IF RENEWABLE energy fails to come up with the goods, nuclear could provide up to four times as much electricity in 2050 as it does now. That’s one of the projections in a report from the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, published on 16 October.
The report considered a series of scenarios. If renewables and carbon capture technology prove highly successful, and the public are hostile to nuclear energy, the generating capacity of nuclear power stations would rise to 580 gigawatts worldwide by 2050, compared with 370 gigawatts in 2007. If renewables don’t achieve their expected output, nuclear stations could have a generating capacity of 1400 gigawatts in 2050, and supply roughly 12.5 per cent of the all the electricity consumed worldwide.
Fulfilling this projection could stretch reactor builders to the limit. According to Fabien Roques at Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Paris, France, it would be difficult to build nuclear stations fast enough.
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