Yes, the Lucas Heights reactor, specifically the OPAL reactor, is still operating but was undergoing a major, multi-month upgrade/maintenance shutdown around mid-2024, returning key scientific and medical isotope production to Australia's nuclear hub at Lucas Heights. Its predecessor, the HIFAR reactor, was permanently shut down in 2007 and is currently being decommissioned, while OPAL produces vital medical isotopes and supports research.
About HIFAR
HIFAR is a 21-metre tall, 10 megawatt research reactor, located at ANSTO's Lucas Heights campus in Sydney's south.
TMI-1 was shut down on September 20, 2019, but may be brought back. The CEO of Constellation Energy, the owner of Unit 1, says the reactor is in "excellent shape," and estimated that it would go online within three years of committing to a restart.
Two older RBMK-1000 reactor units, Leningrad-1 and -2, were permanently shut down in 2020. Russia is the only country to still operate the RBMK reactor technology. It has seven such units in its fleet of 36 commercial reactors.
The Beznau nuclear power plant (German: Kernkraftwerk Beznau [KKB]) is a nuclear power plant of the Swiss energy utility Axpo, located in the municipality Döttingen, Canton of Aargau, Switzerland, on an artificial island in the Aare river. The plant has been operating since September 1969.
The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor that occurred on 26 April 1986 was the most serious accident ever to occur in the nuclear power industry. The reactor was destroyed in the accident and considerable amounts of radioactive material were released to the environment.
France has the greatest share of nuclear power in total electricity generation worldwide.
And the main difference is - Chernobyl had no containment vessel, so the radiation was not contained. BWR's in Fukushima have, and radiation was mostly contained. There are approximations saying that fukushima had 1/10 radiation leaked to the outside compared to Chernobyl.
The reality is much more positive than the myth, with all three men escaping such a grisly fate. Indeed, Alexei Ananenko and Valeri Bespalov are believed to be both still alive as of 2024, while Boris Baranov lived until 2005 when he passed away from heart disease.
Radiation from Chernobyl caused mutations in animals, harming their health and ability to reproduce. Many animals in the Chernobyl exclusion zone are radioactive and some, like birds, show physical abnormalities.
Masao Yoshida (nuclear engineer) - Wikipedia.
The cleanup of contaminated sites on the reservation managed by DOE may not be complete until the 2050s and yet most of the managed reservation's 33,069 acres are undisturbed or clean now, said Erik Olds, who has served as manager of the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management since June 2025.
Forty-eight per cent of AusNet is publicly listed on the ASX, 32 per cent is owned by Singapore Power which is controlled by Singapore government investment fund Temasek and the remaining 20 per cent is owned by State Grid of China.
Thorium boasts several advantages over the conventional nuclear fuel, uranium-235. Thorium can generate more fissile material (uranium-233) than it consumes while fuelling a water-cooled or molten-salt reactor.
Coalition's plan for nuclear power
These include 2 in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and 1 in Western Australia. The plan involves building 5 large-scale plants and 2 small modular reactors (SMRs), with the first SMR expected to be operational by 2036 and all plants in operation by 2050.
There's only one man still entombed at Chernobyl. Valery Khodemchuk is the only person who died in the initial explosions. Even the unconscious, extremely irritated and burned, severely injured, Vladimir Shashenok was taken to the hospital before dying that morning.
Yes, Chernobyl is still highly radioactive in many areas, especially near the damaged reactor, but radiation levels vary significantly; some parts of the exclusion zone have contamination low enough for potential limited agriculture, while a 2025 drone strike damaged the New Safe Confinement (NSC) structure, raising concerns about long-term containment, although immediate levels stayed stable as the NSC's function is to contain the original sarcophagus's radioactive material, not the entire zone.
Surprisingly it is possible to make a tour to the former Nuclear Reactor at Chornobyl. For about 195 EUR a Person you will get picked up at your hotel in Kiev for a full day tour including lunch ( Guarantee radiation free).
Half-lives of up to eight days mean that radioactive iodine released in a reactor accident disappears from the environment after about three months. This was also the case in Fukushima. Contamination with radioactive caesium, with a half-life of up to around 30 years, remains in the environment for a long time.
The blame for the 1986 Chernobyl disaster has been variously attributed to the operating personnel, the plant management, the design of the reactor, and the lack of adequate safety information in the Soviet nuclear industry.
Albert Stevens (1887–1966), also known as patient CAL-1, was an American house painter from Ohio who was subjected to an involuntary human radiation experiment and survived the highest known accumulated radiation dose in any human.
High-level and medium-level long-lived waste
They generate heat and are therefore stored in deactivation pools or in ventilated facilities. In France, the La Hague site and the Marcoule nuclear site host this waste. A "selective separation" process is carried out at the La Hague plant.
China has the fastest nuclear growth rate in the world with 57 reactors commissioned since 1991. Another 28 reactors with a combined capacity of 30 GW are currently under construction, according to IAEA data.
All U.S. nuclear power plants store spent nuclear fuel in "spent fuel pools." These pools are made of reinforced concrete several feet thick, with steel liners. The water is typically about 40 feet deep and serves both to shield the radiation and cool the rods.