"This is important news for anyone concerned about the environmental impacts of electricity sources. Nuclear power plants generally run in baseload, 24 hours a day, and emit no carbon. The more power an operator can get out of each plant, the less electricity has to come from burning fossil fuels or hydro plants, the only other 24-hour-a-day sources," said Margaret Ryan, Platts' editorial director for nuclear. "Also, most operators say nuclear is their cheapest source of electricity, so a larger nuclear share can help to hold costs down."
The U.S. 2006 output of nearly 823 million gross MWh was above 2005's 816 million MWh, but fell short of the 2004 US record of 828 million MWh. On average, U.S. nuclear power plants were operating at 90% or near full capacity.
Notable productivity gains were made in Canada and Russia. The output of Canada's nuclear reactors grew 6.2% in megawatt-hours in 2006. Aided by the return to service of the Pickering-1 reactor, Ontario Power Generation got 14.7% more nuclear generation from the Pickering station in 2006 than in 2005, while Bruce Nuclear Power got 10.7% more out of its existing Bruce station facilities. Meanwhile, Russia's nuclear power plants gleaned about 5.3% more power, or about 9 million MWh, from their stations in 2006 than during the prior year. Both nations have been on a trend of getting more generation from their power reactors in the last several years.
U.S. nuclear power generation plants led the world list of best performers by capacity utilization, occupying half of the top 50 slots, while German reactors dominated in size, topping the list of the 50 largest generators. The U.S. has 103 operating reactors. U.S.-based Florida Power & Light's St. Lucie-1 and Entergy's Vermont Yankee turned in the world's highest capacity utilization rates, each above 102%, during 2006. The largest output came from E.On's 1,475-MW Isar-2 reactor, whose 12,442,254 MWh was nearly 700,000 MWh more than the second largest generator, Vattenfall-E.On's 1,440-MW Brokdorf reactor. The US South Texas Project's 1,333-MW South Texas-2 reactor was just 16,000 MWh behind Brokdorf.
France's 58 power reactors performed well during the year but did not show up at the top of the performance charts because they all load-follow, reducing power periodically to accommodate the needs of grid balancing. France derives nearly 80% of its electricity from nuclear sources. Japan's 55 reactors have been hit by a series of regulatory outages over the past three years, which have kept a number of them off-line, and kept the national average capacity factor below 70%.
