Nuclear Energy Dependency
According to the World Factbook of the CIA released on Nov. 30, Korea recorded a power generation capacity of 94 GW to rank 13th in the world.
The European Union topped the list by recording 9,071 GW, followed by China (1,505 GW), U.S. (1,063 GW), Japan (293 GW), India (254 GW), Russia (234 GW) and Germany (177 GW). Korea ranked 11th in annual electricity production (517 TW) and 10th in annual consumption (482 TW).
According to the data, Korea is highly dependent on nuclear power. The ratio of nuclear power to the total power generation capacity by country reached 48.8 percent in France, 34.3 percent in Armenia, 30.4 percent in Belgium and 26.8 percent in Korea, which is followed by Sweden (24.8 percent), Ukraine (23.7 percent), Slovakia (21.9 percent), Slovenia (20.5 percent), Hungary (20.3 percent) and the Czech Republic (18.8 percent). The ratio is 1.5 percent for China, 2.0 percent for India, 10.1 percent for Russia and 15.1 percent for Japan.
Meanwhile, Korea posted 1.9 percent and ranked 82nd when it comes to the ratio of new and renewable energy-based power generation. The ratio is 43.1 percent for Denmark, 41.2 percent for Germany, 34.1 percent for Nicaragua, 30 percent for Spain, 29.4 percent for Portugal, 11.2 percent for France, 9 percent for China, 7.4 percent for the U.S. and 3.8 percent for Japan.