Smaller fuel also means much smaller transportation costs to get it to the power plant. Millions of tons of coal must be transported from its source to the plant powering a nearby city. This can fill up many train-loads and that can cost a lot of money. Yet with nuclear power, transportation costs can be greatly reduced. The power plant does not have to be near a Uranium mine to be cost efficient, because the fuel can be brought in a highly concentrated form, where several kilograms of U-235 can power a city for months.
With all these benefits of nuclear power, one might think that countries of the world would be implementing nuclear power plants to solve their electricity needs. But unfortunately, this is not the case. Projections of Nuclear capacities of countries from now until the year 2020 show a general trend of declining use instead of increasing. This decline is primarily due to countries that have a large capacity for nuclear power turning away from nuclear energy and using coal and natural gas, which is inexpensive and easier to use at this time. These countries include the United States and Western Europe, which have led the world in nuclear energy for quite a while. Figure 2 shows these projections for the next twenty years.