top of page

How Much Nuclear Waste Does the US Have?


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




174 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page