(A technical paper prepared for the Australian Nuclear Forum)

The rise in annual electricity generation from the world's nuclear power plants has varied inconsistently over the period 1980- 2004 as is shown in the figure below. A major reason for this has been the rise in political influence of the anti-nuclear movement during the early 1970s assisted by the accident at Three Mile Island 2 in 1979, Chernobyl 4 in 1986 and Fukushima Daiichi in 2011. This has led to a significant decrease in the rate of nuclear generation increases that had been the trend from 1980 to 1990.* In 1980 the net annual nuclear generation was 684 billion kWh and by 1990 this had increased to 1908 billion kWh- for an average rate of increase of 122.4 billion kWh/y. Then from 1990 to 2004 the generation rose only another 711 billion kWh, producing an average rate of increase of 50.8 billion kWh/y [ref 1]. Extrapolation of these rates to 2006 gives a difference of 1145 billion kWh, or a total loss of approximately 0.5x16xl145 = 9160 billion kWh