| Need to build around 250 reactors by 2025 to replace current capacity Premise1 #38818
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"There are currently 435 reactors operating worldwide, nine less than in 2002. There are 52 reactors listed as “under construction” (more on that later), down from a peak in 1979 of 233 and 120 in 1987. No new plants were connected anywhere in 2008. The last plant to come online was the Romanian plant Cernavoda-2, which took 24 years to build. Reactors now provide slightly less power worldwide than they did two years ago ...the global “fleet” of reactors is ageing. The average age of plants worldwide is 25 years. The industry maintains that reactors have a lifetime of 40 years (and that of new generations of reactors 60 years), but the average age of the 123 reactors that have been closed across the world has been 22 years. Even assuming a lifetime of 40 years, and assuming all 52 reactors “under construction” proceed, 42 reactors need to be planned and built between now and 2015, and a further 192 built out to 2025, to replace the current nuclear power capacity."
Source: Bernard Keane, World Nuclear Industry Status Report
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