announced anything about their 10 nuclear plants) both continue to have large nuclear service industries.
Moving Forward
The UK: As summerized here, the British are going to add 19GWs of nuclear energy:
* The UK has 18 reactors generating about 18% of its electricity and all but one of these will be retired by 2023.
* The country has full fuel cycle facilities including major reprocessing plants.
* The first of some 19 GWe of new-generation plants are expected to be on line about 2018.
The current plan is derived from the National Planning Statement here, with the part on nuclear here and here. The full report includes official government plans for renewable energy, gas and other parts of their energy infrastructure.
Finland: Remember them? They are building an EPR right now...over budget and behind schedule but it was generally expected to do so since it was a First Of A Kind plant. The French are building one also, with some lessons learned, not "as" behind schedule or over budget. As lessons learned for standardized design plants, the costs actually do come down, as the Koreans and Japanese have shown in their later builds. Anyway...
Fennovoima has invited Areva and Toshiba to bid for the construction of a new nuclear power plant in Finland. This means that Toshiba can compete with Areva for GW installation of large, plus 1400 MW reactors. Finland already gets 30% of it's power from nuclear these two reactors will boost it up close to 40%. The Finns, it seems are unaffected by the political waves created by Fukushima. To watch is if Toshiba can bring in their reactors cheaper than Areva, makers of the most expensive nuclear reactor in the world.
Jordan. Who? Jordan. Jordan has invited the IAEA and other international agencies to help them kick-start a nuclear program. Jordan has it's own fuel, here, in the form of massive phosphate deposits which contain large amounts of uranium. They already mine the phosphate, now they want to export the 'spoil' to Russia or France to enrich the waste uranium and fabricate same into fuel for them. Ergo:
Jordan has received some offers for its new plant proposals three companies: an Areva-Mistubishi Heavy Industries consortium, Russia's AtomStroyExport and Canada's SNC-Lavalin International. The 3 were "shortlisted" to build the plant in May 2010. The designs under consideration are the Atmea-1 pressurized water reactor (PWR), the AES-92 model VVER-1000, and the Enhanced Candu-6 pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR). No one has built an Atmea-1 ever so it would be "First of a Kind". VVERs are under construction in China and India and 1 are online in the former.
Quoting a statement from Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) deputy chairman Kamal Al Araj, official state news agency Petra reported that the offers had a on 4 July date and placed by a specially formed tenders committee, and that financial offers would be received by mid-August. A decision on reactor technology is expected by December.
Jordan has complied with all IAEA requests for new nuclear countries by setting up first, their safety regulatory regime.
Saudi Arabia: As reported here previously, Saudi Arabia is now in the process of doing the same thing, behind Jordan by about 2 years, but noted they may want to build 16 reactors from one or two countries.