The average capacity factor of nuclear plants in the US, 2005.

[NNadir]

Here is the operating output of every single nuclear power plant in the United States in 2005:


http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/usreact05.xls

I will calculate the numbers for the capacity utilization, with explanation:

In 2005, which ended 8 months ago, the nuclear capacity was 99,628 MWe. There are 86400 seconds in a day and 365.25 days in a year. Thus the nuclear energy output if the plants operated at 100% capacity, would be 3.144 exajoules = 99,268 X 10⁶W X 10⁶ X 365.25 day-yr^-1 X 86400 sec-day^-1 = 3.14 X 10¹⁸J. We also see that nuclear plants generated 780,464,675 Megawatt-hours.

An hour has 3600 seconds. Thus the amount of electrical energy generated is 2.80 exajoules or 2.80 X 10¹⁸J.

The average capacity factor of nuclear power plants was thus 100% x 2.80/3.14 = 89.4%.

Following this calculation it is easy to see what the average capacity factor for coal plants was in 2004, using these two links:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p2.html

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html

It is 71.9%.

Thus nuclear capacity exceeds coal in name plate capacity utilization by almost 20%.