The US has one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world, and nuclear power provides a useful form of clean energy, which could be key to the US's environmental efforts to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels. With this in mind, I thought it would be interesting to visualize where nuclear waste is stored, and how much of it is stored. The US has a total of 78624.9 metric tons of nuclear waste stored. Clearly, Illinois has the most waste at over 10,000 metric tons, and it is home to six nuclear power sites(Braidwood, Clinton, Cordova, LaSalle County, Morris and Ogle County). Because the US government has not taken the steps to collect the waste generated by these plants, most if not all of the generated waste remains in Illinois in storage.
In a distant second is Pennsylvania with 7,330, which has five operating nuclear power plants(Beaver Valley, Limerick, Peach Bottom, Susquehanna, and Three Mile Island).
The rankings then level out, as you can see below:
State | Waste |
Illinois | 10180 |
Pennsylvania | 7330 |
South Carolina | 4680 |
New York | 4180 |
Alabama | 3840 |
North Carolina | 3760 |
California | 3390 |
Florida | 3330 |
Michigan | 3050 |
Georgia | 3030 |
New Jersey | 3020 |
Virginia | 2850 |
Texas | 2610 |
Arizona | 2390 |
Connecticut | 2250 |
Tennessee | 1970 |
Maryland | 1550 |
Arkansas | 1530 |
Wisconsin | 1490 |
Louisiana | 1470 |
Minnesota | 1390 |
Ohio | 1330 |
Mississippi | 1010 |
Nebraska | 1010 |
Missouri | 790 |
Kansas | 770 |
Washington | 750 |
Massachusetts | 720 |
Vermont | 710 |
New Hampshire | 660 |
Maine | 540 |
Iowa | 530 |
Oregon | 350 |
Idaho | 130 |
Colorado | 30 |
New Mexico | 4.9 |
Montana | 0 |
Hawaii | 0 |
Alaska | 0 |
Rhode Island | 0 |
Delaware | 0 |
West Virginia | 0 |
Kentucky | 0 |
Indiana | 0 |
Oklahoma | 0 |
Utah | 0 |
Wyoming | 0 |
South Dakota and North Dakota | 0 |
Nevada | 0 |
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