70 Years of Nuclear Power ‑ Launch of Interactive Datavisualization

WNISR, 22 April 2021

Where are operating nuclear power plants in the world? Who is building new reactors? How many units did China start up since the Fukushima disaster struck Japan in 2011? Where are EPRs in the world and what is their current status? Which company is operating/building reactors in the United Arab Emirates? When did construction start at the Hinkley Point C project in the United Kingdom? What happened in the European region after Chernobyl and the Fall of the Berlin Wall?

Now, in a few clicks, you can actually see the answers with the fully interactive tool on World Nuclear Power Reactors covering 70 years of nuclear history from 1951, when construction of the first nuclear power plant began, trough to 2021.

With a primary focus on nuclear constructions, this project is meant to help researchers, academics, journalists, NGOs and other citizens to understand the dynamic and visualize the state of the nuclear industry; it allows to drill down from the broader view to specific reactors.

The display of information is organized in four different graphical modules: a map and three time-charts that provide information on construction starts, grid connections or construction cancellations, and the cumulated number of reactors under construction by year. Each module serves as a filter: any selection from any of those elements is reflected on all the other parts of the dataviz, and can be further refined—you can cross-filter—to concentrate on specific points, time frames, to compare countries, technologies…

Those different levels of interactivity, and the variety of angles and filters, make it a unique exploration tool applied to nuclear power reactors worldwide. They allow to answer immediate and straightforward questions, but also trigger new approaches to their history.

The data visualization is based on the nuclear reactor database developed and maintained by the core team of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR). An earlier version of the data-viz was available on the website of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2017–2020.

The WNISR data-viz project is elaborated and developed in cooperation with the experts of visionscarto for programming and 23FORWARD for web integration.