Why are nuclear reactors commonly built near cities and not in the middle of nowhere like Siberia and Australia?

Question

Is it because the lack of infrastructure that they can’t deal with it on the offset of a nuclear meltdown? Or that the resources needed to maintain the reactor needs to be efficiently sent?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

Some of it is infrastructure, (especially having a lot of nearby emergency services), some of it is that nuclear power plants need to be near large bodies of water for cooling and large cities tend to be near water, and some of it is because long-distance power transmission is inefficient and costly, so having power plants closer to population centers is cheaper and more efficient.