In the year just ended, four new nuclear reactors went commercial around the world. They are: Rostov Unit 2 in Russia, Rajasthan Unit 6 in India, and Ling Ao Unit 3 and Qinshan Phase II, Unit 3. Rostov 2 is a VVER-1000 Pressurized Water reactor, with a net capacity of 950 MWe. Rajasthan Unit 6 is a Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor, a type once known as the "CANDU" until Canada lost its leadership role in this technology to India. India has a habit of building small reactors: This unit has a capacity of 220MWe. Ling Ao 3 is a CPR-1000, an endogenously produced Chinese reactor which is largely based on French Areva designs. It has a capacity of 1080 MWe. Qinshan II-3 is one of 10 reactors at that site, six of which are in operation, and four of which are under construction. Qinshan II-3 is a pressurized light water reactor, one of 5 at the site. All of the other reactors, including those under construction are pressurized heavy water reactors that can act as breeders when fueled with U-233, which is made by transmuting thorium. (Heavy water reactors can also burn used nuclear fuel from light water reactors, sometimes erronously designated at "nuclear waste," but that's another story.) It has a power rating of 650 MWe. Combined...
...the reactors have a total capacity of around 2900 MWe.
South Korea's Shin Kori Unit 3 was completed and connected to the grid, but it is still in the shakedown period of testing and certification and thus is not considered "commercial."
Let's leave the completed and operating Korean reactor out of the equation for the moment.
Total output from all of the solar installations on earth, constructed over 56 year of unrestrained and uncritical cheering, was 18.1 billion kilowatt-hours. This sounds like a lot until someone does something called "math." Translated into SI units, the total solar electricity output of the planet was 0.0654 exajoules. Humanity's energy demand now stands at around 500 exajoules per year.
There are 31,557,600 seconds in a year. It follows that the total average continuous power output of all the planet's solar cells is 0.0654 X 1018/31,557,600 = 2,074 MWe.
This means that the four new reactors that went commercial this year would only need to operate at 2,074/2900 = 71% of capacity utilization to match the output of all of the solar capacity constructed, again, over 56 years of unrestrained, uncritical cheering. (The solar cell was invented in 1954, two years before the first commercial nuclear reactor went on line.)
The Ling Ao 3 unit began construction on December 15, 2005. It was completed and commercial in less than 5 years. It connected to the grid on July 15, 2010. Two months and 5 days later it was certified as commercial.
The Quishan reactor took took a similar period to construct.
Anti-nukes like to whine that nuclear power construction "takes too long."
This reminds me of the American Civil War when Union General George McClellan whined to Abraham Lincoln that conditions prevented his military movements. In response, Abraham Lincoln asked him how it was then, that the Confederacy was almost always moving, even on the very days that McClellan was announcing that movement was impossible.
It is not impossible to build nuclear reactors and evidence would be that the United States built about 100 of them in about a 25 year period, about 4 a year.
The world pace of nuclear reactor building is actually climbing significantly. The number of new reactors that started construction this year around the planet is now 14, which is the highest number of new nuclear starts since 1990, twenty years ago, and just ten years after the uneducated anti-nuke mystic Amory Lovins declared "nuclear power is dead."
Nuclear production rose continuously over the 30 year period after Lovins declared "nuclear power is dead." From 1980 until 2010 nuclear energy was the single fastest growing form of climate change gas free energy on the entire planet, easily outstripping wind, solar, and hydroelectric growth combined. Most of this increase came not from new reactors, but from improved operations and higher fuel burnups.
One may read more at this this link.
An excerpt:
Around the world, last year's construction starts added up to 13,813 MWe gross, according to World Nuclear Association research. Eight of these were in China (Fuqing 3, Ningde 3, Taishan 2, Changjiang 1, Haiyang 2, Fangchenggang 1, Yangjiang 3 and Changjiang 2), but work also started in Russia (Leningrad II-2 and Rostov 4) and India (Kakrapar 3 and 4). Separately, the start of the project to complete Brazil's Angra 3 promised another 1405 MWe gross and the stalled construction of Japan's 1383 MWe Ohma unit got back underway after re-engineering work for enhanced earthquake protection.
These 14 construction projects continue the global upward trend in nuclear power. In 2009 the figure for new construction starts was 11, while 2008 and 2007 each saw ten. Assuming about five years for construction it can be expected that reactors will be coming online around 2012 at double today's rate of five per year, with this to rise to one per month around 2015. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency's PRIS database, the last time ten or more new reactors started in a single year was 1990.
Have a nice evening.