Dive Summary:

• According to Reuters data, the number of U.S. nuclear power plant outages dipped to the lowest level in almost two years on Wednesday, right in time to meet peak summer demand.
• Nuclear outages dropped to 3,947 MW out of service Wednesday from 5,426 MW out of service Tuesday. That constitutes the lowest number of nuclear outages since August 2011, when 3,668 MW of capacity were out of service. In 2012, there were about 6,800 MW of nuclear outages at this time and the five-year average clocked in at 4,200 MW.
• In the next week, nuclear outages are likely to decline even further as utilities bring major plants back into services. They include: Constellation Energy Nuclear Group's 630MW Nine Mile Point 1 reactor in New York, FirstEnergy Corp's 894MW Davis-Besse reactor in Ohio and Xcel Energy Inc's 554MW Monticello reactor in Minnesota.

From the article:
“There are 100 operating nuclear reactors in the United States capable of generating over 97,800 MW, enough to power about 80 million homes. Nuclear reactors produce about 20 percent of the country's generation and operate around the clock as baseload facilities, providing some of the lowest-cost power.”