Every gram is recorded: the IAEA has launched a global interactive map of spent nuclear fuel.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has published its first interactive digital online tool that displays precise data on the amount and locations of spent nuclear fuel storage around the world, categorized by country, region, and storage type

According to data from the IAEA report (Global Spent Nuclear Fuel Inventory), the total worldwide amount of spent nuclear fuel produced in commercial power plants is about 448,000 metric tons of heavy metal (the standard unit for uranium and other heavy elements in fuel). Of this amount, three quarters are currently located in storage facilities, while one quarter has been reprocessed.

The report specifies that 41 percent of spent fuel is kept in the so-called wet storage—primarily in designated cooling ponds located next to the reactors themselves or in centralized pools. An additional 31 percent is located in dry storage, which involves the use of concrete and steel containers (casks), dedicated buildings, and modular dry-storage systems under controlled conditions.

About 126,000 tons of heavy metal have so far been reprocessed, thereby separating usable materials and turning them into new fuel, which reduces the total amount of radioactive waste and the need to mine natural uranium. Data for this interactive map were collected during the 2025 reporting cycle from the states parties to the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and Radioactive Waste, and supplemented with publicly available information.

Amparo Gonzalez Espartero, technical head of the Department of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology at the IAEA, stated that this tool, with its structured presentation of global inventories, facilitates technical analyses and informed debate on long-term waste management strategies among states and stakeholders.

Data for Slovenia and the Krško Nuclear Power Plant

We looked at how Slovenia is represented on this map, mainly due to its proximity, but also because the Krško Nuclear Power Plant was built through joint efforts. According to official data shown by the IAEA app, Slovenia currently holds a total of 185 tons of spent fuel located in cooling ponds (wet storage), which accounts for about 0.1% of the world’s total fuel in cooling ponds, while an additional 230 tons are housed in vertical containers within the newly built dry storage facility at the plant site — 0.5% of the world’s spent nuclear fuel stored this way.

Comment

We sincerely welcome this application — around nuclear waste a very systematic (and we fear: also planned) process produces a whole system of stereotypes and completely unfounded beliefs that sometimes even take the form of visual tropes (for example in the TV series “The Simpsons” where nuclear waste is depicted as something that is placed in yellow barrels and dumped into a river).

These stereotypes are absolutely and completely unfounded, and now, in real time you can actually search for every gram of spent nuclear fuel today in the world and dispel this myth about “nuclear waste”. After all, spent nuclear fuel is the most carefully and most systematically tracked “waste”.

That is, as some people involved in the nuclear industry like to say “there is no nuclear waste problem; there is only an industrial process by which it is safely disposed of”, and raising a fuss about “nuclear waste” in order to criticize the nuclear industry is, in our view, “knocking on the wrong doors”.

S.A.