How attitudes towards nuclear energy have changed – Business – Kommersant

The largest construction of nuclear power units in world history took place in the 1970s, which was also associated with the most severe energy crisis against the backdrop of rising oil prices due to the Arab oil embargo, the revolution in Iran and the ensuing Iran-Iraq war. The lion’s share of nuclear power plants was built in North America, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and the USSR.

At the peak of the oil crisis – in 1976 – the world’s first concrete was poured (considered the start of the construction of the facility) immediately under 43 power units with a total capacity of 42 GW. But the rise of relatively young nuclear technologies ended in the spring of 1986 after the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Interest in nuclear energy gradually began to revive only after about 20 years. However, the scale of the new nuclear construction did not manage to reach the record levels of the 1970s: the first wave of the “nuclear renaissance” ended in March 2011 after the second major accident at the Japanese nuclear power plant Fukushima. Since then, countries have froze construction and began to close power units, and major national industry players have gone bankrupt.

Polina Smertina