[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built interactive map of active and decom...
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Show HN: I built interactive map of active and decommissioned
nuclear stations
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.
Author : externedguy
Score : 81 points
Date : 2024-08-08 07:40 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nuclearstations.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nuclearstations.com)
| hk__2 wrote:
| I'm getting a 502 Bad gateway :/
| externedguy wrote:
| sorry, should be fixed now, forgot to scale ram on fly.io :/
| rob74 wrote:
| > _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...).
| externedguy wrote:
| 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.
| creesch wrote:
| > 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.
| rob74 wrote:
| Not sure about the rest, but I can definitely explain why
| Germany has (had) nuclear power plants and Austria doesn't:
| lobbying! Siemens wanted an opportunity to show off its
| technology, so all NPPs in West Germany were built by them.
| Austria didn't have such implications, so no nuclear power.
| Lobbying (by the strong automobile industry) is also the
| reason why the German autobahns still have no general speed
| limit and are still free to use for cars (paid by taxes of
| course). Austria BTW has both a speed limit and a toll for
| its freeways (and no domestic car manufacturers).
| externedguy wrote:
| History has shown that German automotive industry has
| huge power, so things like nuclear ban, shady emission
| restrictions, etc. seem like just the tip of the iceberg.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Are you really insinuating that the German automotive
| industry is behind the nuclear ban? Why would they do
| that?
| externedguy wrote:
| Keep in mind that I'm stupid in politics and economy and
| I did not invest meaningful time into studying them, but:
|
| I think generally accepted nuclear power is a literal
| threat to the German automotive industry. MB, VW Group,
| BMW, and others are not _ages ahead_ of Chinese
| manufacturers in EV sector like they are in case with ICE
| cars.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| german auto companies aren't that competitive in ev field
| and i'm not sure they want to. Thousands of ppl are
| working at those and that work is related to combustion
| engine design, switching to ev might mean a huge blow for
| them. Nuclear, if done like in france/japan/korea, means
| cheap(er) reliable electric energy which would motivate
| more ppl to switch to ev's and since there are other
| players like tesla (more popular) or something from byd
| (cheaper) german auto industry can be in a tough
| position.
| cinntaile wrote:
| France, Japan and Korea are all countries with a big
| vested interest in ICE vehicles so why doesn't your
| reasoning apply to them?
| Moldoteck wrote:
| the interest in ice vehicles is either smaller and
| smaller lobby from them or the countries had little
| natural resources and national interest was put first,
| but who knows
| externedguy wrote:
| If Germany was so worried about accidents, wouldn't they
| have fights and serious arguments with the neighbors like
| France that is packed with nuclear fuel, plants, and the
| French character of seeking endless revolutions?
|
| Germany intentionally did something that they knew will
| hurt its economy, there should be a very profound reason
| for taking such a hit. Who would be ok to take such a hit
| because of a "fear"?
|
| My generalization about the German nations may be really
| inaccurate here, I just thought they all had a huge
| influence on each other (which affects lots of previous and
| future decisions).
| rob74 wrote:
| They do - e.g. before its closure, there was a lot of
| German (and Swiss) opposition to the Fessenheim NPP,
| located just across the Rhine from Germany (the English
| Wikipedia article only mentions it briefly https://en.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/Fessenheim_Nuclear_Power_Plant..., but
| the German one has more details, including a long list of
| somewhat significant incidents https://de.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Kernkraftwerk_Fessenheim#Betri...)
| lis wrote:
| For a lot of people in Germany it's not about the risk of
| an accident, but rather the cost of building and
| decomissioning nuclear reactors.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| they are in fact against france's nuclear and are trying
| very hard to not include nuclear as a green source to not
| give it eu funding.
|
| But there are other reasons ofc including lobying from
| russia and auto industry
| pantalaimon wrote:
| In general, ideas spread more easily in communities that
| speak the same language.
| lukan wrote:
| 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.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| For germany it's easy: cheap gas from russia+lobby from it +
| auto industry
| dachworker wrote:
| 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.
| kjeldsendk wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It may as well be some money from fossil fuel sellers:
| https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russia-funding-
| europe...
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > ... 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.
| pella wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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="Jaderna elektrarna Dukovany"/> <tag
| k="name:cs" v="Jaderna elektrarna Dukovany"/> <tag
| k="name:de" v="Kernkraftwerk Dukovany"/> <tag
| k="name:en" v="Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant"/> <tag
| k="operator" v="CEZ"/> <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:Jaderna
| elektrarna Dukovany"/> And a Link to Wikidata :
| https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q336735
| externedguy wrote:
| Nice, thanks for the ideas and links! Might add this data
| to the map in the future, hopefully will find a way to do
| so in a user-friendly way without cluttering the ui.
| defrost wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| 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
| externedguy wrote:
| 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?
| defrost wrote:
| 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... 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.
|
| 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 wrote:
| Nice work! Can you consider finding a different solution for the
| many entries on Null Island, please?
| externedguy wrote:
| 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
| RajuVarghese wrote:
| 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.
| externedguy wrote:
| 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.
| mikeocool wrote:
| Those are the little known Null Island reactors!
| frumiousirc wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| fifilura wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| fifilura wrote:
| 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 Agesta reactor, which is mapped.
| externedguy wrote:
| 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.
| jeroen wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| This is super cool! Curious how you got the data, web scraping I
| assume?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://resourcewatch.org/data/explore/Powerwatch is also a
| resource.
| p1mrx wrote:
| 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...
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