IAEA news.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported on 30 January that 10 new nuclear plants were operating in 1990, bringing the world's total number of operating nuclear electricity plants to 424. These new facilities are in Canada, France, India, Japan, the Soviet Union and the United States.

Twenty-five countries generate electricity from nuclear power plants, the IAEA stated, with almost half of them producing more than one third of their electricity by nuclear power. Also in 1990, 12 reactors were shut down in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The IAEA also announced that scientists and engineers from the European Community, Japan, the Soviet Union and the United States had completed a three-year collaboration to describe their vision of the next major step in the worldwide quest for useful power from controlled thermonuclear fusion. The conceptual design of the fusion test reactor, called International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, is based on a concept used in dozens of scientific experiments during the past 20 years.

Thermonuclear fusion is an option, the IAEA stated, that is potentially acceptable from the environmental, safety and economic points of view for providing an adequate, worldwide energy supply for the future.