Show HN: Reactor Atlas

Posted by fedecaccia 5 days ago

Hi HN, I'm a nuclear engineer and tech entrepreneur. After working for 3 years in the National Atomic Energy Commision (CNEA) in HPC software for nuclear simulations, I co-founded ratherlabs.com, a software company providing blockchain solutions for startups. Rather Labs business reached ~6 million usd in annual revenue in 2024; now demand is decreasing as our niche clients are using AI to launch their MVPs.

Now I'm joining my scientific background with my entrepreneurial inclinations to think of problems related to the energy industry. Nuclear is experiencing a renaissance now (it was in a dark age when I was studying after the Fukushima event) so I think this is the right moment for me to jump again into the field.

Reactor atlas is an interactive nuclear reactor map and an intelligence layer on top of it. The basic layer indexes:

  - power reactors
  - research reactors
  - fuel facilities

with their history and projection, by country. The project is solving a fragmented information ecosystem, where operational and commercial data is hard to conciliate. Also, I'm monitoring nuclear news associated with each of the facilities, political declarations that may affect the nuclear landscape and geo-phisical news (like earthquakes) that could affect operation. On top of the operational + news layer, I'm creating an intelligence layer that will help institutions of different types make faster decisions by subscribing to very specific alerts.

As an engineer, I used to code in fortran and c++ when I was working at CNEA, and later I participated in the first Rather Labs projects architecting complex async systems, mostly using MERN stack. I'm no longer coding anymore. I'm focused on designing robust systems with AI agents.

I mainly used Claude Fable 5.1 to develop reactoratlas.com, deploying on vercel and using mostly nextjs, threejs, postgreSQL and some cron jobs to query and update data. I miss coding as in the old days, but I haven't code a single line in this project. And I strongly believe we humans shouldn't code anymore: our responsibility is now on designing and supervising AI systems.

Thanks for your attention!

Comments

Comment by defrost 4 days ago

Nice site, looks like you had a bit of fun putting it together.

Missing the Australian research reactor OPAL in Lucas Heights, Sydney - https://www.ansto.gov.au/education/nuclear-facts

Note that while you do have the no longer operating Fukushima Daiichi plant, you don't have the ceased functioning easter egg natural nuclear fission reactors, such as the one in Oklo, Gabon.

It seems related to address nuclear waste also - the filthy sites related to early nuclear weapons development, the surface blast sites during the testing years, current and proposed repository locations, various open pools of low level radioactive waste from mining, rare earth processing, etc.

And, if you're going "full stack" - nuclear sources - Olympic Dam (sitting tight with large reserves), former African sites, Kazakhstan supplying the US and elsewhere, automated uranium mining in Canada, etc.

Comment by fedecaccia 4 days ago

The natural reactor in Oklo is a great one! It isn't a facility so it doesn't fit the current layers, but it deserves its own entry: added in the backlog and will be updated soon!

Comment by tomhow 4 days ago

As defrost suggested, your comments have been autokilled as our software classifies them as likely LLM-generated or edited/polished. Please don't do this on HN. The community here much prefers imperfect-but-authentic writing, and we very much appreciate the effort!

Comment by fedecaccia 4 days ago

Thanks! As I explained below, my first language is spanish and my intention was to provide fluid answers. Suggestion accepted.

Comment by defrost 4 days ago

Heh, I hoped that might get a chuckle - sorry I missed the separate research layer <doh>

If you're an ESL (English as Second Language) speaker using AI assist for comments .. that might explain the number of [flagged][dead] comments you're getting (there's an AI detect layer at HN these days).

I've emailed HN@ycombinator and [vouched] the dead ones - fingers crossed.

Comment by fedecaccia 4 days ago

THanks for your support defrost. Indeed, Im from Argentina and I tried to improve my answers assisted with AI. No more asistance, but I'm not that fluid in english!

Comment by defrost 4 days ago

Your English is better than my Spanish :-)

If you keep noodling on this then I'd suggest getting the nuclear stack down pat, then gradually integrating full energy mixes per country, at first just showing the proportions of energy use provided by nuclear.

Make things clear as you go - a countries energy use is more than just electricity generation, for example, aim for bright 15 years old as a target audience perhaps.

A good many people do want to see better "dashboards" for their planet, over all and country by country.

Comment by fedecaccia 4 days ago

thanks! and your comments are in the right direction, I plan to integrate other layers of the global energy network, with a better visualization of nuclear proportion by region/country.

Comment by amenghra 4 days ago

There must be tons of research reactors around the world. E.g. https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lrs/facilities/crocus-reactor/ runs at 100W and is used for teaching/research purpose.

Comment by defrost 4 days ago

Sure, and they should all be part of an Atlas that purports to map research reactors.

Moreover, the entire continent of Australia currently lacks any pins .. so it'd be nice to get one there for Lucas .. if not for for one of the globe's largest uranium reserves and maybe for that place where the British dusted a future UK Prime Minister with fallout.

Comment by fedecaccia 4 days ago

I have changed the UI, now both power and research layers are on by default, so you should see nuclear pins in Australia at first sight. Thanks for the feedback!

Comment by fedecaccia 4 days ago

* * *

Comment by mineralhoiland 4 days ago

This is a cool development, it has great information on worldwide nuclear facilities and energy production details, I also enjoy vibe coding physics/scientific apps, and I've been working on nuclear fusion and alternative efficient reactor designs for the past few years. Nice to see another scientist adapting to AI acceleration of programming and research.

Comment by fedecaccia 4 days ago

thanks for your support! Im passionate about nuclear fusion as well, and there will be more projects to come from my side..! Feel free to share your projects in the community! Happy to take a look

Comment by winrid 4 days ago

I thought the monitoring part was cool: https://reactoratlas.com/en/monitoring

But why does it say stuff about hydropower? is that a translation bug?

> I strongly believe we humans shouldn't code anymore

It's okay to enjoy things.

Comment by fedecaccia 4 days ago

Sure! not a translation bug! The monitoring section you mention is part of the “signals” layer, where I’m tracking things like increases/decreases in power generation and grid contributions. I think this kind of data could be useful for operators and institutions. The Monitoring/News section, on the other hand, is 99% nuclear.

And yeah, fair point on the coding comment. I guess I still enjoy it too much! I’ll publish some piece of code fully coded by my own fingers one of these days

Comment by winrid 4 days ago

It would probably be good to be able to filter between the two. Personally I just wanted to see the list of events directly related to the nuclear plants. Since you know, that's what the site is for :)

Comment by fedecaccia 4 days ago

ok! I'll add a filter in this page, looking forward to deploy an update in next hours.

Comment by sajithdilshan 4 days ago

Cool site, didn't know Bangladesh was building nuclear reactors. Good for them. Stable and affordable energy is paramount to lift millions out of poverty. Hope Bangladesh would get more industrial factories that is being moved out of countries like Germany.

Comment by fedecaccia 1 day ago

Thanks! Yes, Bangladesh is building two VVER 1200s, 1,080 MWe net each. Unit 1 is scheduled for commercial operation this year and unit 2 next.

Comment by fedecaccia 3 days ago

I implemented several updates in the platform, based on all the feedback received in the last 24 hs. Thanks to all the folks that helped improving the platform!

BTW it was pinned as a resource in the nuclear subreddit, which makes me very happy: people is finding it very useful!

Comment by beyondcompute 4 days ago

Cool project! However, the map-globe navigation feels confusing and unintuitive compared to a more conventional 2D map UI. Also the clustering algorithm makes labels “jump” in a jarring way during zooming. I’d tune it somehow so that it feels better to the users.

Comment by fedecaccia 4 days ago

Thanks for the feedback! Al these are welcome and Im taking note for improvements. On the 2D map UI: you can select the 2D option right above the years slider. I hope it works as expected! Will update soon with the other improvements!

Comment by jtreitz 4 days ago

hurts to see Germany at 0MWe in 2026 :(

Comment by fedecaccia 4 days ago

a reaction to 2011 fukushima event. The ironic fact: if you check japan nuclear power evolution, they just had a small drop and later keep growing, nowadays in top 3!

Comment by kaito2503 4 days ago

Comment by 5 days ago

Comment by rooty_ship 13 hours ago

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