4 ms·

there are 99 nuclear reactors operating in the US, producing about 100,000mw. So about 1000mw/ea. Many of the plants in the US have more than one reactor.. but

there are 99 nuclear reactors operating in the US, producing about 100,000mw. So about 1000mw/ea. Many of the plants in the US have more than one reactor.. but you can see on this page, plant capacity/units is about 1gw/ea [edit: corrected, thanks], and many of the single reactor plants are about that size also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_nuclear_power_stations_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_nuclear_po... Note, that page has the largest plants.. about ~45. There are only 61 in the US. So there are a few smaller ones not in the list. If you built a 1100mw reactor, it would be ~#42 largest plant.

taf2 8y ago
Isn’t this not about size of energy produced but rather the physical size of the reactor?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
acidburnNSA 8y ago
*1 GW each. A small reactor is under a few hundred megawatts. A micro reactor is on the order of tens of megawatts. It's quite hard to make economic reactors below that.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Some Russian satellites went into space with two to a whopping six kilowatt reactors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A). The Americans in contrast only got a 500 watt reactor into the sky, and it failed after 43 days (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A).
  - acidburnNSA 8y ago
    Yes but when you aren't allowed to use highly-enriched (weapons-grade) uranium it's a different story. And space is a much different story for economics. Out there, fully enriching your fuel probably makes sense because weight is so expensive. My comment was limited to terrestrial reactors.