Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, a nuclear power plant located in Wintersburg, Arizona, about 50 miles (80 km) west of central Phoenix, is currently the largest nuclear generation facility in the world, producing over 30,000 gigawatt hours of electricity annually to serve approximately 4 million people. Arizona Public Service holds the majority ownership of the station and operates the facility. Other partial owners include Salt River Project, El Paso Electric Co., Southern California Edison, Public Service Co. of New Mexico, Southern California Public Power Authority, and the Los Angeles Dept. of Water & Power.

The facility is on 4,000 acres (16 km²) of land and consists of three Combustion Engineering pressurized water reactors, each with an original capacity of 1,270 megawatts. The plant is a major source of power for Phoenix and Southern California, capable of serving about 4 million people. The plant was fully operational by 1988, taking twelve years to build and costing $5.9 billion, eventually employing about 2,500 people.

Due to its location in the Arizona desert, Palo Verde is the only nuclear generating facility in the world that is not located adjacent to a large body of water. Instead, it uses treated sewage from several nearby municipalities to meet its cooling water needs, recycling 20 billion gallons of wastewater each year. At the nuclear plant site, it is further treated and stored in an 80 acre (324,000 m²) reservoir for use in the plant's cooling towers. Over 20 billion US gallons (76,000,000 m³) of this waste water are recycled each year.