The United States is not an exception: the average daily capacity of idle nuclear power units decreased from 3.1 GW in the summer of 2023 to 2.6 GW in the summer of 2024. For comparison: on some days in April 2024, the total capacity of idle reactors exceeded 20 GW.
Most scheduled maintenance at NPPs is carried out to replace the spent nuclear fuel. In 2023, the average duration of fuel change was 38 days, and 34 days in the first seven months of 2024. However, in some cases, these works take longer. Thus, the most recent fuel change at the first power unit of the Enrico Fermi NPP in Michigan and the second power unit of the South Texas NPP took 48 days.
In turn, forced repairs are carried out in case of equipment failure, operating errors or extreme weather conditions. For the whole of 2023, a total of 55 unscheduled repairs was carried out at nuclear reactors in the United States, and 39 – in less than eleven months of 2024. The longest unscheduled repair was at the third power unit of the Waterford NPP in Louisiana, which lasted 59 days after a transformers fire. However, most unscheduled repairs take much less time: for example, repairs at the first power unit of the Watts Bar NPP in Tennessee lasted 16 days last summer, and at the second power unit of the Calvert Cliffs NPP in Maryland – not more than a day.
In the autumn, Hurricane Helene made a major impact on the energy infrastructure state. Due to the power transmission line damage, an operator of the Hatch NPP in Georgia suspended the first power unit and also reduced the load of the second one to 80% of the design capacity. A sharp reduction in electricity generation at the Catawba NPP in North Carolina occurred for the same reason.
In general, in countries and regions with a high share of nuclear generation, repairs at NPPs can make a significant impact on the supply and demand balance of electricity. For example, in 2022, France increased by almost five times electricity imports (from 24 to 115 TWh). As a result, electricity purchases from the EU neighboring countries exceeded the export volume for the first time in several decades (36 TWh).
