When reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine melted down on 26 April 1986, the fallout contaminated large parts of Europe. That disaster, and the earlier incident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, blighted the nuclear industry in the West for a generation. Worldwide, though, the picture did not change quite as dramatically.
In 2007, 35 nuclear plants were under construction, almost all in Asia. The 439 reactors already in operation had an overall capacity of 370 gigawatts, and contributed around 15% of the electricity generated worldwide, according to the most recent figures from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which serves as the world's nuclear inspectorate.
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