Ninety-four nuclear reactors continue to operate across the United States, powering tens of millions of homes and businesses, according to industry figures reviewed at the Nuclear Energy Institute's 2026 Nuclear Energy Policy Forum in April. NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick presented the organization's policy priorities for the year at the forum, framing the current period as a pivotal one for the industry's fleet of operating reactors.

The forum comes amid a wave of new federal support for the sector, including billions of dollars in Department of Energy funding directed toward uranium enrichment capacity, small modular reactor demonstration projects and loan guarantees for plant restarts. NEI's statistics resources track detailed operating data for the current reactor fleet, including plant-by-plant capacity figures and generation totals that utilities and regulators use to benchmark performance across the industry.

The existing 94-reactor fleet represents the physical foundation the industry is building additional capacity around, whether through uprates at currently operating plants, restarts of recently decommissioned facilities, or new small modular reactor projects still moving through licensing. Industry trade groups have pointed to the fleet's steady operating performance over multiple decades as evidence that nuclear plants can reliably support baseload demand even as electricity consumption patterns shift with new large industrial loads coming online nationwide.

Source: Nuclear Energy Institute - https://www.nei.org/news/state-of-the-nuclear-industry-2026