What Countries Have Nuclear Reactors Producing Energy?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers on the countries that have commercial nuclear reactors producing energy. Participants explore the list of nations with operational nuclear power plants, as well as the implications of decommissioned plants and the geographical distribution of these reactors.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant lists countries with commercial nuclear reactors, including Argentina, Canada, China, and the USA, among others.
  • Another participant notes that some US and UK plants listed are outdated, with several having been decommissioned.
  • A participant mentions specific examples of decommissioned plants, like Shippingport and Elk River, and discusses the costs associated with dismantling nuclear power plants.
  • There is a geographical rearrangement of the list of countries by continent, highlighting the distribution of nuclear reactors across North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
  • Some participants express surprise that Australia does not have any nuclear power plants despite its uranium resources.
  • Discussion shifts to electricity prices in the US, with participants sharing insights on regional variations and the impact of nuclear power on electricity costs.
  • One participant suggests that Hawaii could benefit from a nuclear power plant to reduce electricity costs, although the state constitution prohibits nuclear energy.
  • Another participant provides detailed statistics on the percentage of electricity generated from nuclear power in various US states, noting significant differences in reliance on nuclear energy.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants present multiple viewpoints regarding the status of nuclear reactors and the implications of decommissioned plants. There is no consensus on the overall impact of nuclear energy on electricity prices or the feasibility of nuclear power in certain regions.

Contextual Notes

Some claims about the status of nuclear plants depend on definitions of "operational" and "decommissioned," and the discussion includes unresolved assumptions about the economic implications of nuclear energy.

Who May Find This Useful

Readers interested in nuclear energy, energy policy, and the geographical distribution of power generation may find this discussion relevant.

Pengwuino
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What nations actually have commercial nuclear reactors producing energy for their country?
 
Engineering news on Phys.org
ARGENTINA
ARMENIA
BELGIUM
BULGARIA
BRAZIL
CANADA
CHINA
CZECH R.
FINLAND
FRANCE
GERMANY
HUNGARY
INDIA
IRAN
ITALY
JAPAN
KAZAHSTAN
R.of KOREA
LITHUANIA
MEXICO
NETHERLANDS
PAKISTAN
ROMANIA
RUSSIA
SLOVAKIA
SLOVENIA
S.AFRICA
SPAIN
SWEDEN
SWITZERLAND
TAIWAN
UKRAINE
UK
USA

See - http://www.antenna.nl/nukeatlas/npps/nppsgo.html - click on link for each country to see list of plants. Some the information on the units is outdated - I noticed various US and UK plants which have long been decommissioned or others which are only in planning, but it is historically accurate for the most part. Well at least you have a list of countries.
 
thank you :D
 
Astronuc said:
ARGENTINA
I noticed various US and UK plants which have long been decommissioned...

Astronuc,

Yes - in fact ALL 10 of those listed on the first page of the list have been
shutdown and / or disassembled. For example, Shippingport and Elk River
have been completely dismantled, and their sites have been released for
unrestricted use. [ These are good counterexamples to use when the
anti-nukes tell you that one can't dismantle a nuclear power plant - or
that it is prohibitively expensive to do so - or that the costs are unknown
and that the sky's the limit. It's been done - and the costs are well within
the amount in the escrow fund that nuclear power plant operators are
required to pay into to cover the cost of dismantlement. ]

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
 
Greg, thanks for pointing that out. I just didn't take the time.

The plants seem to be listed in order of commissioning.

I noticed on subsequent pages of the US list

Haddam Neck
Millstone-1
Fort St. Vrain
BONUS

Which have all been shutdown and decommissioned. Millstone-1 is one of the more recent closures. It shares a site with two other units.

Fort St. Vrain was a commercial graphite-moderated, gas-cooled reactor. Lots of problems with that one though. One of my previous employers did a lot of support work for that plant.
 
Because I'm a spatially oriented person, using Astronuc's list, I've rearranged the list geographically:

North America:
CANADA
USA
MEXICO

South America:
BRAZIL
ARGENTINA

Western Europe
BELGIUM
FINLAND
FRANCE
GERMANY
ITALY
NETHERLANDS
SPAIN
SWEDEN
SWITZERLAND
UK

Eastern Europe and Former USSR:
ARMENIA
BULGARIA
CZECH R.
HUNGARY
KAZAHSTAN
LITHUANIA
ROMANIA
RUSSIA
SLOVAKIA
SLOVENIA
UKRAINE

Africa:
S.AFRICA

Asia:
IRAN
PAKISTAN
INDIA
CHINA
TAIWAN
R.of KOREA
JAPAN

Australia, Oceania, Antarctica
None.
 
You mean australia doesn't have any nuclear power plants? Interesting!
 
Ironically, Australia also has one of the richest supplies of uranium in the world.

http://www.australianminesatlas.gov.au/info/aimr/uranium.jsp
 
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Crazy people! Anyone happen to have like a map of electricity prices in the US by region or county or something of the sort? I wonder what characterizes a low-priced electricity region/city and what characterizes the opposite.
 
  • #10
Pengwuino said:
Crazy people! Anyone happen to have like a map of electricity prices in the US by region or county or something of the sort? I wonder what characterizes a low-priced electricity region/city and what characterizes the opposite.
I don't have a map, but HERE are the numbers.
 
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  • #11
To summarize what is going on in those numbers, the highest by far is Hawaii, which pay 16.38 cents per Kwh. This is because Hawaii is the only place in the United States where virtually all electricity is generated with petroleum (almost every place else uses a mix of nuclear, hydro, coal and natural gas). Alaska's 10.6 cents per Kwh also likely reflects a large share of petroleum in the electricity generation mix.

New England, New York and California all pay 11 cents per Kwh plus or minus a half cent. I suspect that this largely reflects a decision to avoid cheaper coal powered plants in order to meet environmental objectives. Both New England and California maintain more strict clean air standards than the rest of the United States. New Jersey's 9.28 cents per Kwh and Pennsylvania's 7.99 cents per Kwh probably has a similar source. In particular, I suspect that fairly heavy use of natural gas to generate electricity drives these prices.

Most of the rest of the nation is in the 5.2-6.9 cents per Kwh range, which likely reflects generation of electricity predominantly with coal, or when not with coal, with alternatives that were chosen only because they were price competitive with coal. In Oregon and Washington State, at least, I suspect that hydroelectric power has been the main competition.

The remaining outliers are Texas, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Florida. They are in the 7-8 cents per Kwh range. I suspect that rapid population growth and increased air conditioning use by existing residents has driven an increase in demand producing temporary infrastructure costs that are driving electricity costs in these areas.

Kentucky's low 4.55 cents per Kwh may reflect local coal deposits or cheap federally subsidized TVA hydropower.

Detailed data from here: http://www.glencoe.com/sec/science/...2.html&link=http://www.eia.doe.gov/price.html

As I've noted before in this forum, I think that the place with the single most to gain from a new nuclear power plant would be the island of Oahu in Hawaii. A single typical sized nuclear power plant could replace all of the existing power generation facilities on the island, greatly reduce the cost of electricity in Hawaii for most of its residents, and greatly reduce the risk of an oil spill which could devistate Hawaii's tourism driven economy. The state constitution, however, prohibits the use of nuclear power in the state.
 
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  • #12
11 cents? i wish!
 
  • #13
The prices are averaged over all sectors of consumption. Some details on state by state electricity sources follows:

The percentage of electricity generated from nuclear power varies greatly from state to state within the U.S., on a percentage basis, from highest to lowest, the percentage of total net power generation from nuclear power by U.S. state is (with number of plants): Vermont(1) 85.3%, New Jersey(4) 74.5%, New Hampshire(1) 62.4%, Connecticut(2) 61.6%, South Carolina(7) 58.2%, Illinois(11) 54.4%, Pennsylvania(9) 44.0%, Virginia(4) 43.5%, New York(6) 38.2%, California(4) 37.2%, Arizona(3) 36.6%, North Carolina(5) 34.2%, Nebraska (2) 33.3%, Massachusetts(1) 31.2%, Minnesota(3) 30.2%, Arkansas(2) 29.3%, Georgia(4) 28.6%, Alabama(5) 27.1%, Maryland(2) 26.9%, Mississippi(1) 25.9%, Kansas(2) 21.8%, Wisconsin(3) 21.0%, Louisiana(2) 20.3%, Florida(5) 18.9%, Michigan(4) 16.6%, Texas(4) 12.7%, Missouri(1)11.7%, Ohio(2) 11.6%, Iowa(1) 9.8%, Washington(1) 5.4%.

The following states do not generate any electricity from nuclear power (with percentage of power from coal shown behind each listing): Alaska 3.7%, Colorado 87.5%, Delaware 80.2%, District of Columbia 0%, Hawaii 0%, Idaho 0%, Indiana 98.2%, Kentucky 96.6%, Maine 0%, Montana 4.9%, Nevada 64.5%, New Mexico 88.5%, North Dakota 93.0%, Oklahoma 63.9%, Oregon 8.2%, Rhode Island 0%, South Dakota 37.9%, Utah 95.0%, West Virginia 99.3% and Wyoming 97.2%.

Some states which use nuclear power use very little coal to generate electricity. California, Connecticut, and Vermont get less than 1% of their electricity from coal. New York gets 5.5% of its electricity from coal and Washington gets 3.4% of its electricity from coal.

By and large this data supports my earlier post which suggested that coal powered generation was associated with cheap electricity. But, nuclear power seems to be an important factor in many of the higher cost states, and hydropower is apparently not a factor in Kentucky.
 
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  • #14
Purposely locating nuclear reactors in high-risk zones

ohwilleke said:
As I've noted before in this forum, I think that the place with the single most to gain from a new nuclear power plant would be the island of Oahu in Hawaii.
Oahu is in a high-frequency volcano, earthquake and tsunami zone.
google.com/search?q=hawaii+tsunamis

Normally, reactors are not located in such high-risk areas.
 
  • #15
hitssquad said:
Oahu is in a high-frequency volcano, earthquake and tsunami zone.
google.com/search?q=hawaii+tsunamis

Normally, reactors are not located in such high-risk areas.

hitssquad,

The coast of California may not have the volcanos, but it most certainly
has many fault lines including the infamous San Andreas - so the risk of
earthquake is certainly there. The coast could also be hit by a tsunami,
should there be an off-shore earthquake.

Yet, the California coast has 4 operating reactors [ Diablo Canyon 1 & 2,
San Onofre 2 & 3 ], and 2 mothballed plants [ San Onofre 1, Humbolt Bay ]

Although there is always much bleeting from the anti-nukes about
placing reactors near earthquake zones - there's nothing "wrong" with
the practice provided the plant is designed to withstand the maximum
stress that an earthquake could exert.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
 
  • #16
I thought one of diablo canyons reactors was shut down... hmm... maybe I am thinking of San Onofre... don't mind me :D
 
  • #17
ohwilleke said:
The prices are averaged over all sectors of consumption. Some details on state by state electricity sources follows:

Ohwilleke:

Have you got the stats for Tennessee? You have 50 'states' in your list, but it also included the District of Columbia, so it should be 51. I tried to find it from your link, but it wasn't intuitively obvious which table(s) you pulled your data from.
 
  • #18
Why San Onofre Unit 1 was shut down

Pengwuino said:
I thought one of diablo canyons reactors was shut down [...] maybe I am thinking of San Onofre.
San Onofre Unit 1 was of an older design (first generation) and of very small capacity. It eventually became uneconomical to keep it running, as the maintenance and repair costs continuously crept higher (it was also determined to be economical to shut it down before the older employees, who had the most experience with that reactor, retired).

Conversely, Diablo Canyon's two units are the most advanced reactors online today in the United States, and they seem to be cost-effective.
http://www.zimfamilycockers.com/DiabloCanyon.html

--
The average cost of electricity produced in California is over 3.6 cents per killowatt/hour... but Diablo Canyon power costs less than 1.6 cents per kWh.
--
 

Attachments

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  • #19
russ_watters said:
I don't have a map, but HERE are the numbers.
Your URL is a mile long and it simply points to this one:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/price.html
 
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  • #20
Nuclear production stats by state

Grogs said:
Have you got the stats for Tennessee?
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statestn.html

from:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/states.html

from:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors/reactsum.html

from:
eia.doe.gov/fuelnuclear.html



Code: 
Competing Fuels 

Electricity Market in Tennessee
(Percent Generated by Fuel)  
Year Coal  Gas  Hydro  Nuclear  Petroleum  Other  
2003  60    *    12      26        *         2  
2002  62    1     8      29        *         *  
  
*less than one percent 
Source: Form EIA-906, Power Plant Report
 
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  • #22
Morbius,

What are the two blue pools for? Do they hold emergency cooling water?
 
  • #23
Grogs said:
Ohwilleke:

Have you got the stats for Tennessee? You have 50 'states' in your list, but it also included the District of Columbia, so it should be 51. I tried to find it from your link, but it wasn't intuitively obvious which table(s) you pulled your data from.

Those numbers are selective stats I pulled from hard copy government documents a while ago with another purpose in mind.
 
  • #24
hitssquad said:
Your URL is a mile long and it simply points to this one:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/price.html is the table I was looking at.
 
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  • #25
hitssquad said:
Morbius,

What are the two blue pools for? Do they hold emergency cooling water?

hitssquad,

Or at least water that can also be used for emergency cooling.

http://www.nucleartourist.com/us/diablo.htm

lists the emergency water sources; one of which is called the
"raw water storage reservoir". This source is listed at 4.5 mega-gallons.

I would bet it is for general water use - but is available in an emergency.
It also appears to be at a higher elevation than the reactors - so gravity
can be used in lieu of pumps.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
 
  • #26
Morbius,

Thanks for the info. Yes, those pools look to me like they hold about 4.5 million gallons. That's a great picture of Diablo Canyon, BTW.
 
  • #27
hitssquad said:
Morbius,

Thanks for the info. Yes, those pools look to me like they hold about 4.5 million gallons. That's a great picture of Diablo Canyon, BTW.

Yes - it was taken from a helicopter flying up and down the California
coast - the same people that Barbara Streisand unsuccessfully sued
because they took a picture of her coastal estate in Malibu.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
 

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