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

> 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 · a 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

Dead Comment

qwerty9001 · a 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 · a 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 · a 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 · a 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 · a 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 · a 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 · a 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 · a 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 · a year ago

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

Moldoteck · a year ago

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

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pantalaimon · a year ago

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

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 · a 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 · a 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...

<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

As the only government-sponsored publication tracking world trends and developments in uranium resources, production and demand, the Red Book is an authoritative source of information on the subject.

rob74 · a year ago

fifilura · a year ago

KptMarchewa · a 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...

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 · a 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

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?

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...

defrost · a 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.

_djo_ · a year ago

It doesn't include all research reactors, for instance for South Africa it only shows the Koeberg nuclear power station but not the SAFARI-1 research and isotype-production reactor.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAFARI-1

A "nuclear station" is just a sound name I found because other domains were taken ;) APS is a widely used term as far as I understood from wikipedia.

> Are you across the reactors under construction? China has a good number on the go and planned

Some of them are located on the Null Island (0" 0" coordinates) I think, I'll add sensible locations for them.

I don't think it's a good idea to include mobile reactors on the map, but maybe it makes sense to create some kind of a list with them if there's a real need for such a thing.

> Not especially willingly as an active source. The Congo region was the source of much of the Cold War

Isn't France still heavily dependent on uranium from Niger, Namibia?

France's most recent source of volume is winding down | has wound down - they have other options for future fuel.

There's an NEA Red Book that's quite thorough. https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_28569/uranium-resources-pro...

is an accurate although qualified sound-bite .. at one point in time the precursor to

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met...

was considered definitive wrt uranium sources, it had all the Red Book data and a good deal of non government mining company internal data.

(late in day for me, I have better recall & resources to hand at other times)

hiergiltdiestfu · a year ago

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

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 · a 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 · a 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 · a year ago

Those are the little known Null Island reactors!

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 · a year ago

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