How Safe Are You?: Population Density/Nuclear Plant Interactive Maps and Quiz!

Last week, Declan Butler of Nature.com published a very informative article titled "Reactors, Residents and Risk," discussing the population density surrounding every nuclear power plant in the world. Following the Japan Tsunami and subsequent Fukushima Nuclear Crisis, many people including myself have wondered: could this happen to us?

One hundred and fifty-two nuclear power plants have more than 1 million people living within 75 kilometres; and all but five plants have more than 1 million people within 150 kilometres.

As Fukushima showed, external threats — such as earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, flooding, tornadoes or even terrorist attacks — are some of the greatest risk factors for a serious nuclear accident. Conventionally, nuclear plant operators have considered some accident sequences so unlikely that they have not built in complete safeguards — such accidents are called 'beyond design basis' events. Yet forecasting the location of the next earthquake or the size of the next tsunami is an imperfect art.

Nature also teamed up with the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, operated by Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), to give us some very informative population density and nuclear proximity maps.

Check out the article and interactive maps here (note: Google Earth plug-in required) to see how safe you are:
Article
Nuclear Power Plant Proximity Analysis Map
Nuclear Power Plant Proximity Analysis Population Distribution Map

Here's a quick quiz for all the nuclear gurus out there:

1. How many nuclear power plants currently rest on top or in close proximity to a major fault line?
2. Which one's are they?
3. How many nuclear power plants currently use the same reactor design as the trouble Fukushima plant?
4. What, in your personal opinion, is the most credible and pragmatic threat to nuclear power safety that we face today (Terrorism, Earthquake, Tsunami, etc.)?
Note: this should change depending on where you live
5. Which plant do you think is the most susceptible to disaster in the world today and why?

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Thanks for the find. Very interesting maps. I'm one of the lucky .42 million who live within the 30km zone around Seabrook so I'd be more worried about a giant wave hitting that behemoth than anything else.

Luckily they were smart enough to build it above sea level.

The whole Japan situation has created quite a stir around any nuclear power plants. There was a minor circuit fire in a service elevator at Seabrook about a month ago and it was reported on MSM sites all over. Pretty messed up imo that the biggest nuclear disaster in history has to happen for reporting of accidents at nuclear facilities to be considered news. It's definitely opened alot of eyes about the dangers.