Improving Nuclear Power Plant's Operational Efficiencies in the U.S.A.

This article discusses improvement in nuclear power plant’s operational efficiencies in the USA in the past 40 years. The increase in nuclear generation has been achieved by a substantial increase in the overall capacity factor of the US plants from about 60% in 1980 to over 90% today. This large increase in capacity factor was achieved by reducing outages, having longer fuel cycles, using higher burnup fuel, and reducing unplanned outages and fuel failures. Combined with increases in power in various plants, this allowed nuclear power to maintain and increase its share of electricity generation. Such an increase in nuclear generation is the equivalent of having built 25–30 nuclear power plants during that period. The length of the planned outages has reduced from 106 days for an average operating plant in 1991 to 38 days in 2008. The fuel performance has also improved to a very high level over the last 20–30 years.