World Wind exceeds US Nuclear

The United States is by far the global leader in nuclear power plants with technically 100 operating reactors (though if you remove Crystal River, two San Onofre units and Kewaunee from this list you only have 99 reactors).  France is a distant second with 58 operating reactors.  So it was with some pleasure that i read that the global fleet of wind turbines had reached the 300 GW level, which is equivalent to 114 nuclear reactors*.

Future so bright, i've got to wear shades

Future so bright, i’ve got to wear shades

Also heartening is that in the first 5 months of this year the US built 29% of it’s new capacity in renewables.  This is even with historically very low natural gas prices.  Renewables installed capacity is more than twice the new coal capacity.

* Remember installed capacity is the maximum amount of power a generator can produce, to get the actual amount of power produced you need to multiply by the capacity factor.  For wind turbines this is about 35%, because they do not run all the time.  Nuclear reactors run about 90% the time.  A typical reactor is around 1 GW capacity.