Morinosuke Kawaguchi is a member of the Fukushima Project, a non-profit group established to investigate the nuclear accident. He is Principal and Associate Director of the global consulting firm, Arthur D. Little, (Japan) Inc. Here he examines the significance of nuclear power in terms of national military strategy.
There are many discussions in various forums on the future of nuclear power plants, with arguments for and against. We at the non-profit Fukushima Project are adding to that debate.
We have also been researching the spread of nuclear power, since knowledge of these developments is necessary in order to understand the current situation and discuss the future. In fact, during our investigation of the course of events, we have discovered several important motivating factors. Here I will focus on and analyze what can be considered a particularly important one of these: the significance of nuclear power to military strategy.

Nuclear power worldwide has peaked

Fig. 1 shows the total amount of electricity produced by nuclear power stations worldwide, and the change in nuclear share of total electricity generation. Nuclear power was introduced in the former Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and other countries in the late 1950s, underwent an embryonic phase in the 1960s, and expanded in the 1970s, before entering the mature phase in the 1990s, with the overall nuclear share reaching about 15% at the present day. Currently a total of 31 countries have nuclear power, with only three countries having of their own accord decommissioned their nuclear power stations: Italy, Kazakhstan, and Lithuania. Of these, Kazakhstan and Lithuania are planning to recommission some, so in effect Italy is the only country to have truly given up nuclear power.

Fig. 1 　Nuclear share of electricity generation (Source: World Nuclear Association)

It is a click of the image and a zoom.

Looking at the graph in detail, there are two periods where the growth process stagnated. These occurred following the accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, and reflect doubts over nuclear safety due to the radiation leaks. Despite these accidents, however, the trend for overall expansion continued unabated, reaching a mature phase from the 1990s onward.

Nevertheless, the nuclear share is now on the decline, and this trend is unlikely to be reversed.

Next I’ll look at the breakdown by countries. Fig. 2 compares the nuclear share of total electricity generation of each country in 2007. The bar height represents the nuclear share, and bar width the total amount of electricity generated by that country. This shows us that the US, which consumes around 20-25% of the world’s electricity, is by far the biggest producer, but its nuclear dependency ratio is only twenty percent. Of the major energy consuming countries, France’s nuclear share is by far the highest, but the other “advanced countries” that is, those with higher production mostly have a nuclear dependency ratio of around 15-20%.

Fig. 2 Comparison of nuclear energy ranking by country (Source: World Nuclear Association)

It is a click of the image and a zoom.

The other countries with low production and high nuclear dependency are mostly Eastern European countries formerly part of the Soviet Union, who constructed their nuclear power stations during the Cold War years, and the nuclear power stations introduced at that time are probably sufficient for their needs. All of the countries with larger bar areas on this graph are, with the exception of India and China, advanced countries whose energy consumption will not increase all that much from now on, since the standard of living has reached a satisfactory level, and the populations are unlikely to grow any further.