You probably don’t think about uranium when you flip your kitchen light switch. Most of us don't. But if you're looking at a map of US nuclear power plants, you’ll notice something pretty quickly: the country is lopsided. There is this massive, dense cluster of reactors humming away east of the Mississippi River, while the West Coast looks almost empty by comparison. It’s not an accident. It’s a mix of 1970s industrial history, geology, and how we decided to build our cities.
Nuclear energy provides about 20% of the electricity in the United States. That’s been true for decades. Even as coal plants get demolished and wind turbines pop up across the plains, nuclear stays steady. It’s the "baseload." That means when the wind stops blowing and the sun goes down, these plants are still there, splitting atoms and boiling water.
The Geography of the Grid
Look at Illinois. It’s the heavyweight champion of nuclear power in America. If you zoom in on a map of US nuclear power plants, Illinois glows—metaphorically, of course. With 11 operational reactors across six different sites like Braidwood and Byron, it produces more nuclear power than any other state. Why? Because Chicago is a massive energy sink and the state had the political will to build big in the 20th century.
Then you have the Southeast. South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia are packed with reactors. In Georgia, they recently finished Vogtle Units 3 and 4. These were the first new reactors built from scratch in the U.S. in over thirty years. It was a chaotic, expensive process—billions over budget—but they are finally online.
Contrast that with the West. California used to have several, but now only Diablo Canyon remains. It was supposed to shut down, but the state realized they couldn't hit their carbon goals without it, so it’s staying open for now. Washington has one—Columbia Generating Station. Arizona has the massive Palo Verde plant, which is weirdly located in the desert and uses treated sewage water for cooling because there isn't a river nearby.
How These Plants Actually Work
Basically, a nuclear plant is just a very fancy way to boil water.
In a pressurized water reactor (PWR), which is what most of the dots on your map of US nuclear power plants represent, you have a primary loop of water that stays under intense pressure so it doesn't boil. This water gets hot—really hot—by touching the fuel rods. It then transfers that heat to a secondary loop of water, which turns into steam. That steam spins a turbine. The turbine spins a generator. Electricity happens.
Pressurized Water vs. Boiling Water
About two-thirds of U.S. plants are PWRs. The rest are Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs). In a BWR, the water boils right there in the reactor vessel. It's a simpler design in some ways, but it means the steam going to the turbine is slightly radioactive, which requires more shielding for the workers.
The fuel is almost always Uranium-235. It’s processed into small ceramic pellets. One pellet, about the size of a pencil eraser, contains as much energy as a ton of coal. When you realize that, you start to understand why engineers are so obsessed with keeping this technology alive despite the high construction costs.
The Plants That Vanished
If you compared a map of US nuclear power plants from 1990 to one from today, you'd see several missing dots. Vermont Yankee is gone. Pilgrim in Massachusetts is gone. Three Mile Island Unit 1—the one that didn't melt down—finally closed in 2019 because it couldn't compete with cheap natural gas.
Economics is the real "nuclear killer," not fear.
Fracking changed everything. When natural gas prices plummeted, old nuclear plants became "uneconomic." It’s expensive to run a nuclear plant because you need hundreds of highly paid engineers and security guards on-site 24/7. A natural gas plant can be run by a skeleton crew.
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However, we are seeing a weird reversal. In 2024 and 2025, there was serious talk about "restarting" closed plants. Microsoft famously signed a deal to help revive Three Mile Island (Unit 1) to power their AI data centers. Constellation Energy is renaming it the Crane Clean Energy Center. This is unprecedented. We’ve never really brought a "dead" nuclear plant back to life like this before.
Safety and the "Not In My Backyard" Factor
People worry. It’s natural. When you see a map of US nuclear power plants, you might wonder how close you live to one. The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) maintains two emergency planning zones. There’s a 10-mile "plume exposure" zone and a 50-mile "ingestion pathway" zone.
But here is the reality: nuclear is statistically one of the safest ways to make power.
If you look at "deaths per terawatt-hour," nuclear is right there with wind and solar. It’s way lower than coal or gas. The spent fuel—the "waste"—is currently stored on-site at these plants in big concrete and steel canisters called dry casks. They just sit there on concrete pads. It’s not the glowing green ooze from The Simpsons. It’s solid metal and ceramic.
The problem is we still don't have a central place to put it. Yucca Mountain in Nevada was supposed to be the spot, but politics killed that decades ago. So, every dot on that map is also a mini-storage site for radioactive waste.
The Future: Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)
The next time you look at a map of US nuclear power plants, the dots might look different. We are moving away from "gigawatt-scale" monsters that take 15 years to build.
Companies like NuScale, TerraPower (backed by Bill Gates), and X-energy are working on SMRs. These are smaller, factory-built reactors. The idea is to build them in a plant and ship them to the site on a truck or train. They are designed to be "passively safe," meaning if the power goes out, the physics of the reactor shuts it down automatically without human intervention or pumps.
TerraPower is building a demonstration plant in Wyoming at the site of an old coal plant. This is a brilliant move for the grid—you use the existing power lines and the same workforce, but you swap the coal boiler for a nuclear one.
Finding the Plants Near You
If you want to find the exact locations, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has the most accurate map of US nuclear power plants. You’ll see clusters in the Northeast (think Millstone in Connecticut or Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania). You’ll see the "Nuclear Trail" down the Atlantic coast.
Here are the heavy hitters you should know:
- Palo Verde (Arizona): The biggest in terms of net generation.
- Grand Gulf (Mississippi): Has the largest single-unit capacity.
- Vogtle (Georgia): Now the largest nuclear plant in the U.S. following its expansion.
Why This Matters Right Now
We are in an energy crunch. Between electric vehicles and the massive power demands of AI and data centers, the U.S. grid is under more strain than it has been in decades. We can't just build more solar and hope for the best; we need "firm" power.
That’s why the map is becoming a political battleground. States like New York have struggled after closing plants like Indian Point, seeing their carbon emissions actually go up as gas plants filled the gap. Meanwhile, states like Tennessee—home to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)—are doubling down on nuclear as a way to attract tech companies that want 24/7 carbon-free energy.
The map of US nuclear power plants is basically a map of our industrial past and our high-tech future.
Actionable Steps for the Curious
If you're interested in how this affects your local area or your bill, there are a few things you can actually do:
- Check the EIA's Interactive Layer: Go to the EIA’s "U.S. Energy Atlas." You can toggle a layer specifically for nuclear reactors to see exactly where your power comes from.
- Monitor "Real-Time" Grid Mix: Use an app or website like Electricity Maps. It shows you in real-time what percentage of your state's electricity is coming from nuclear versus gas or renewables. It’s eye-opening to see how much the "nuclear dots" carry the load during a heatwave.
- Research "Power Purchase Agreements": If you own a business, look into whether your local utility allows you to specifically purchase nuclear RECs (Renewable Energy Credits) or carbon-free attributes.
- Track the SMR Pipeline: Keep an eye on the NRC’s "New Reactor" dashboard. This is where you’ll see the first signs of those Small Modular Reactors moving from blueprints to actual dots on the map in states like Wyoming or Idaho.
Nuclear isn't going anywhere. If anything, those dots on the map are about to become more important than ever.