If nuclear power plants boil water to turn a turbine to make energy then why do they make more energy than a coal power plant that does the same?
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Nuclear power plants are typically very large capacity because they have to be to be economical in the context of civil power generation, where they must compete against natural gas powered plants. If you look at the field of military nuclear reactors such as the ones found in aircraft carriers and submarines, they are much much smaller, which is possible because cost-efficiency isn’t their top priority. There is a huge upfront cost to build a nuclear power plant, but doubling the capacity of the plant does not double the construction cost. There is an economy of scale where by building a larger, higher capacity plant, they achieve a lower cost on a per-megawatt basis.
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