The US commercial nuclear fleet runs at an industry wide capacity factor of about 92 percent, a level no other generating source in the country sustains year after year. The Nuclear Energy Institute tracks that figure back to 1972, when the fleet operated far below current levels. Longer fuel cycles, tighter refueling outage management and equipment reliability programs moved the number into the low 90s and held it there.

Ninety four reactors are operating across the United States. As of December 2025, 97 reactors had received an initial 20 year license renewal from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and 20 had received a second renewal that can carry operation toward 80 years. The regulator has approved more than 8,000 megawatts of power uprates over the life of that program, with more than 7,500 megawatts of the approved capacity sitting at reactors still in service. Uprates add output at existing sites without new construction.

Employment tracks the same fleet. Nuclear plants support roughly 73,000 direct jobs, and the industry counts about 250,000 positions once secondary employment is included. Annual labor spending runs near $11 billion, which works out to roughly $100 million per reactor per year.

Those figures explain why utilities and data center developers keep returning to existing reactors first when they need firm capacity. A licensed plant already connected to the grid delivers steady output at a high capacity factor, and the license renewal and uprate paths extend that output without the schedule risk of a new build.

Source: Nuclear Energy Institute - https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/us-nuclear-industry-capacity-factors