Show HN: I built interactive map of active and decommissioned nuclear stations

Show HN: I built interactive map of active and decommissioned nuclear stations(nuclearstations.com)

129 points by externedguy 1 year ago | 64 comments

Hi all,

I am not an expert in nuclear energy but I've always wondered and found it difficult to get a clear picture about the amount of nuclear stations located in a specific region. So I built this tool that shows all the nuclear plants in the world, scaled by their capacity and with indication of their status. Clustering is enabled by default and allows to see the sum potential capacity of a region.

It's a fun tool for me: e.g. disable clustering, scale circle radius to 70%, go to EU, and you'll see Germany has shutdown all of the stations. Ofc it's a widely known fact, but what came to my surprise is that Poland, Turkey, Scandinavian countries, Africa have literally 1 to none nuclear stations. Which is kinda strange because some of these regions are modern, well-developed, and Africa specifically was sourcing lots of nuclear fuel for other countries other the years.

idk what to do with it yet, but I think I'll come up with ideas for future improvements as I believe nuclear sector will grow drastically.

rob74 1 year ago |

> what came to my surprise is that Poland, Turkey, Scandinavian countries, Africa have literally 1 to none nuclear stations.

Also, Austria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Austria

Short timeline:

- 1972: started building its first nuclear power plant

- 1978: parliament decides to ban nuclear power for 20 years

- 1997: ban is made permanent

Note that the initial decision for the ban was even before Chernobyl (the event that greatly boosted anti-nuclear sentiment in Europe).

What's important to keep in mind is that fuel from nuclear power plants can also be used for developing nuclear weapons, so historically only states "trustworthy" to the US or the former USSR were allowed access to the technology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_proliferation#Dual-Use...).

pjc50 1 year ago | |

The South African nuclear reactor was of course linked to their desire to have nuclear weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_ma...

It's difficult to disentangle civilian power from nuclear weapons concerns. This is particularly important if you want to get a good historical understanding of the opposition to nuclear reactors.

- until the end of the cold war, many people considered the risk of nuclear war to be potentially imminent, while global warming was a comparatively distant threat. This is still a somewhat live political issue around Iran, and Israel/US security services devote a lot of effort to sabotaging the Iranian nuclear weapons industry

- until environmental campaigners won, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_... was common

- American commentators really underestimate the impact of Chernobyl on European agriculture, and how long it took to dissipate

qwerty9001 1 year ago | | |

> … while global warming was a comparatively distant threat.

Ahhh young folks. Until about the 70s all the media, leading scientist and organisations were concerned about the impending ice age.

So no, people then could not be bothered by the global warming, as they were actively scared of the horrors of the coming ice age.

How times have changed.

pvg 1 year ago | |

historically only states "trustworthy" to the US or the former USSR were allowed access to the technology

Your own wikipedia link explains this isn't really true - the whole idea of the NPT framework is to trade assistance with civilian nuclear technology for giving up military use. There are definitely all sorts of Realpolitik factors involved but NPT signatories could and did build nuclear power plants. Who was Austria 'trusted' by to build Zwentendorf, if you think about it.

khafra 1 year ago | |

It's easy to remember the early players in the nuclear power/weapons game, with a simple mnemonic song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRLON3ddZIw

externedguy 1 year ago | |

Indeed. I wonder what are the real reasons behind these bans in German nations. Can't believe it's just for political populism, there must be something more substantial.

lukan 1 year ago | | |

Chernobyl was something very substantial in germany. People knew a radioactive cloud was coming and had to stop their kids from playing outside in that year. There are still regulations up to today, that every boar meat has to be checked for radioactive contamination and they don't disclose how much has to be thrown away (boars eat mushrooms). That doesn't create a feeling of safety, even though the real risk is probably not that high anymore.

In general, you may read up on the history of the anti nuclear movement. The idea was, officials said that nuclear is totally safe - people doubted it before that and then chernobyl was the turning point for many to not believe the government at all anymore, even though there had been big demonstration before that already.

The car industry had nothing to do with that. Rather, "populism" as you call it, or rather the strong opinion of many people living in a representative democracy somehow matters.

Also, it wasn't just opinion. There were violent clashes quite often, even with deaths. Driving the cost of it all up.

dachworker 1 year ago | | |

It's populism.

Germany is a country littered with voodoo "medicine" clinics, to the point that they have even been integrated in the statutory healthcare system. You take those hippie "nature above science" people and tell them about the invisible danger rays and they will found the Green party, and the rest is history.

creesch 1 year ago | | |

> Can't believe it's just for political populism, there must be something more substantial.

Can you expand on what you mean by that? Also, generalizing "German" nations like this does seem a bit odd to me. Austria has a very clear and different history with nuclear power compared to Germany where it is only recently that they vowed to get rid of nuclear. For the latter case, it very much was due to events around the Fukushima nuclear accident what contributed greatly to the decision.

kjeldsendk 1 year ago | | |

The real reasons were many. Political nuclear was always a battlefield in Germany. Safety concerns, how long before something goes wrong. Economy, going green and gas and eventually primarily green would be cheaper than investing billions in Nuclear.

Today it's also a question of security and with what's going on I would guess Germany has no regret that they don't have these juicy targets available anymore.

nine_k 1 year ago | | |

It may as well be some money from fossil fuel sellers: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russia-funding-europe...

Moldoteck 1 year ago | | |

For germany it's easy: cheap gas from russia+lobby from it + auto industry

pantalaimon 1 year ago | | |

In general, ideas spread more easily in communities that speak the same language.

fifilura 1 year ago |

In Scandinavia i would say Denmark is the anomaly. Their bet is on wind power.

I think they also had a negative sentiment towards nuclear because Sweden built one of their (now closed) plants very close to Copenhagen.

Norway has so much high yield Hydro power that they would not need it.

(The difference between Swedish and Norwegian hydro is that the landscape is more dramatic so they can get a big height difference. Whereas Sweden has to rely on huge reservoirs to store water).

Both Sweden and Finland has Nuclear power, at the scale or higher than their population would sustain, and Finland opened their latest plant as late as 2023.

ViewTrick1002 1 year ago | |

Finland opened a single new reactor after a 13 year delay on what was supposed to be a 5 year project at unimaginable cost for all involved parties.

Not a great look.

toomuchtodo 1 year ago | | |

While late to the party, it will provide material support for the Baltics as they disconnect from the Russian grid over the next 6-12 months [1]. Synchronous condensers are being installed, and the Finland<->Estonia interconnect is being upgraded to support more current [2] [3]. This should also reduce Estonia's carbon heavy generation from oil shale [4].

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/baltic-states-seek-to-decouple-grid-fr...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39545607 (citations)

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37832343 (citations)

[4] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/estonia-turns-back-s...

KptMarchewa 1 year ago |

Poland has test nuclear reactor: https://www.ncbj.gov.pl/en/maria-reactor

We were building NPP based on VVER reactors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBarnowiec_Nuclear_Power_P...

We're going to build at least one, the planning phase is rather advanced and real building is expected to start in 2026, with completion expected in 2033-2035.

https://ppej.pl/en/news/information-on-the-status-of-field-w...

externedguy 1 year ago | |

MARIA is a research reactor that does not contribute to the grid so it's not included.

I indeed missed the other two, added both of them (even though they have no ID provided by IAEA) here:

https://nuclearstations.com/map#6.58/54.044/19

pella 1 year ago |

Alternative ( with individual Nuclear Power Plants ):

"Open Infrastructure Map is a view of the world's infrastructure mapped in the OpenStreetMap database."

like: https://openinframap.org/#12.37/49.08812/16.15412

externedguy 1 year ago | |

didn't know about this one, looks nice but complicated.

Note: if you want to see individual stations, you can disable clustering on the map I've made on the top right corner there's a control for disabling clustering.

maybe I should make clustering disabled by default?

pella 1 year ago | | |

All OpenStreetMap - nuclear:

https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1Pqv

And you can add an extra osm link / Wikidata link for any individual Nuclear Plants:

example:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/5538984#map=16/49.084...

  <tag k="landuse" v="industrial"/>
  <tag k="name" v="Jaderná elektrárna Dukovany"/>
  <tag k="name:cs" v="Jaderná elektrárna Dukovany"/>
  <tag k="name:de" v="Kernkraftwerk Dukovany"/>
  <tag k="name:en" v="Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant"/>
  <tag k="operator" v="ČEZ"/>
  <tag k="operator:wikidata" v="Q336735"/>
  <tag k="plant:method" v="fission"/>
  <tag k="plant:output:electricity" v="1880 MW"/>
  <tag k="plant:source" v="nuclear"/>
  <tag k="power" v="plant"/>
  <tag k="ref:EU:ENTSOE_EIC" v="27W-PU-EDUK----1"/>
  <tag k="short_name" v="EDU"/>
  <tag k="type" v="multipolygon"/>
  <tag k="wikidata" v="Q687033"/>
  <tag k="wikipedia" v="cs:Jaderná elektrárna Dukovany"/>
  
  And a Link to Wikidata : https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q336735

defrost 1 year ago |

What's a "nuclear station" .. does a 20 megawatt reactor count?

https://www.ansto.gov.au/education/nuclear-facts

How about mobile reactors .. they're purposely hard to geolocate but their number is (up to a point) relatively well known (within circles).

Are you across the reactors under construction? China has a good number on the go and planned to break ground in the near future, both on their home soil and for global clients.

> and Africa specifically was sourcing lots of nuclear fuel for other countries other the years.

Not especially willingly as an active source. The Congo region was the source of much of the Cold War nuclear material for the vast proliferation of nuclear weapons, but various non African powers kept the area in conflict to prevent the rise of any representative government that would oppose that extraction.

hiergiltdiestfu 1 year ago |

Nice work! Can you consider finding a different solution for the many entries on Null Island, please?

externedguy 1 year ago | |

Ideally, this Null Island should not exist on this map I think.

I guess I'll need to research all of them and put a sensible location for each. e.g. Kumharia should be in India, not on the Null Island. Will do once I have more time for this project

p1mrx 1 year ago |

There are a couple plants under construction in Kemmerer, WY and Oak Ridge, TN:

https://www.terrapower.com/terrapower-begins-construction-in...

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/kairos-power-starts-const...

RajuVarghese 1 year ago |

There is a circle with 10 nuclear stations that is erroneously located (on the map) in the Atlantic just south of West Africa. That should be in/near China.

mikeocool 1 year ago | |

Those are the little known Null Island reactors!

externedguy 1 year ago | |

There are more than 10. It's the Null Island location @hiergiltdiestfu refers to in another comment. Will add the locations to all of them once I have time to put all the coordinates in.

3np 1 year ago | | |

Most recently featured: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41073777

treebeard901 1 year ago |

I have been looking for spare nuclear rods and various waste for a few hobby projects and this map should help. Well done!

externedguy 1 year ago | |

Sounds crazy, make sure you don’t brake into any of these.

What kind of hobbies you have?!

AtlasBarfed 1 year ago | |

ok, Dr. Evil

piyushtechsavy 1 year ago |

Interesting tool. What is the source of your data? I doubt some countries would let the world know their real capacity.

fifilura 1 year ago |

In Sweden there is also a closed down reactor close to the Stockholm city center at the technical university (KTH).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R1_(nuclear_reactor)

Not the same as the Ågesta reactor, which is mapped.

externedguy 1 year ago | |

Thanks, afaiu it's also a research reactor that did not contribute to the grid. Might add research ones in the future, even though I do not see how they would be useful.

frumiousirc 1 year ago |

Maybe you include only power reactors and exclude research reactors? In the latter category is this decommissioned reactor not shown on your map: https://www.bnl.gov/hfbr/

externedguy 1 year ago | |

Research reactors are not used for energy production, so yes, reactors like HFBR in US, Petten in Netherlands are not included.

Maybe I'll add them later, but for this I need to first add sensible filters for clarity, otherwise it will become a mess and won't be as simple to see what kind of potential certain region in some country has.

physicsguy 1 year ago | | |

Yeah, there's similarly defense reactors. For e.g. this site in Derby in the UK: https://www.onr.org.uk/our-work/what-we-regulate/defence/def...

techguru007 1 year ago |

please consider filling in some gaps -- in the United States, for instance, your current map does not show any of the "experimental" reactors, and is even missing some of the Power Utilities reactors I am familiar with. I suspect that the DOE (US) has databases and maps which show most of those.

There are many (not currently shown) in eastern Washington State, and many in Idaho State (US)

I also have a friend who did the geologic surveys for a number of commercial nuclear stations in Africa -- so perhaps those did not end up in the database you used to source your data?

toomuchtodo 1 year ago |

https://resourcewatch.org/data/explore/Powerwatch is also a resource.

jeroen 1 year ago |

Something seems to be off with the grouping. If you look at Chinon (France) there are 2 different statuses, but 3 groups. A1 is not grouped with A2 and A3.

externedguy 1 year ago | |

Circles are not grouped in any way, just overlaid.

If you hover on the center of the circle you'll see all of the Chinon blocks (they're 7: A1-3 and B1-4). You can search for "Chinon" to see them on the list or just click the circle that will scroll the list to the section where all the blocks are visible.

Will try to find a more intuitive way to show the reactors that are located in the same place.

tk90 1 year ago |

This is super cool! Curious how you got the data, web scraping I assume?

samstave 1 year ago |

Wonderful.

Now, if we add the layers of the SubmarinCableMap [0] DataCenterMap [1] - and we begin to track shipments

And

https://i.imgur.com/zO0yz6J.png -- Left is nuke, top = cables, bottom = datacenters. I went to ImportYeti to look into the NVIDIA shipments: https://i.imgur.com/k9018EC.png

And you look at the suppliers that are coming from Taiwan, such as the water-coolers and power cables to sus out where they may be shipping to, https://i.imgur.com/B5iWFQ1.png -- but instead, it would be better to find shipping lables for datacenters that are receiving containers from Taiwain, and the same suppliers as NVIDIA for things such as power cables. While the free data is out of date on ImportYeti - it gives a good supply line idea for NVIDIA... with the goal to find out which datacenters that are getting such shipments, you can begin to measure the footprint of AI as it grows, and which nuke plants they are likely powered from.

Then, looking into whatever reporting one may access for the consumption/util of the nuke's capacity in various regions, we can estimate the power footprint of growing Global Compute.

DataCenterNews and all sorts of datasets are available - and now the ability to create this crawler/tracker is likely full implementable

https://i.imgur.com/gsM75dz.png https://i.imgur.com/a7nGGKh.png

[0] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

[1] https://www.datacentermap.com/

hk__2 1 year ago |

I’m getting a 502 Bad gateway :/

externedguy 1 year ago | |

sorry, should be fixed now, forgot to scale ram on fly.io :/

<tag k="landuse" v="industrial"/> <tag k="name" v="Jaderná elektrárna Dukovany"/> <tag k="name:cs" v="Jaderná elektrárna Dukovany"/> <tag k="name:de" v="Kernkraftwerk Dukovany"/> <tag k="name:en" v="Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant"/> <tag k="operator" v="ČEZ"/> <tag k="operator:wikidata" v="Q336735"/> <tag k="plant:method" v="fission"/> <tag k="plant:output:electricity" v="1880 MW"/> <tag k="plant:source" v="nuclear"/> <tag k="power" v="plant"/> <tag k="ref:EU:ENTSOE_EIC" v="27W-PU-EDUK----1"/> <tag k="short_name" v="EDU"/> <tag k="type" v="multipolygon"/> <tag k="wikidata" v="Q687033"/> <tag k="wikipedia" v="cs:Jaderná elektrárna Dukovany"/> And a Link to Wikidata : https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q336735