‘Tis the season to be jolly—and to be amazed by fun energy stats!
Did you know that 94 nuclear reactors produce around 20% of our country’s electricity each year?
They also make up more than half of America’s carbon-free electricity.
But, if you really want to turn heads this holiday season keep this stat in your ugly sweater:
Just one nuclear reactor can power enough holiday lights to wrap around the globe 27 times over.
Breaking Down The Numbers
A typical U.S. nuclear reactor produces 1 gigawatt of power. That’s a billion watts for this calculation.
Why do holiday lights burn out all the time? We find out the answer, and do it in rhyme.
A set of LED mini lights can use up to 7 watts of power. For this exercise, we used the higher wattage and an estimated cord length of 25 feet.
Here’s how it broke down…with some rounding:
1,000,000,000 watts ÷ 7 watts = 142,857,143 sets of 100 count LED mini lights.
142,857,143 X 25 feet = 3,571,428,575 feet of lights.
3,571,428,575 ÷ 5,280 feet = 676,407 miles.
676,407 miles ÷ 24,900 miles (the equatorial distance around the earth) = 27.1 times around the world!