Future prospects

The Fukushima crisis was a heavy blow for global nuclear energy prospects and reignited debate among government officials and industry experts about whether nuclear power was a viable solution for countries to meet growing energy demands.

Oliver Morton, a British science editor, wrote in an article published by the Economist magazine earlier this year that nuclear power will not go away but its role may never be more than marginal.

But some experts disagreed, arguing that nuclear power will remain an important part of the global energy mix and the future development of nuclear power plants will be dominated by emerging economies such as China and India.

According to a report by the World Energy Council, there are at least 50 countries in the world that are operating, building or considering nuclear generation as a viable solution for energy demand.

Half of them are emerging economies or nuclear "newcomers" aiming to develop nuclear power production to better cope with the challenges of an affordable and low-carbon energy production, the report said.

While some predict that cost concerns may see renewable energy pip nuclear power, CEA chairman Bigot argues that renewable power suffers from its interruptible characteristics and some fundamental physical limits.

"As long as we have not found out the way to store energy at sufficient scale, I do believe that the renewable energy, whatever the price would be, will not be able to sufficiently cope with the energy need of the countries," he says.

"Nuclear power and renewable energy are complementary. My expectation is that nuclear energy has a bright future as long as we cope correctly with safety."

Wei Tian contributed to the story.

lixiang@chinadaily.com.cn