John Coviello wrote:
Interesting, but doesn't an average nuke plant put out about 1,000
MW? The ones in my part of the country put out 1,000 MW.
I have adjusted the numbers in order to compare apples to apples.
I believe the average US nuclear reactor is 980 MW nameplate. (I
cannot find the source for this statistic!) The capacity factor in
2002 was 90.4%. (EIA, Annual Energy Review 2002, p. 257) So this
comes to 886 MW actual.
For wind turbines on land, actual is about 30% of nameplate. Offshore
it is about 40%. So 2,500 MW wind nameplate is approximately 750 MW
actual, a bit less than 886 MW, but in round numbers it is close to 1
nuclear plant.
I believe the average US nuclear power plant size is increasing,
because older, smaller units are being retired. However, future
nuclear power plants are likely to be smaller than today's average. I
cannot find any recent US data. Worldwide, the IAEA reports there are
443 nuclear plants with a total of 364,794 MWe capacity, 823 MWe average. See:
http://www.nei.org/documents/World_Nuclear_Generation_and_Capacity.pdf
http://www.nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=3&catid=13
The trend for all thermal electric power generator types is toward
smaller units and co-generation. See:
http://www.helioscentre.org/downloads/articles/2000_EN_COSPP_DisGen.pdf
- Jed
