WORLD NUCLEAR ENERGY FIGURES 1981

GRAPHIC: A09_8205.TIF

Figures for the Communist world are harder to come by. The nuclear capacities (and no. of reactors on line) are USSR 15.2 GW (35), East Germany 1.7 GW (5), Czechoslovakia 0.99 GW (3). The USSR has had two breeders (400 and 600 MW) on line since 1973 and 1980 and is planning a 1600 MW breeder. Politburo member Nikolai Tikhonov, in Soviet Union earlier this year (same issue that sings the praises of Caldicott's The Final Epidemic and Schell's The Fate of the Earth) states:

"The [Soviet] nuclear power industry will be developed at a particularly rapid pace. Now the capacity of its facilities amounts to 13 GW, or about 5% of total Soviet generating capacity. This will be tripled by the end of the current 5-year plan period [1985], and in the next, the 12^th 5-year plan, we shall annually put 10 GW of new capacity into operation."

The discrepancies in capacity data -- 10.5 GW (AIF), 13 GW (Tikhonov) and 15.2 GW (DAF), testify both to the speed with which the Soviets are going nuclear and to the difficulties of getting their data.

World nuclear capacity increased by 20% in 1981.