Over the next 50 years, mankind will use more energy than it has consumed in the entire history. Earlier predictions of energy consumption growth and evolution of energy technologies proved to be wrong as consumption is rising much faster than expected while new sources of energy are not likely to become commercially viable until 2030. Fossil fuels are meanwhile growing short. Opportunities to build new hydropower capacity remain limited, while greenhouse effect prevention measures impose limitations on burning oil, gas and coal at thermal power stations.
A potential response to these challenges is nuclear energy, one of the youngest and fastest evolving global industries. Having realized this, increasingly more countries are embarking on nuclear power.