US nuclear outages on Oct 23, 2026 stay near autumn high at 19,425 MW

On October 23, 2026, 19,425 megawatts (MW) of US nuclear generating capacity was offline. That is about 19.4% of total capacity. Outages remain near their autumn high as reactors shut for seasonal refuelling.

A data update from FactIQ, written from Energy Information Administration figures. What is FactIQ?

Outages eased slightly from this autumn's high

The US daily nuclear capacity outage measures how much reactor capacity is not generating power on a given day. It matters because less nuclear output has to be replaced by other power sources. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the outage was 19,425 megawatts (MW) on Oct 23. Listed US nuclear capacity was 100,057 MW. The outage was down slightly from 19,936 MW on Oct 21.

The rise follows the usual autumn refuelling season

Outages were about 7,500 MW in late September.
They passed 16,000 MW on Oct 3.
They have stayed between 18,000 and 20,000 MW since Oct 12.
This spring's peak was about 22,170 MW on Apr 20.
In midsummer, outages were only 1,000–3,000 MW.

Several large plants are offline, and Palisades has produced no power

Palo Verde has had 1,333 MW out every day since at least Oct 4.
Diablo Canyon has had 1,122 MW out since at least Oct 14.
Vogtle has about 1,129–1,152 MW out.
Palisades in Michigan is listed as fully offline. Its outage equals its full capacity of 815.6 MW every day.

Browns Ferry and South Texas Project are no longer recording any outage.

Listed capacity rose on Oct 1

Total US nuclear capacity rose from 97,620.5 MW to 100,056.7 MW on Oct 1. Palisades rose from 768.5 MW to 815.6 MW. The increase appears to reflect updated capacity ratings, not new reactors.

About FactIQ and these updates

What FactIQ is. FactIQ is a database of official statistics from government agencies, central banks and international organisations in the US, China, India, Europe and elsewhere. AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT connect to it to look up the exact figures and cite the agency that published them. It also holds what companies report in their filings and say on their earnings calls.

How an update is made. When Energy Information Administration publishes new figures, FactIQ loads them and an AI model writes a short summary of what changed. Before it is published, code checks that every number in the summary matches FactIQ's record of the release, and a second review checks that nothing is overstated. Values that look like errors in the source data are left out.

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