The 13 EU member countries that have operational nuclear reactors together generated 609,255 GWh of electricity in 2022, 16.7% less than the 731,700 Gwh in 2021, according to data published by Eurostat on Friday.

According to the data, this is the lowest amount of nuclear electricity produced by EU countries since 1990, when data on this indicator began to be collected. Despite the decline, nuclear power plants were responsible for more than a fifth (21.8%) of total electricity production in the EU.

This decrease was largely caused by maintenance and repair work carried out in France, Europe’s largest nuclear power producer. Last year, France’s nuclear reactors produced 84,630 GWh less electricity than in 2021 (a 22% year-on-year decrease). In addition, on the last day of 2021, Germany permanently shut down three of its nuclear reactors, so its electricity production from nuclear sources fell from 69,130 GWh in 2021 to 34,709 GWh in 2022, according to Agerpres.

At the end of 2022, 103 nuclear reactors were operating in the European Union, compared to 106 at the end of 2021.

In the case of Romania, the two reactors at Cernavoda produced 11,098 GWh in 2022, down from 11,284 GWh in 2021. Romania’s nuclear energy production is lower than that of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria. In the EU, the only member states with a lower nuclear energy production than Romania are the Netherlands and Slovenia.

At the EU level, France produced half of all the nuclear energy of the EU bloc (48.4% or 294,731 GWh), followed by Spain (9.6% or 58,590 GWh), Sweden (8.5% or 51,944 GWh) and Belgium (7.2% or 43,879 GWh). Together these four countries together produced 73.7% of the EU bloc’s nuclear energy.