Clayton Dembski, Mikayla Fischler
The United States has, over the years, had numerous spills and incidents involving petroleum and radioactive materials. This series of visualizations is intended to show you when incidents have happened, where they happened, and what actually happened. Usually only the big accidents are discussed, such as Three Mile Island and Deep Water Horizon, but many other accidents have occurred, and some with more severity than you may expect.
While we go through these incidents, it is important to note the sparseness of data in particular years is a good thing to see. For example, the amount of incidents resulting in radiation leaks and deaths is relatively low, except during the start of nuclear development. And since then, most accidents have been very minor, resulting in minimal to no hazard to the surrounding ecosystem.
To help understand trends over time, this chart shows the number of incidents per decade since the 1940s. Hover over a bar to see what happened during that decade.
To help visualize oil spilled since the 1940s, below you can find the accumulation of oil spilled in and around the US. Hover over a point to see what happened during that year.
To help visualize the actual consequences of the nuclear incidents, below you can find the plot of injuries and fatalities due to the various nuclear incidents. While incidents still occur a few times per decade, injuries and fatalities due to actual radiation exposure from accidents have essentially stopped since the 1980s, which is a comforting statistic.
However, when it comes to some older incidents, such as the accidents at Santa Susana Field Labs, actual fatality and injury counts are unknown, but most likely non-zero. Hover over the points to see what happened during which years.