Skip to content

The Nuclear Files

The Nuclear Files Map

Where the stories happened. Each marker is a story from The Nuclear Files, placed at the site most central to it: a crash zone, a reactor, a regulator’s door.

World map marking where each story in The Nuclear Files took place The Night Hanford Released Radioactive Iodine on Purpose (Hanford Site, Washington, United States)1The Spy Mission That Left a Plutonium Generator Missing in the Himalayas (Nanda Devi, Uttarakhand, India)2The Only U.S. Commercial Reprocessing Plant Is Gone, but Its Glass Waste Has Nowhere to Go (West Valley, New York, United States)3The Soviet Satellite That Scattered a Reactor Across Canada (Great Slave Lake region, Northwest Territories, Canada)4The Lost Quarry Capsule That Ended Up Inside an Apartment Wall (Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine)5The $10 Scrap Sale That Put Radioactive Rebar in Mexican Homes (Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico)6The Cesium Cloud That Crossed Europe Before Anyone Named Its Source (Algeciras, Andalusia, Spain)7Twice the NRC Was Pushed to Drop Its Radiation Model. So Far, It Hasn’t. (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Rockville, Maryland)8
Markers show the main location of each story, numbered in the order the events happened. A pulsing marker means radioactive material from that story is still decaying today. Select one to read it.

  1. 1949 · Hanford Site, Washington, United StatesThe Night Hanford Released Radioactive Iodine on Purpose
  2. 1965 · Nanda Devi, Uttarakhand, IndiaThe Spy Mission That Left a Plutonium Generator Missing in the Himalayas
  3. 1966 · West Valley, New York, United StatesThe Only U.S. Commercial Reprocessing Plant Is Gone, but Its Glass Waste Has Nowhere to Go
  4. 1978 · Great Slave Lake region, Northwest Territories, CanadaThe Soviet Satellite That Scattered a Reactor Across Canada
  5. 1980 · Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast, UkraineThe Lost Quarry Capsule That Ended Up Inside an Apartment Wall
  6. 1983 · Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, MexicoThe $10 Scrap Sale That Put Radioactive Rebar in Mexican Homes
  7. 1998 · Algeciras, Andalusia, SpainThe Cesium Cloud That Crossed Europe Before Anyone Named Its Source
  8. 2015 · U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Rockville, MarylandTwice the NRC Was Pushed to Drop Its Radiation Model. So Far, It Hasn’t.

All stories in The Nuclear Files