The Associated Press debuted its own custom zoomable world map today, which you can see on their first project with it — a world map that locates all active nuclear sites in the U.S., pictured below.

Michelle Minkoff, Interactive Producer for the Associated Press, told me this about the map via email:

“We are using our own worldwide HTML zoomable map for the first time today. AP Interactive has used other mapping systems in the past. We’ve had other worldwide maps and other zoomable maps in Flash. We also did two experiments with HTML zoom mapping in late 2011, but those were limited to the United States.

But this new system provides a more thorough base for some of the mapping projects that will come out of AP Interactive, and be distributed to customers.  That being said, it’s just the beginning, and we look forward to growing our capabilities.”

The tools and libraries they used to build the map:

• TileMill – to create the mapping tiles
• Leaflet - for javascript beauty

You can read Michelle’s full post about the project on her blog.