Nuclear power had its origins over half a century ago, during the Cold War. Some eight years after the first nuclear reactors for plutonium production had begun operation in the USA, as part of the Manhattan Project, the first reactor to produce electricity entered service in late 1951 (EBR-1, in Idaho, USA). Just two years later, in 1953, President Eisenhower made his famous “Atoms for Peace” proposal, which effectively launched commercial nuclear power generation and led to the formation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The spread of nuclear power was slow during the early 1950s, with only the USA, the Soviet Union and the UK having operating power reactors by 1958. In 1959, France and Germany began their nuclear power operations. Nuclear power plants (NPPs) began real commercial development in the early 1960s, led by the Pressurized Water Reactor design (PWR, originally developed for submarine propulsion units), and there was a rapid spread worldwide during the 1970s and 1980s (Figure 1.1). By the mid 1980s, although the number of NPPs being put into operation was at its peak (in 1985, when 42 NPPs were brought into operation), nuclear power was actually entering a marked decline. In 1986, further development of the nuclear industry essentially stopped in many European countries, primarily caused by reaction to the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union (Ukraine).

However, other nations continued expansion, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region and, although the average number of NPPs commissioned each year since 1990 has only been about five, what has been called a worldwide “nuclear renaissance” was considered to be underway in the early years of the present century.