Comment by gpm
3 days ago
Yeah, that's the gas turbine thing. The first-stage (which generates the majority of the power) isn't boiling water, but extracting energy directly from pressure from burning the gas in a jet-engine like fashion.
The coal/nuclear like natural gas is what is labelled as "Steam Turbine" in the chart in this article: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61444
Looks like it's already a small minority.
Coal and natural gas also emit some of their waste heat in the outgoing exhaust gases. Nuclear doesn't have exhaust gases (aside from evaporated cooling water) to carry away waste heat.
The big difference is the much lower thermal efficiency of LWR power plants.