US Nuclear Performance – October 2010

It’s been awhile since we’ve highlighted our monthly nuclear performance report on the blog. Most of the time the nuclear units hum along at their usual pace so there’s not much to report. But worth mentioning from the latest issue is that nuclear generation in the US in 2010 could break its previous 2007 record:

Year-to-date 2010 nuclear generation is 0.4% higher than the same period in 2009. For 2010, nuclear generation was 670.0 billion kilowatt-hours compared to 667.2 bkWh for the same period in 2009 and 669.5 bkWh in 2007 (the record year for nuclear generation).

For October 2010, nuclear generation was 61.8 billion kilowatt-hours compared to 57.7 billion kWh in October 2009. The average capacity factor for October 2010 was 82.5% compared to 77.0% in October 2009.

For the 2010 fall refueling outage season, 15 units completed refueling while another eight are still shut down. Twenty-three nuclear reactors are expected to refuel during fall 2010 compared to 33 in fall 2009.

Average refueling outage durations for PWRs during fall 2010 (12 units) was 39 days compared to 29 days during the same period for BWRs (3 units).

For more stats on a unit by unit level, stop by and check out the rest of the report.