page_title: Low-carbon power
section_title: Nuclear power
hierarchical_section_title: Low-carbon power / Examples of low carbon power technology / Nuclear power
caption_attribution_description: English: The following is the author's description of the photograph quoted directly from the photograph's Flickr page."Argonne National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory have announced a collaboration to study how to better recycle spent nuclear fuel." Read morePhoto: Samples from Idaho National Laboratory's Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) core will be sent to Argonne's ATLAS particle accelerator for analysis to learn the characteristics of the nuclear material. Powered up, the fuel plates can be seen glowing bright blue. The core is submerged in water for cooling." More on the ATR
context_page_description: Low-carbon power comes from processes or technologies that produce power with substantially lower amounts of carbon dioxide emissions than is emitted from conventional fossil fuel power generation. It includes low carbon power generation sources such as wind power, solar power, hydropower and nuclear power. The term largely excludes conventional fossil fuel plant sources, and is only used to describe a particular subset of operating fossil fuel power systems, specifically, those that are successfully coupled with a flue gas carbon capture and storage system. Globally, 35% of electricity generation comes from low-carbon sources. As of 2018 the largest low-carbon energy sources globally were hydropower and nuclear power, with the latter providing over 50% of low-carbon power alone in United States and European Union.
context_section_description: Nuclear power, with a 10.6% share of world electricity production as of 2013, is the second largest low-carbon power source.
  Nuclear power, in 2010, also provided two thirds of the twenty seven nation European Union's low-carbon energy, with some EU nations sourcing a large fraction of their electricity from nuclear power; for example France derives 79% of its electricity from nuclear. As of 2020 nuclear power provided 47% low-carbon power in the EU with countries largely based on nuclear power routinely achieving carbon intensity of 30-60 gCO2eq/kWh.
  According to the IAEA and the European Nuclear Society, worldwide there were 68 civil nuclear power reactors under construction in 15 countries in 2013. China has 29 of these nuclear power reactors under construction, as of 2013, with plans to build many more, while in the US the licenses of almost half its reactors have been extended to 60 years, and plans to build another dozen are under serious consideration.  There is also a considerable number of new reactors being built in South Korea, India, and Russia.
  Nuclear power's capability to add significantly to future low carbon energy growth depends on several factors, including the economics of new reactor designs, such as Generation III reactors, public opinion and national and regional politics.
  The 104 U.S. nuclear plants are undergoing a Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program, to sustainably extend the life span of the U.S. nuclear fleet by a further 20 years. With further US power plants under construction in 2013, such as the two AP1000s at Vogtle Electric Generating Plant. However the Economics of new nuclear power plants are still evolving and plans to add to those plants are mostly in flux.
caption: Blue Cherenkov radiation light being produced near the core of the Fission powered Advanced Test Reactor
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