By Editors of Power Engineering
The list of the ten biggest nuclear plants in the world lost three plants in Japan, each with a generating capacity of more than 4,000 MW, following the tsunami-related breach at Fukushima Daiichi.
The idling of the three plants leaves room for the Palo Verde plant near Phoenix, Arizona, to enter at number nine, and the Quinshan and Ling Ao plants in China to enter at numbers eight and ten respectively.
The top ten list, released by the Energy Information Administration, runs through 2015. However, the Hongyanhe plant near Dailan China now generates 4,183 MW thanks to a 1,000 MW addition, and will likely become part of a future EIA list.
With the idling of Japan’s 7,965 MW Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, Canada’s Bruce Nuclear Generating Station is now the largest nuclear plant in the world with eight reactors totaling 6,274 MW.
At three reactors, Palo Verde had the fewest number of reactors but the highest capacity factor. Over the last 15 years, nuclear capacity factors in the United States have remained above 90 percent, which is higher than other regions in the world. EIA attributed that to the declining duration of refueling outages.