
Map of the World's Nuclear Power Plants - ejhowell
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-the-worlds-nuclear-power-plants
======
a3_nm
Only tangentially related but: this kind of map is really a good use case for
Wikidata and its query service, I think. For instance here's how to get
something similar: [https://w.wiki/4wz](https://w.wiki/4wz)

Drawbacks: not all reactors are known and not all the data is currently here.

Advantages: took me 2 minutes to write, and the underlying data can be edited
by anyone to keep it up to date.

~~~
epistasis
Nice to see SPARQL getting used in the wild for real purposes!

I want to do this too, and have lots of questions. How do you look up
relationship terms like "wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q134447"? Is there a graph or
entity viewer somewhere that allows discovery based on browsing a particular
entity's tuples?

Edit: In addition to Squad_Tamer's tip below, the things I've found:

1) removing the #defaultView:map comment results in a table

2) adding the `?x` back to the select will result in links to the full entity
page, including all statements associated with the entity nicely organized.

3) The SERVICE statement was entirely new to me, but points to how difficult
it is to do knowledge summary (I.e. wtf should I call this entity? let's write
a service for that.)

~~~
Squid_Tamer
I figured out that if you click the "info" icon at the top-left of the screen,
it'll bring up a little GUI editor with dropdowns. Still not great for finding
categories, but better than "wdt:P279"

------
citilife
A singular voting issue for me would be replacing all the nuclear power plants
in the U.S. Maybe even doubling the count over the next two decades.

We are running a huge risk not replacing them as they age. If one of the
plants have a meltdown it's going to ruin any support to have them replaced.
The U.S. keeps these plants so they can make nuclear weapons very quickly, but
also the power is relatively clean / contained.

~~~
dragonwriter
> We are running a huge risk not replacing them as they age.

We're mostly decommissioning them as they age, usually before the end of their
design life. And there are legal requirements to do so at the end of their
permitted period if they aren't refreshed. So, what's the risk?

> If one of the plants have a meltdown it's going to ruin any support to have
> them replaced.

Sure, but such support — particularly from industry in the absence of even
greater subsidies for which there is no public support — does not exist
anyway, nor is a meltdown even remotely likely.

> The U.S. keeps these plants so they can make nuclear weapons very quickly

The U.S. keeps shutting them down, and isn't replacing them, so I don't think
that's accurate.

~~~
cure
> Sure, but such support — particularly from industry in the absence of even
> greater subsidies for which there is no public support — does not exist
> anyway, nor is a meltdown even remotely likely.

Globally, we've had 2 major meltdowns in the last 25 years. There have been
many near misses. Three mile island was only a 'partial' meltdown, but it
happened right here in the US, in 1979.

I don't know why you think a meltdown is "not even remotely likely".

~~~
citilife
Newer reactor designs are less likely to have a meltdown. 1979 was 23 years
into having commercial nuclear reactors. It's been 40 years, presumably we've
learned a lot since then.

------
keanebean86
It's a little scary seeing that pretty much every US plant was built in the
60s-70s. I know Nuclear has been controversial for a long time but 50 years is
a little ridiculous.

~~~
neuland
What is preventing new nuclear power plants from being built? Is it just
fear/local opposition, or is there some regulatory or financial reason that
new plants aren't being proposed?

~~~
Retric
Nuclear power is not cost competitive. Reasonably safe nuclear power plants
require a lot of concrete and steel. A highly trained workforce and
significant security 24/7\. Quite a bit of land with access to water and or
the construction of a huge cooling tower(s). Past all this you need a massive
insurance policy or state backing in case something major goes wrong.

Without subsidies it’s a money losing proposition even if you can sell all
power produced at a good rate. However, with renewables regularly pushing down
the value of electricity for much of the day things have gotten even worse.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Or states are giving tax breaks to fracking (natural gas) companies in the
name of “job creation”, only helping to lower the cost of electricity produced
from natural gas. Basically we are subsidizing non-renewalable energy
sources.... Also regulation drives a big chunk of the cost of nuclear. It’s
not the cement and labor that drives the cost here...

~~~
roenxi
I've observed a bit of an irony there - the fossil fuel industries generate
political protection for themselves because of all the jobs they generate.

Nuclear is an order or two more efficient (you need a fraction of the mines,
and a fraction of the work to keep the whole technology stack running). In
practice this seems to mean that nuclear power doesn't have much of a lobby in
favor of it even if it is established as an industry.

In Australia the coal lobby is a pretty noticeable force in two states and
arguably influenced the last election. If we were 100% nuclear instead there
wouldn't be enough people in the industry to make a political difference.

------
roenxi
The current construction being done in China is really interesting. Come what
may, nuclear power it is a sophisticated and technically excellent way of
securing energy. China's strategy of long-term technical success really shines
through.

They might be serious about shutting down their coal burners. That is a real
commitment to clean air and energy security - they are doing something
different. Minor compared to the current business-as-usual perhaps, but they
make iterative change work.

~~~
jjoonathan
If the US hadn't stopped building nuclear and merely continued at the same
rate, half of our electricity would be CO2-free. With even modest growth
assumptions, 100% of our electricity would be CO2-free. Today. Not 50 years
from now. Today.

It's a shame we decided nuclear was too dangerous and decided to pump our
atmosphere full of carbon instead. I'm glad to see that China is making the
right choice, I just wish we could have as well.

~~~
reaperducer
_If the US hadn 't stopped building nuclear_

The map shows three facilities under construction. I'm not sure that counts as
"stopped."

~~~
DuskStar
When did a new plant last come online in the US? I think it _does_ count as
stopped.

Prior to Watts Bar unit #2 coming online in 2016, the previous reactor was
Watts Bar unit #1 in _1996_. So that's one reactor in the past 20 years, and
23 years since we last opened a new plant.

~~~
reaperducer
So the one that started construction in 2013 doesn't exist?

20 years between plants isn't that big a deal. They're not building houses.
Nuclear reactors take decades to built. It's one of the reasons they're so
expensive.

~~~
DuskStar
It's possible to build these things in parallel, so "each one takes 10 years
to build" doesn't mean you can't still bring one reactor online each year.

Either way, new reactor construction is not currently a significant source of
new generation capacity in the US, and so I think it counts as "basically
stopped".

------
hbbio
France clearly stands out in this map. As a result, the country is the world's
leader in using few carbon resources:

Share of electricity produced from oil, gas and coal in 2015.

Indonesia: 89%

Australia: 86%

Netherlands: 82%

India: 81%

Nigeria: 81%

Japan: 80%

Saudi: 76%

China: 73%

Turkey: 67%

US: 67%

Russia: 65%

Italy: 59%

Germany: 55%

UK: 53%

Spain: 43%

Brazil: 23%

France: 6%

(World Bank)

------
cameldrv
Related:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/srep13945/figures/1](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep13945/figures/1)

An awesome map of antineutrino emissions from the earth, which doubles as a
map of operating nuclear plants.

~~~
jhallenworld
Cool! I found recently that it's thought that all the uranium came from an
ancient neutron star merger:

[https://www.space.com/neutron-star-crash-made-gold-
uranium.h...](https://www.space.com/neutron-star-crash-made-gold-uranium.html)

[https://physicsworld.com/a/radioactive-decay-accounts-for-
ha...](https://physicsworld.com/a/radioactive-decay-accounts-for-half-of-
earths-heat/)

------
dmos62
This is a side-track and pure speculation, but I wonder if a popular recent TV
show might be further putting people off nuclear energy.

~~~
carlob
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/06...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/06/why-
hbos-chernobyl-gets-nuclear-so-wrong/amp/)

And I wonder how much it has misinformed the general public

~~~
sk1pper
n=1, but my general takeaway from the show wasn't that nuclear is
fundamentally flawed, it was that a series of pretty questionable choices by
management and egregiously eschewing safety protocol lead to the accident. The
graphite-tipped rods were also essential to the accident happening as well,
but only after that series of bad choices had put the reactor in a such an
extreme state. (Reading about the event on Wikipedia seems to confirm this
take, but, of course I'm not pretending to have any more than the most basic
layman's understanding of all this)

~~~
dreamcompiler
There's a saying among pilots:

"Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree
than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or
neglect."

This is 10x more true with nuclear power. And you can add malfeasance, graft,
corruption, ignorance of basic science, and generally every other flaw
inherent in humanity to the list.

~~~
7952
It totally is though. The general public understand this intuitively. What
goes up must come down. And for the industry to work it requires a staggering
amount of effort, coordination and training. That safety record can never be
taken for granted.

------
thrower123
Poor Japan. I can understand taking plants down in the aftermath of Fukushima
to fix them up and take safeguards that there wouldn't be a repeat, but what
the hell are they doing letting all that generating potential sit idle years
later?

~~~
nickik
Politics. Abusing the peoples ignorance.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Violating the public trust has a cost.

~~~
ekianjo
What violation? So far maybe only one person died (not even certain) from
radiations caused by Fukushima. 15 000 died in the tsunami. So why is Japan
stopping nuclear power exactly? In the meantime they use way more dirtier
sources of energy that will directly cause lung diseases and deaths to way
more people.

~~~
toomuchtodo
[http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-
and-...](http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-
security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx)

* Official figures show that there have been well over 1000 deaths from maintaining the evacuation, in contrast to little risk from radiation if early return had been allowed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Cos...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Costs_of_the_clean-
up_operations)

* Cleanup cost is estimated at $187 billion

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fuk...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster)

* Almost 50k local residents still remain evacuees 8 years later

It's plainly obvious why a populace would no longer trust nuclear as a
generation technology based on how it was managed, regardless of your air
pollution arguments (which I agree with; Japan should move to wind, solar, and
batteries rapidly instead of coal).

~~~
ekianjo
> Japan should move to wind, solar, and batteries rapidly instead of coal

There is no such technology Japan can move to at this stage, to cover the
needs of major cities. DOn't forget that land is extremely expensive in japan
(as it's rare to get stable and flat surfaces) and there is no place in which
you can build large areas of solar farms just next to cities that need it. For
high energy density production there's only fossil fuels (which is awful on so
many levels) and nuclear (which is very safe even when accounting for
Fukushima and Chernobyl and Three Miles Island). Pretending that there is
right now more to renewables than just maybe up to 10% of energy needs is
lying to the public.

Of course, we should continue to invest in renewables to make their costs drop
as much as possible, but at the same time we all need to keep investing in
nuclear too (and build new generations of reactors that reduce further the
risk of meltdown).

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Renewable (other than hydro) is 4% I think.

Its easy for the public to be panicked by old unsafe plants causing pollution.
They should have voted for new plants to replace the old ones. It was a
choice, probably emotional. As is the reluctance to move forward with
renewable nuclear plants as our energy future.

------
RandomGuyDTB
Related: an official map of US power reactors from the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, [https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/map-power-
reactors.ht...](https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/map-power-
reactors.html)

------
Thaxll
So many nuclear plants being constructed in China.

~~~
ekianjo
And Japan is completely shut down in the meantime and burns coal and fossil
fuels like crazy instead. Completely nonsensical.

------
netsa
It seems that CCP is not construct Nuclear Power Plants for power. They
actually create fortification!

------
java-man
This map lists "nuclear power plants" and therefore is missing research
reactors.

Any research reactor contains a critical mass of fuel, and therefore is fully
capable of meltdown.

~~~
jhallenworld
Not true: TRIGA reactors can be put into prompt critical but shut themselves
quickly as they get hot. They do it on purpose with a pneumatically ejected
control rod to generate a high neutron flux pulse:

[https://ne.oregonstate.edu/11-mw-triga-mark-ii-pulsing-
resea...](https://ne.oregonstate.edu/11-mw-triga-mark-ii-pulsing-research-
reactor)

As far as meltdown: if you drain all of the water, they do not generate enough
decay heat to melt down due to their size.

They were invented by Freeman Dyson as a "reactor safe enough for high school
students to operate".

~~~
toomuchtodo
Is it legal to own and operate such a reactor as a private citizen?

~~~
FiatLuxDave
You would have to get a license, either from the NRC or from your state
regulator (it is different in different states). Oregon is an NRC agreement
state, so in Oregon it would be from the state.

Typically there is a person whose name is on the license, who is responsible
for the proper use of the reactor. At an organization this could be the boss,
owner, or RSO. In theory, as a private citizen you could get a license, as
long as you can prove to the regulator that you have the experience and
training to operate the reactor properly.

Of course, you would have to comply with all the rules and regulations. This
could be quite burdensome for a private citizen, especially with the
additional security rules added post 9/11 (assuming you are not a
billionaire).

Edit: removed link to quantities of concern, sorry, rules are different for
reactors.

Edit again: better link for security regs: [https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/non-
power.html](https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/non-power.html)

