Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station
Nuclear power plant near Tonopah in Maricopa County, Arizona. Largest nuclear power plant in the United States.
The Palo Verde Generating Station is a nuclear power plant located near Tonopah, Arizona about 45 miles (72 km) west of downtown Phoenix. Palo Verde generates the second most electricity of any power plant in the United States per year, and is the second largest power plant by net generation as of 2021. Palo Verde has the third-highest rated capacity of any US power plant. It is a critical asset to the Southwest, generating approximately 32 million megawatt-hours annually.
Its average electric power production is about 3.3 gigawatts (GW), serving about four million people. Arizona Public Service (APS) owns 29.1% of, and operates the plant. Its other owners are the Salt River Project (20.2%), the El Paso Electric Company (15.8%), Southern California Edison (15.8%), PNM Resources (7.5%), the Southern California Public Power Authority (5.9%), and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (5.7%). APS was granted a 20-year license extension to operate through 2045 for Unit 1, 2046 for Unit 2, and 2047 for Unit 3, with the option to submit a subsequent license renewal application for extended operation.
The Palo Verde Generating Station, lying in the Northeastern Sonoran Desert, is the only large nuclear power plant in the world that is not near a large body of water. The power plant cools and condenses the steam that it produces by using treated sewage water from several nearby cities and towns.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station” is nuclear power plant near Tonopah in Maricopa County, Arizona. Largest nuclear power plant in the United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Palo, Verde and Nuclear, not as a finished interpretation.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1508667. VIAF identifies the subject as 316746964. The Library of Congress control number is sh2007009452. Authority coordinates are 33.389, -112.865. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2021, 2045, 2046 and 2047.
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This entry incorporates text from “Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.