A drop in relative supply isn't a decline. 2019 saw the most electricity produced from nuclear energy in all of recorded history.
The technical term for a thing which is getting bigger is "growth". And realistically looking at the chart the term for nuclear power should be "steady".
That’s actually a sign of a dying industry. Capacity factor increases as you lower the percentage of the grid from inflexible base load Nuclear and Coal.
In 2018 there where 449 nuclear reactors world wide, in 2019 there where 442, in 2020 441. Sure that’s up from 438 in 1996, but this isn’t a growing industry. At best the output has been improving slightly per reactor over time, except again most of that is moving away from base load power plants.
This looks like wishful thinking on your part. I got curious about how much nuclear construction was going on [0] and new plants are being built at a rate that far outweighs capital depreciation.
Capital depreciation is something like a lifetime of 50 years ~= 2% per annum, but new supply is being bought on line at ~12% of global capacity.
And they claim there are 443 reactors, so your precipitous decline might be overstated by 33%. 6 instead of 8 :)
First you ignored the direct evidence that being a dying industry is why capacity factors have been increasing. Total installed capacity of nuclear reactors in 2018: 402.04 GW total installed capacity worldwide in 2020: 397.78 GW that’s the opposite of growth. https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/WorldTrendNuclear...
Next your comparing a single year process with a multi year construction process. Even China takes over 5 years on average to construct a reactor. So your 12% is under 2.4% per year and in practice looking at when things are coming online it’s below 2%.
Personally I don’t have an issue with Nuclear. I was looking to go into the industry so I started trying to predict the market, and things look bleak outside of China.
The technical term for a thing which is getting bigger is "growth". And realistically looking at the chart the term for nuclear power should be "steady".