How many Gigawatt hours per year do most nuclear power plants produce?

Question

how many Gigawatt or Megawatt hours per year do most nuclear power plants produce?

Please list a few examples of active nuclear power plants in the US (or France, or where ever actually), if you can

thanks!!!!

Answer 1

Here is the simplest way to determine.  You take the MWe output of the plant.  That rating is based on the hourly output.  You multiply it by 24 hours in one day.  You multiply that number by 365 days in the year.  That will give you the theoretical output of the plant if it ran at full power every day for one year.  

In reality plants shut down for repairs, refueling outages or derate in power for short periods of time to support repairs and system testing.  So you multiply that number by the plants CAPACITY FACTOR.  This number is expressed as a percentage.  Since most plants operate on a 2 year cycle between refueling outages, the best US plants in a refueling outage year run at a 90% to 93% capacity factor.  In non outage years, the best plants operate at >98%.

A small US plant that generates 715 MWe in output generates 17160 MWe Hours per day. (715 X 24)  In one year it will generate 6263400 MWe hours per year theoretically (715 X 24 X 365).  Apply a 98% capacity factor in a non outage year and that number is 6138132 MWe hours per year(715 X 24 X 365 X 98%).

Newer, larger plants can generate between 1200 and 1500 MWe output per hour and their outputs would be about double of the small US plant in the example.

Answer 2

In 2006, the estimated amount of nuclear power production worldwide was 2,658 TWh, or 2,658,000 GWh.

The Millstone Plant in CT has two active reactors (out of 3)

In 2007, Unit 2 generated 7,686 GWh and Unit 3 generated 8,699 GWh.  Three Mile Island in PA generated 6,645 GWh last year.

The Borssele nuclear power plant in the Netherlands generated 3,273 GWh in 2006.  Wikipedia has a wealth of information on this topic.

Organizations such as the World Nuclear Association (referenced below) may aid you more in your study.