Nyongbyon nuclear power plant
Nyongbyon nuclear power plant is a nuclear power station in North Korea with 1 operating unit totalling 5 MW gross. The site has 3 units on record in total.
Units
| Unit | Status | Type | Model | Gross MW | Online |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unit 1 | GCR | MAGNOX | 5 | 1985 | |
| Unit 2 | Cancelled | GCR | MAGNOX | 50 | - |
| Unit 3 | Mothballed | LWGR | - | 30 | 2023 |
Unit by unit
Each unit's rating, type and milestone dates as recorded by the Global Nuclear Power Tracker, with any correction we made to it. A dash or "not disclosed" means the source does not give the value.
Nyongbyon nuclear power plant 1
| Reactor type | Gas-cooled reactor (GCR) |
|---|---|
| Model | MAGNOX |
| Size class | Very small |
| Gross capacity | 5MW |
| Net capacity | not disclosed |
| Thermal output | 25MWt |
| Enrichment | Natural uranium to 2.5–3.5% U-235no enrichment required |
| NSSS vendor | not on record |
| Construction start | 1 Jan 1980 |
|---|---|
| First criticality | 1 Jan 1986 |
| Commercial operation | 1 Jan 1985 |
Nyongbyon nuclear power plant 2 Cancelled
| Reactor type | Gas-cooled reactor (GCR) |
|---|---|
| Model | MAGNOX |
| Size class | Small |
| Gross capacity | 50MW |
| Net capacity | not disclosed |
| Thermal output | 200MWt |
| Enrichment | Natural uranium to 2.5–3.5% U-235no enrichment required |
| NSSS vendor | not on record |
| Cancelled | 2006 |
| Milestones | no dates on record |
|---|
Nyongbyon nuclear power plant 3 Mothballed
| Reactor type | Light water graphite reactor (LWGR) |
|---|---|
| Model | not disclosed |
| Size class | Small |
| Gross capacity | 30MW |
| Net capacity | not disclosed |
| Thermal output | 100MWt |
| Enrichment | 2–2.6% U-235 |
| NSSS vendor | not on record |
| Construction start | 1 Jan 2009 |
|---|---|
| Commercial operation | 1 Jan 2023 |
Nyongbyon nuclear power plant in context
Nyongbyon nuclear power plant is the only operating nuclear site in North Korea on record, so it holds all of the country's operating capacity, and ranks 172nd of 172 operating sites worldwide by gross capacity.
Its operating unit started up in 1985; the unit is 41.0 years old.
No other nuclear site with an exact position in this dataset lies within 300 km.
How these are worked out: ranks use gross operating capacity; ages count from the start-up year on record, as on the age page; build times run from construction start to grid connection, as on the build-times page; ratings are the tracker's net and design net capacity, as on the uprates page. Distances are straight-line between exact positions, so a site with only an approximate position gets none. A unit missing a date or a rating is left out of the figure that needs it.
Earthquakes nearby
Loading the latest USGS check…
| Time (UTC) | Mag | Depth | Epicentre | Distance |
|---|
Magnitude 4.0 and above within 200 km of Nyongbyon nuclear power plant's listed coordinates, past 30 days. This is distance, not shaking: it says nothing about damage or any change in operation. Every plant.
| Location | North Pyongan, North Korea |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 39.7974, 125.7549 |
| Elevation | about 50 mabove sea level |
| Setting | 35.6 km from the sea |
| Region | Eastern Asia |
| Units by status | Operating: 1 Cancelled: 1 Mothballed: 1 |
Elevation is read at the listed coordinates from a 30 m terrain model (SRTM 30 m). Two independent models differ by a median of 6 m across our plants and by up to about 40 m on steep or coastal ground, and a point on a shoreline can read as sea level. Distance to the water is measured to a generalised 1:10 million coastline, so a few kilometres or less is not resolved. This is context, not a design-basis or flood-risk figure.
| Owners | |
|---|---|
| Operators | not disclosed |
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Sources
- Global Nuclear Power Tracker, Global Energy Monitor, August 2026 release , CC BY 4.0 · retrieved 2026-09-06
- GEM.wiki entry (further reading) , CC BY-SA 4.0, linked, not quoted
How these sources are used, including the corrections applied on top of them and what is deliberately left blank · download the underlying data