About and method
NuclearChain answers three kinds of question: what reactors exist, where their fuel comes from, and which advanced designs are actually moving through regulators. The fuel chain is the part that does not exist elsewhere in one navigable place, and it is where the curation effort goes.
Where the data comes from
- Fleet, Global Nuclear Power Tracker, Global Energy Monitor, August 2026 release, licensed CC BY 4.0. 1825 units across 62 countries.
- Fuel chain, 158 facilities compiled from agency capacity tables and company filings. Every capacity figure carries the year it applies to and a link to its source.
- US daily status, NRC Power Reactor Status Reports, public domain, fetched daily.
- SMR pipeline, regulator dockets and proceedings at the NRC, ONR and CNSC. Every design carries a docket or is explicitly tiered as paper.
- Verification, IAEA PRIS, used to spot-check records. Not ingested or mirrored.
How this site is made
- AI assistance does not supply the facts. Every reactor, capacity, date and price comes from a cited source file. The figures on analysis pages, such as medians, counts, shares and fuel costs, are computed from that data by scripts when the site is built, not typed in.
- Automated checks run on every release. They look for broken links, missing canonical links, counts stated on a page that disagree with the data, and drift between the data and the live outage tracker. They catch inconsistencies; they do not catch every factual error.
- What is not claimed. We do not claim an independent expert or professional review of these pages, and we have not measured an error rate. Treat the cited source as the authority, and tell us if a page disagrees with it.
- Images. Social preview cards and charts are drawn by code from the data. None is AI-generated imagery.
Rules this site follows
- Nothing is invented. Where a value is not publicly disclosed it is null and renders as "not disclosed". It is never estimated, interpolated or filled with a plausible-looking guess.
- Every figure carries its date. A capacity figure states the year it applies to. A status figure states when it was last researched. A live number states the date of the report it came from.
- A forecast is never shown as history. A planned retirement year is stored in a separate field from an actual shutdown date, so it is structurally impossible to render one as the other.
- Inferred status is labelled. 281 units carry a status the compiler inferred from an absence of progress rather than from an announcement. Every one says so.
- Corrections are visible. Where we depart from the base dataset, the page shows the old value, the new value, the source and the verification date.
The most important limitation
93% of units the August 2026 fleet release lists as operating were last researched in May 2024, 27 months before that release. Global Energy Monitor's own release notes say prospective projects were re-researched; the operating fleet was not.
Any unit that shut down in between still reads as operating in the base data. We spot-checked against IAEA PRIS, found the affected records, and corrected 27 of them. Every reactor page shows the date that specific unit was last researched, so you can judge the record for yourself rather than trusting the release date.
Corrections currently applied
| Record | Why | Verified |
|---|---|---|
| doel-nuclear-power-plant-1 | Permanently shut down on 15 February 2025 under Belgium's nuclear phase-out law, after the GNPT record was last researched in May 2024. | 2026-09-06 |
| doel-nuclear-power-plant-2 | Permanently shut down on 30 November 2025, after the GNPT record was last researched in May 2024. | 2026-09-06 |
| tihange-nuclear-power-plant-1 | Permanently shut down on 1 October 2025 at the end of its extended licence, after the GNPT record was last researched in May 2024. | 2026-09-06 |
| pickering-nuclear-power-plant-a1 | Permanently shut down on 1 October 2024 ahead of the Pickering B refurbishment programme, after the GNPT record was last researched in May 2024. | 2026-09-06 |
| pickering-nuclear-power-plant-a4 | Permanently shut down on 31 December 2024, after the GNPT record was last researched in May 2024. | 2026-09-06 |
| kakrapar-nuclear-power-plant-4 | GNPT records the commercial operation date as identical to the grid connection date (2024-02-20), which appears to be a field-copy error. The IAEA records commercial operation on 31 March 2024. | 2026-09-06 |
| sizewell-nuclear-power-plant-c1 | GNPT types the unit as a pressurized heavy water reactor, but its model is the UK EPR, which is a pressurised water reactor. Sizewell C Ltd states that the UK EPR design used at Sizewell C is the same as at Hinkley Point C and that EPRs are a type of PWR. The fuel family follows the type: an EPR takes square-lattice PWR fuel, not CANDU-style bundles. | 2026-10-22 |
| sizewell-nuclear-power-plant-c2 | GNPT types the unit as a pressurized heavy water reactor, but its model is the UK EPR, which is a pressurised water reactor. Sizewell C Ltd states that the UK EPR design used at Sizewell C is the same as at Hinkley Point C and that EPRs are a type of PWR. The fuel family follows the type: an EPR takes square-lattice PWR fuel, not CANDU-style bundles. | 2026-10-22 |
| amarillo-nuclear-power-plant-1 | GNPT lists the model as ESBWR, a boiling water design, while typing the unit as a pressurised water reactor. The NRC's list of expected new plant applications shows Amarillo Power's design as the EPR, 2 units, near Amarillo, Texas. The EPR is a pressurised water reactor, so the type was right and the model was not. The capacity figure is left as GNPT gives it. | 2026-10-22 |
| amarillo-nuclear-power-plant-2 | GNPT lists the model as ESBWR, a boiling water design, while typing the unit as a pressurised water reactor. The NRC's list of expected new plant applications shows Amarillo Power's design as the EPR, 2 units, near Amarillo, Texas. The EPR is a pressurised water reactor, so the type was right and the model was not. The capacity figure is left as GNPT gives it. | 2026-10-22 |
| southern-ohio-clean-energy-park-nuclear-power-plant | GNPT types the unit as a pressurized heavy water reactor, but its model is the EPR, a pressurised water reactor. AREVA's announcement of 18 June 2009 describes negotiations to develop an EPR reactor for the Clean Energy Park at the Department of Energy site in Piketon, Ohio. The fuel family follows the type: an EPR takes square-lattice PWR fuel. | 2026-10-22 |
| qinshan-nuclear-power-plant-3-1 | GNPT types the unit as a pressurized water reactor, but its model is the CANDU 6, a pressurized heavy water reactor. The World Nuclear Association reactor database lists Qinshan 3-1 as a PHWR, model CANDU 6, 728 MWe gross, in commercial operation from 31 December 2002. The fuel family follows the type: a CANDU 6 takes natural uranium fuel bundles, not PWR assemblies. GNPT already gives the PHWR fuel family. | 2026-10-22 |
| qinshan-nuclear-power-plant-3-2 | GNPT types the unit as a pressurized water reactor, but its model is the CANDU 6, a pressurized heavy water reactor. The World Nuclear Association reactor database lists Qinshan 3-2 as a PHWR, model CANDU 6, 728 MWe gross, in commercial operation from 24 July 2003. The fuel family follows the type: a CANDU 6 takes natural uranium fuel bundles, not PWR assemblies. GNPT already gives the PHWR fuel family. | 2026-10-22 |
| yibin-beijiang-nuclear-power-plant-1 | GNPT types the unit as a pressurized heavy water reactor, but its model is the CAP1000, the Chinese version of the AP1000, a pressurised water reactor. The World Nuclear Association reactor database lists the CAP1000 unit Haiyang 3 as a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), model CAP1000. The fuel family follows the type. The unit is cancelled, so this corrects the record of what was proposed. | 2026-10-22 |
| yibin-beijiang-nuclear-power-plant-2 | GNPT types the unit as a pressurized heavy water reactor, but its model is the CAP1000, the Chinese version of the AP1000, a pressurised water reactor. The World Nuclear Association reactor database lists the CAP1000 unit Haiyang 3 as a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), model CAP1000. The fuel family follows the type. The unit is cancelled, so this corrects the record of what was proposed. | 2026-10-22 |
| kashiwazaki-kariwa-nuclear-power-plant-7 | GNPT records the unit as under construction, with a commercial operation date in the future. The Japan Atomic Industrial Forum's table of the status of Japan's nuclear power plants, as of 7 August 2026, lists Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 7 (ABWR, 1,356 MWe) among the operable units, commercial operation 1997, in outage since 2011.08.23. Only Ohma, Higashidori-1 and Shimane-3 are in its under-construction table. The unit is complete and idle, like its sister units already recorded as mothballed, so it is not under construction. The commercial operation year is the JAIF's; the exact day is not given there, so only the year is recorded. | 2026-10-22 |
| tokai-nuclear-power-plant-2 | GNPT records the unit as under construction, with a commercial operation date in the future. The Japan Atomic Industrial Forum's table of the status of Japan's nuclear power plants, as of 7 August 2026, lists Tokai-2 (BWR, 1,100 MWe) among the operable units, commercial operation 1978, in outage since 2011.03.11. Only Ohma, Higashidori-1 and Shimane-3 are in its under-construction table. The unit is complete and idle, like its sister units already recorded as mothballed, so it is not under construction. The commercial operation year is the JAIF's; the exact day is not given there, so only the year is recorded. | 2026-10-22 |
| tomari-nuclear-power-plant-3 | GNPT records the unit as under construction, with a commercial operation date in the future. The Japan Atomic Industrial Forum's table of the status of Japan's nuclear power plants, as of 7 August 2026, lists Tomari-3 (PWR, 912 MWe) among the operable units, commercial operation 2009, in outage since 2012.05.05. Only Ohma, Higashidori-1 and Shimane-3 are in its under-construction table. The unit is complete and idle, like its sister units already recorded as mothballed, so it is not under construction. The commercial operation year is the JAIF's; the exact day is not given there, so only the year is recorded. | 2026-10-22 |
| alvin-w-vogtle-nuclear-power-plant-4 | GNPT gives a commercial operation date of 1 January 2023, which is before the unit's own grid connection on 6 March 2024 and before first criticality on 14 February 2024. Georgia Power declared Vogtle Unit 4 in commercial operation on 29 April 2024. | 2026-10-22 |
| turkey-point-nuclear-power-station-3 | GNPT gives a commercial operation date of 1 January 1972, before the unit's own grid connection on 2 November 1972: a year-only placeholder. The World Nuclear Association database lists 14 December 1972. | 2026-10-22 |
| turkey-point-nuclear-power-station-4 | GNPT gives a commercial operation date of 1 January 1973, before the unit's own grid connection on 21 June 1973: a year-only placeholder. The World Nuclear Association database lists 7 September 1973. | 2026-10-22 |
| olkiluoto-nuclear-power-plant-3 | GNPT gives a commercial operation date of 1 January 2022, before the unit's own grid connection on 12 March 2022. The World Nuclear Association database lists regular (commercial) operation from 16 April 2023, after the trial-operation period that followed the grid connection. The start year follows the commercial date. | 2026-10-22 |
| barakah-nuclear-power-plant-4 | GNPT gives a commercial operation date of 1 March 2024, before the unit's own grid connection on 23 March 2024 and the same as its first criticality. The World Nuclear Association database lists 7 September 2024. | 2026-10-22 |
| fangchenggang-nuclear-power-plant-2-4 | GNPT gives a grid connection of 25 May 2024 and a commercial operation date of 1 January 2024, which is before it. The World Nuclear Association database lists first grid connection on 9 April 2024 and commercial operation on 25 May 2024, so the May date is the commercial one. | 2026-10-22 |
| yangjiang-nuclear-power-plant-5 | GNPT gives a first criticality of 1 January 2013, before the unit's own construction start on 18 September 2013: a year-only placeholder. The World Nuclear Association database lists first criticality on 16 May 2018. | 2026-10-22 |
| lufeng-nuclear-power-plant-1 | GNPT gives a net capacity equal to the gross capacity (1,250 MW). The World Nuclear Association database lists Lufeng 1 (CAP1000, under construction) at 1,250 MWe gross and 1,161 MWe net. | 2026-10-22 |
| lufeng-nuclear-power-plant-2 | GNPT gives a gross capacity of 1,200 MW and a net capacity of 1,250 MW, so the net exceeds the gross. The World Nuclear Association database lists Lufeng 2 (CAP1000, under construction) at 1,250 MWe gross and 1,161 MWe net, the same as Lufeng 1. | 2026-10-22 |
Reuse
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Contact
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