According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), China is expected to become the world’s third largest nuclear generating country by 2017 surpassing South Korea and Japan. China is expected to surpass South Korea and Russia in nuclear generating capacity by the end of 2015, overtake Japan around 2017 and to be behind only after the US and France. In last three years, China has added 10 reactors totalling more than 10 GW, pushing China’s net installed nuclear capacity to 23 GW at present.
Nuclear power uses fission (splitting atom nuclei) to produce energy.
Well known nuclear power plant accidents have occurred in Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and more recently in Fukushima (2011).
Globally, there are over 430 commercial nuclear power reactors in 31 countries.
The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power plant in Tokyo is the largest nuclear plant in the world.
Ernest Rutherford is known as the father of nuclear physics.
Rutherford was the New Zealand-born scientist and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 ‘for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances’.
Test Your Knowledge
What is Project Prometheus?
