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Nuclear power is one of the leading low carbon power generation methods of producing electricity, and in terms of total life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy generated, has emission values comparable to or lower than renewable energy.
Nuclear power is a low-carbon source of energy, because unlike coal, oil or gas power plants, nuclear power plants practically do not produce CO 2 during their operation. Nuclear reactors generate close to one-third of the world’s carbon free electricity and are crucial in meeting climate change goals.
A typical nuclear power plant has a generating capacity of approximately one gigawatt (GW; one billion watts) of electricity. At this capacity, a power plant that operates about 90 percent of the time (the U.S. industry average) will generate about eight terawatt-hours of electricity per year.
A nuclear power plant (NPP), [1] also known as a nuclear power station (NPS), nuclear generating station (NGS) or atomic power station (APS) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor.
Nuclear reactors are the heart of a nuclear power plant. They contain and control nuclear chain reactions that produce heat through a physical process called fission. That heat is used to make steam that spins a turbine to create electricity.
Nuclear is the largest source of clean power in the United States. It generates nearly 775 billion kilowatthours of electricity each year and produces nearly half of the nation’s emissions-free electricity.
Nuclear power generation has existed since the 1960s but saw massive growth globally in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The interactive chart shows how global nuclear generation has changed over the past half-century.