10 ms·

Map of the World's Nuclear Power Plants

113 points by ejhowell 7y ago

thrower123 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Politics. Abusing the peoples ignorance.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Violating the public trust has a cost.
    - ekianjo 7y ago
      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 7y ago
        http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-... * 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#Costs_of_the_clean-up_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Cos... * Cleanup cost is estimated at $187 billion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fuk... * 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 7y ago
        > 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 7y ago
        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.
        292355744930110 7y ago
        More people die from wind power than die from nuclear. Solar uses vastly more land area than nuclear, a major problem for an island nation like Japan. The varying power output from sources like solar/wind make them infeasible for a full grid.
        7952 7y ago
        If nuclear killed the same number of people as wind it would still be safe enough. So I am not sure that is a good reason for choosing nuclear over wind. Both energy sources have extremely small numbers. Also, the deaths are workers. People who understand and have consented to the risk. And who can take some responsibility for their own safety. The death of a random member of the public is morally different.
      - 7952 7y ago
        Trust is about more than casualty figures. The industry did not promise low death rates following a meltdown. They promised no melt downs ever. They promised total safety again and again and again. I think the public are intelligent enough to know that a meltdown must never happen. In the same way that they know that an airline must never run out of fuel. Of course that is going to damage trust.
        nickik 7y ago
        Nuclear would not even be allowed to operate if they didn't claim to be that safe therefore they have to claim it, and the regulators have to claim it. This is because widespread misinformation about radiation in the population and among politicians. Instead of a rational discussion politicians have abused the public trust by spreading more misinformation and making publicity stuns to keep plants closed even after significant security review and alternatives that are far more damaging.
        7952 7y ago
        Even if all that were true a meltdown is still going to damage trust. You like to talk about rationality. But is it really? Do you have a thorough understanding of the model of reactor in question? Or various complex failure modes? Or the dozens of degree level specialisms involved in safety critical aspects? If you don't then you have to rely on a little blind faith. Even an aerospace engineer has to trust when they step on a plane. Breaking that trust is going to damage your industry.
        nickik 7y ago
        Yes. But if a plane falls in Japan. Germany doesn't stop all planes from flying. At most you look at the specific model and ground that for a while. You do review and try to improve. Nuclear is simply treated differently then anything else. Nuclear in the 'western' exemplary history of safety in the last 40 years and most of these plants have operated without fail for a long time. The failure mode is not actually a mystery in this case and stopping plants where the same failure mode is impossible makes little sense for plants that have proven to run perfectly for 30+ years.
- testplzignore 7y ago
  This graph is fascinating: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Japan_annual_total_net_electricity_generation_by_fuel_type_in_2000_through_2017_(33402772668).png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Japan_annual_total_n...
keanebean86 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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?
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    Probably political will is lacking the most. Almost nobody campaigns for building more nuclear plants.
    - imtringued 7y ago
      Have you been living under a rock? There is no shortage of pro nuclear campaigns. The reason nuclear platns don't get built is that they are too expensive to build. Every pro argument is built around theoretical reactor designs that haven't been built yet. Building an old design is expensive, building a new design is even more expensive.
  - angersock 7y ago
    Fear manifesting in extreme regulation, cost of insurance, cost of construction, court cases...the whole thing.
  - jartelt 7y ago
    No one wants to make the investment to build a plant that costs several billion dollars and will take up to 10 years to build. There have been attempts to build new plants in the US but the cost over runs have been huge. Rate payers are fed up with billion dollar cost increases. Plus, many of the plants that are currently operating in the states are losing money because their electricity is too costly. We have had a series of nuclear plant bailouts in the past few years. If you can't make money after the construction costs have already be amortized, how can you make money on a new plant? It's just a very poor financial investment to build a large reactor in the states (unless something changes).
Thaxll 7y ago
So many nuclear plants being constructed in China.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  And Japan is completely shut down in the meantime and burns coal and fossil fuels like crazy instead. Completely nonsensical.
roenxi 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    If the US hadn't stopped building nuclear The map shows three facilities under construction. I'm not sure that counts as "stopped."
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      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 7y ago
        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.
java-man 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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-research-reactor https://ne.oregonstate.edu/11-mw-triga-mark-ii-pulsing-resea... 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 7y ago
    Is it legal to own and operate such a reactor as a private citizen?
    - FiatLuxDave 7y ago
      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
  - 7y ago
citilife 7y ago
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 7y ago
  > 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 7y ago
    > 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 7y ago
      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.
- 7y ago
hbbio 7y ago
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)
RandomGuyDTB 7y ago
Related: an official map of US power reactors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/map-power-reactors.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/map-power-reactors.ht...
dmos62 7y ago
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 7y ago
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/06/why-hbos-chernobyl-gets-nuclear-so-wrong/amp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/06... And I wonder how much it has misinformed the general public
  - sk1pper 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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 7y ago
        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.
a3_nm 7y ago
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.
- petepete 7y ago
  How did I not know about this until now?! What a useful tool!
- epistasis 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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"
  - a3_nm 7y ago
    To find the relationships and entity IDs, you can type the prefix like "wdt:" or "wd:" then type something in English and hit Ctrl-Space. For instance, wd:nuclear<Ctrl-Space>. Alternatively you can search on wikidata.org. 1) Indeed, there are many other kinds of visualizations available as well (have a look at the examples) 3) the SERVICE is just an easy way to retrieve the name, which is stored in Wikidata, in a reasonable language. You can also access the name directly in SPARQL
netsa 7y ago
It seems that CCP is not construct Nuclear Power Plants for power. They actually create fortification!
cameldrv 7y ago
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.
- foxyv 7y ago
  I didn't know South Africa had a nuclear plant! Cool! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_energy_in_South_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_energy_in_South_Africa
- jhallenworld 7y ago
  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.html https://www.space.com/neutron-star-crash-made-gold-uranium.h... https://physicsworld.com/a/radioactive-decay-accounts-for-half-of-earths-heat/ https://physicsworld.com/a/radioactive-decay-accounts-for-ha...

113 points by ejhowell 7y ago

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 7y ago
Politics. Abusing the peoples ignorance.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Violating the public trust has a cost.
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-... * 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#Costs_of_the_clean-up_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Cos... * Cleanup cost is estimated at $187 billion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fuk... * 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 7y ago
        > 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 7y ago
        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.
      - 292355744930110 7y ago
        More people die from wind power than die from nuclear. Solar uses vastly more land area than nuclear, a major problem for an island nation like Japan. The varying power output from sources like solar/wind make them infeasible for a full grid.
        7952 7y ago
        If nuclear killed the same number of people as wind it would still be safe enough. So I am not sure that is a good reason for choosing nuclear over wind. Both energy sources have extremely small numbers. Also, the deaths are workers. People who understand and have consented to the risk. And who can take some responsibility for their own safety. The death of a random member of the public is morally different.
    - 7952 7y ago
      Trust is about more than casualty figures. The industry did not promise low death rates following a meltdown. They promised no melt downs ever. They promised total safety again and again and again. I think the public are intelligent enough to know that a meltdown must never happen. In the same way that they know that an airline must never run out of fuel. Of course that is going to damage trust.
      - nickik 7y ago
        Nuclear would not even be allowed to operate if they didn't claim to be that safe therefore they have to claim it, and the regulators have to claim it. This is because widespread misinformation about radiation in the population and among politicians. Instead of a rational discussion politicians have abused the public trust by spreading more misinformation and making publicity stuns to keep plants closed even after significant security review and alternatives that are far more damaging.
        7952 7y ago
        Even if all that were true a meltdown is still going to damage trust. You like to talk about rationality. But is it really? Do you have a thorough understanding of the model of reactor in question? Or various complex failure modes? Or the dozens of degree level specialisms involved in safety critical aspects? If you don't then you have to rely on a little blind faith. Even an aerospace engineer has to trust when they step on a plane. Breaking that trust is going to damage your industry.
        nickik 7y ago
        Yes. But if a plane falls in Japan. Germany doesn't stop all planes from flying. At most you look at the specific model and ground that for a while. You do review and try to improve. Nuclear is simply treated differently then anything else. Nuclear in the 'western' exemplary history of safety in the last 40 years and most of these plants have operated without fail for a long time. The failure mode is not actually a mystery in this case and stopping plants where the same failure mode is impossible makes little sense for plants that have proven to run perfectly for 30+ years.
testplzignore 7y ago
This graph is fascinating: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Japan_annual_total_net_electricity_generation_by_fuel_type_in_2000_through_2017_(33402772668).png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Japan_annual_total_n...

keanebean86 7y ago

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 7y ago
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?
- ekianjo 7y ago
  Probably political will is lacking the most. Almost nobody campaigns for building more nuclear plants.
  - imtringued 7y ago
    Have you been living under a rock? There is no shortage of pro nuclear campaigns. The reason nuclear platns don't get built is that they are too expensive to build. Every pro argument is built around theoretical reactor designs that haven't been built yet. Building an old design is expensive, building a new design is even more expensive.
- angersock 7y ago
  Fear manifesting in extreme regulation, cost of insurance, cost of construction, court cases...the whole thing.
- jartelt 7y ago
  No one wants to make the investment to build a plant that costs several billion dollars and will take up to 10 years to build. There have been attempts to build new plants in the US but the cost over runs have been huge. Rate payers are fed up with billion dollar cost increases. Plus, many of the plants that are currently operating in the states are losing money because their electricity is too costly. We have had a series of nuclear plant bailouts in the past few years. If you can't make money after the construction costs have already be amortized, how can you make money on a new plant? It's just a very poor financial investment to build a large reactor in the states (unless something changes).

Thaxll 7y ago

So many nuclear plants being constructed in China.

ekianjo 7y ago
And Japan is completely shut down in the meantime and burns coal and fossil fuels like crazy instead. Completely nonsensical.

roenxi 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  If the US hadn't stopped building nuclear The map shows three facilities under construction. I'm not sure that counts as "stopped."
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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.

java-man 7y ago

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 7y ago
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-research-reactor https://ne.oregonstate.edu/11-mw-triga-mark-ii-pulsing-resea... 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 7y ago
  Is it legal to own and operate such a reactor as a private citizen?
  - FiatLuxDave 7y ago
    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
- 7y ago

citilife 7y ago

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 7y ago
> 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 7y ago
  > 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 7y ago
    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.
7y ago

hbbio 7y ago

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)

RandomGuyDTB 7y ago

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

dmos62 7y ago

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 7y ago
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/06/why-hbos-chernobyl-gets-nuclear-so-wrong/amp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/06... And I wonder how much it has misinformed the general public
- sk1pper 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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.

a3_nm 7y ago

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.

petepete 7y ago
How did I not know about this until now?! What a useful tool!
epistasis 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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"
- a3_nm 7y ago
  To find the relationships and entity IDs, you can type the prefix like "wdt:" or "wd:" then type something in English and hit Ctrl-Space. For instance, wd:nuclear<Ctrl-Space>. Alternatively you can search on wikidata.org. 1) Indeed, there are many other kinds of visualizations available as well (have a look at the examples) 3) the SERVICE is just an easy way to retrieve the name, which is stored in Wikidata, in a reasonable language. You can also access the name directly in SPARQL

netsa 7y ago

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

cameldrv 7y ago

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.

foxyv 7y ago
I didn't know South Africa had a nuclear plant! Cool! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_energy_in_South_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_energy_in_South_Africa
jhallenworld 7y ago
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.html https://www.space.com/neutron-star-crash-made-gold-uranium.h... https://physicsworld.com/a/radioactive-decay-accounts-for-half-of-earths-heat/ https://physicsworld.com/a/radioactive-decay-accounts-for-ha...