Well... yes technically anytime you have hotter steam its more efficient. A big gain is your stereotypical turbine blade doesn't like condensing conditions. S

Well... yes technically anytime you have hotter steam its more efficient. A big gain is your stereotypical turbine blade doesn't like condensing conditions. Supercritical can't condense by definition, so its inherently good. Water droplets literally wear away the blade. Kinda sucks. They're expensive. So those expensive little things last longer if superheated steam is used. Its not so much that you can't make a condensing turbine, its that a condensing turbine will be less financially / economically efficient, its going to have to be much bigger and stronger for a given power output. Also the flow of steam is very predictable and constant, but once you start condensing no one really knows how it'll put vibration loads on, which can break the blades and wear out the bearings. Its false economy to use saturated or "wet" steam in a turbine to save money, usually. You can add a reheat stage to the middle of a turbine to prevent condensation. Of course that costs money and maint labor and energy. You can see the appeal of just using higher quality steam and avoiding all that. Sometimes you just have to eat the losses. Especially with nukes, they have relatively wet steam, well compared to coal plants anyway. Note that what some people call a condensing turbine doesn't involve condensation in the blades, at least not intentionally LOL. Its just a turbine with a huge condenser on the output instead of using a small condenser with an intermediate stage of process heat. Process heat is like, here's cruddy wet steam, but its hot, so how about using it in the office radiators, or to help heat preheat cooking ovens or something. Its hot by human standards but by power generation standards its only lukewarm and no longer economically useful to generate electricity. Its useless on the turbine floor, but perhaps a neighboring bread bakery would pay real money for it.