Promoting the peaceful uses of nuclear energy

Abstract

For the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the peaceful uses of nuclear energy include not only electrical power generation, but also its application for medical, agricultural, and industrial purposes. This chapter focuses on the narrow use of nuclear energy for power generation. The share of nuclear power generation as a percentage of world power generation has been slowly declining after it peaked at close to 20 percent around 1996. The fast-growing economies of China and India have resulted in greater electricity generation more by burning coal and other fossil fuels than rapidly introducing nuclear power. Nuclear power generation produces spent nuclear fuel, but only very few countries, such as Finland and Sweden, have found places to dispose of their spent nuclear fuel. Other countries—the United States, Japan, France, Switzerland, South Korea, and Taiwan among them—are struggling to find places for the permanent disposition of spent nuclear materials.