VIENNA (Reuter) - Five new nuclear power plants came into operation since 1994 and a mothballed plant in Armenia came back on stream, bringing the total number around the world to 438, the United Nations nuclear agency said Thursday.
Four new reactors with a combined capacity of 3,290 megawatts of electricity were connected last year to power grids in India, South Korea, Britain and Ukraine, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.
In addition, Romania opened a Canadian-built reactor at Cernavoda on the Danube 170 km (105 miles) east of Bucharest in April, the IAEA told Reuters.
``Cernavoda was launched by the Canadian prime minister (Jean Chretien) and the Romanian authorities last week, just before the anniversary of Chernobyl (on April 26),'' said IAEA spokesman David Kyd.
``It is not yet in commercial use, but it is up and running,'' Kyd said.
Cernavoda is the first Western-designed nuclear power plant in Eastern Europe. Romania's power authority Renel said Cernavoda would begin generating commercial quantities of electricity in the fourth quarter of 1996.
An Armenian plant at Metsamor was reconnected to the local electricity grid in 1995 after being shut down following a devastating earthquake in 1988, Kyd said.
Two nuclear reactors were shut down in 1995, one in Canada and one in Germany.
``That would bring us up to 31 countries with operating reactors,'' he said.
The IAEA said 38 nuclear power plants were currently under construction in 14 countries, including five in Ukraine, five in South Korea, four in Russia and four in India.
The United States runs the greatest number of nuclear power plants with 109 in operation. France comes second with 56, followed by Japan with 51.
Ukraine, site of the world's worst nuclear accident at the Chernobyl plant in 1986, has 16 reactors in operation.
The IAEA said 17 countries relied on nuclear power plants to supply at least a quarter of their electricity needs, but in some areas of Europe it was significantly higher.
Nuclear power's share of electricity production was highest in Lithuania at 85.59 percent, followed by 76.14 percent in France and 55.52 percent in Belgium.
The share dropped to slightly below half in Sweden at 46.61 percent, 46.43 percent in Bulgaria, 44.14 percent in Slovakia and 42.30 percent in Hungary.
The IAEA said the total nuclear power generation around the globe rose to 2,227.94 terawatt-hours, more than the world's total electricity generation from all sources in 1958.
Overall, nuclear power plants provided about 17 percent of the world's electricity production in 1995.