Nivetske, Ukraine – The residents of the little village of Nivetske, located just west of Chornobyl, are literally living on the edge. It’s not just the edge of the so-called “alienation zone,” a 30-kilometer area where people are not supposed to settle.Somehow, Nivetske is also on the edge of decent living standards: they have regular power blackouts, health care is out of reach, and there is no easy way to commute to the bigger towns nearby. The list of daily challenges for the villagers, whose lives are still affacted by the world’s worst nuclear power accident on April 26, 1986, is long.

“It used to be a nice prosperous village before the Chornobyl explosion. We had a big collective farm and were known for their cattle,” said Anatoliy Oborsky, a Nivetske native. “There used to be more than 100 households and a population of 800 people.”