Drop in nuclear power production in 2022

In 2022, 13 EU countries with nuclear electricity production generated 609 255 gigawatt hours (GWh) of nuclear electricity (-16.7% compared with 2021). This is the lowest level registered in the period from 1990, the first year for which comparable data are available for all EU countries. Nevertheless, nuclear power plants accounted for over a fifth (21.8%) of the total electricity production in the EU. 

The decrease is largely attributable to reactor maintenance and repairs in the EU’s largest producer of nuclear power – France. In 2022, French nuclear power plants produced 84 630 GWh less electricity (-22%) than in 2021. Additionally, on the last day of 2021 Germany permanently shut down three of its reactors, halving its nuclear power production (from 69 130 GWh in 2021 to 34 709 GWh in 2022). A reactor was also shut down in Belgium in September 2022. With these four shutdowns and one new reactor in Finland, there were 103 operating nuclear reactors in the EU at the end of 2022, compared to 106 at the end of 2021. 

France produced almost half of the EU’s total nuclear power (48.4%; 294 731 GWh), followed by Spain (9.6%; 58 590 GWh), Sweden (8.5%; 51 944 GWh) and Belgium (7.2%; 43 879 GWh). These four countries together produced 73.7% of the total amount of electricity from nuclear sources in the EU.

Source dataset: nrg_bal_peh 

France remained the EU country most reliant on nuclear electricity, which represented 62.8% of all electricity generated in the country in 2022. The only other EU country with more than half of its electricity generated in nuclear power plants was Slovakia (60.2%). Among countries that relied on nuclear electricity, the Netherlands (3.4%) and Germany (6.0%) recorded the lowest shares.