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Electricity generation in the world of nuclear power industry 69

3.1 Statistics on electricity generation in the world

This chapter is a logical continuation of our previous publications on this topic [1–4].
It is well known that electricity generation and consumption is the key factor for advan-
ces in industry, agriculture, technology, and the standard of living (see Table 3.1,and
Figs. 3.1 and 3.2).Also, strongpower industry with diverse energysources isveryimpor-
tant for a country’s independence. In general, electricity (see Fig. 3.3) can be generated
mainly from: (1) nonrenewable energy sources such as coal (see Fig. 3.4), natural
gas, oil, and nuclear (see Fig. 3.5); and (2) renewable energy sources such as hydro
(see Figs. 3.6–3.9), biomass, wind (see Figs. 3.10–3.12), geothermal (see Figs. 3.13
and 3.14), solar (see Figs. 3.15–3.20), and marine power (see Figs. 3.21 and 3.22).
Figs. 3.4–3.10, 3.12, 3.13, 3.15–3.17, 3.19, 3.21, and 3.22 show selected power
plants of the world. Figs. 3.11, 3.14, and 3.18 show maps of wind-speed distribution
over the United States, geothermal resources of the United States, and annual aver-
age direct normal solar-resource-data distribution over the United States. Operation
of various energy sources in an electrical grid is discussed in Section 3.2; and mod-
ern thermal and nuclear power plants are discussed in Sections 3.3 and 3.4,
respectively.
Today, the main sources for global electrical-energy generation (see Fig. 3.3A) are:
(1) Thermal power—primarily using coal (39.9%) and secondarily using natural gas
(22.6%);
(2) “Large” hydroelectric plants (17.2%); and
(3) Nuclear power from various Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) (11.2%).
The last 9.2% of the electrical energy is generated using oil (4.2%), and the remainder
(5%) generated from biomass, geothermal, and intermittent wind, and solar energy.
In addition, renewable energy sources such as marine power (tidal and wave power)
are also intermittent.
Main sources for electrical energy generation in selected countries are shown in
Fig. 3.3. Seventeen top power plants of the world by installed capacity are listed in
Table 3.2, and largest operating power plants of the world (based on installed
capacity) by energy source—in Table 3.3.
A comparison of the data in Fig. 3.3 with those data (mainly, related to 2013 or even
earlier) presented in our previous paper from 2015 [2] shows that world usage of coal
and oil for electricity generation has dropped by 1%, and of nuclear by 2.3%; usage
of gas and hydro power has increased by about 1%, and renewables by a couple per-
cent. However, these changes are not so significant within even a number of years.
For China trends are different (Fig. 3.3B). China has significantly decreased the
usage of coal for electricity generation from 69% to 65% (actually, not long ago China
used up to 80% of coal-based electricity!); usage of gas has decreased by 2%; but
usage of hydro power increased from 6% to 20%, nuclear from 1% to 4%, wind from
0% to 4%, and solar from 0% to 1%, which is a very good trend, that is, decreasing
usage of “dirty” coal for electricity generation.
However, on opposite, India has significantly increased usage of coal for electricity
generation from 52% to 77%; and, at the same time, usage of hydro power has