On one pandemic lockdown evening together, my wife and I were chatting and challenged each other to identify major innovations that have improved everyday life, but have been relatively unknown to people. Of course, I immediately chimed in with “innovations in nuclear” and was met with a puzzled look, but she patiently heard me out. The story here is actually quite surprising.
In 2019, U.S. nuclear power plants generated the largest amount of electricity in their history (and broke more than a few other records) and did so even as market conditions threatened some plants and prematurely shut down others.
How is this possible?
The U.S. nuclear industry is certainly known for safe, reliable operations, but what isn’t always talked about is the decades of innovation and hard work involved in getting to this point. With efficiency improvements and power uprates, the U.S. nuclear industry has added the equivalent of 32 new large reactors over the last 30 years.
Yes, you read that right.
Even though there are slightly fewer plants today than 30 years ago, they’re doing more work. So much more work, it’s like there are 32 extra reactors.
The U.S. nuclear industry spent the last three decades finding ways to get more “juice” out of its operating plants. In fact, plants have achieved on average more than 90 percent industrywide capacity factors for the last 20 years.
Capacity factor is a measure used to identify how much electricity a plant actually generated in a year versus the maximum amount that it could have produced that year if it ran without stopping ever. That means that these power plants provided 24/7 carbon-free power to homes and businesses more than 90 percent of the time, or for 330 days of the year.
America’s Nuclear Plants Are Working Harder Than Ever
Consider this: Nuclear energy has maintained its near 20 percent share of electricity generation in the U.S. from 1989 to 2019, even while the electricity demand has sharply rose during that time (less than 3 billion megawatt-hours (MWh) in 1989 to more than 4.1 billion MWh in 2019). That means that the U.S. nuclear industry has been able to match the increase in the electricity demand, achieving new heights for these amazing plants.
More efficient operations have led to an increase of more than 200 million MWh of electricity, equivalent to 24 new 1,000-megawatt reactors. These gains are a result of many contributing factors. For example, the nuclear industry has streamlined refueling outages, decreasing its average time out of service to refuel from more than three months in 1989 to just over a month in 2019. The industry also improved nuclear fuel designs and performance for longer durability, effectively doubling the lifetime in a reactor. With the help of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, the industry has seen continuous improvement in every performance indicator from unplanned shutdowns to chemistry effectiveness over the last three decades.
The nuclear industry also implemented efforts to uprate the power plants, effectively increasing power output by more than 60 million MWh, or the equivalent of eight new reactors. These uprates, which occurred primarily from early 1990s to mid-2010s, were accomplished by investing and upgrading the plant infrastructure, using new approaches to reduce uncertainties, or using newer instrumentation measurement techniques.
Nuclear Is Performing At Its Best—And Then Some
The world is focused on reducing carbon emissions now more than ever as policymakers prioritize getting all of the clean energy we can. But for the past 30 years, our nuclear plants—which provide nearly 55 percent of the carbon-free energy in the U.S.—have been quietly powering our way of life without carbon emissions and working to do so more efficiently.
This is what innovation looks like. It’s not only advanced reactors and new applications; it’s a carbon-free energy leader finding ways to do more.
