



If you lived near Chernobyl or Fukushima, would you stay?

On April 26, 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant changed history, sending radiation and political shockwaves across Europe. Radioactive fallout contaminated 56,700 square miles of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, a region larger than New York state.

A generation later in Japan, on March 11, 2011, the Tohoku earthquake and the tsunami it triggered brought on multiple nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. In the initial fires, Fukushima released ten to thirty percent as much radiation as Chernobyl, contaminating some 4,500 square miles of Japan—nearly the area of Connecticut. Radioactive water continues to leak from the Fukushima plant to this day.

To the world, Chernobyl and Fukushima seem like dangerous places, but for the people who live there, that danger is simply a fact of life.

In my photography, I explore the human consequences of environmental contamination. I am interested in questions about home: how do people cope when their homeland changes irreversibly? Why do so many stay?

In the popular imagination, the Chernobyl region is a wasteland—forsaken, hazardous, and inaccessible. And yet, a generation later, life continues across these radiation-affected lands. Six million people still live here. After the accident, 188 nearby towns and villages were evacuated. Many were bulldozed, some were simply abandoned. The Soviet military created the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to prevent public access to highly contaminated areas. Beyond this first “zone of alienation” are three further zones where radiation fell but evacuation was merely encouraged, not mandatory. In Ukraine, these three zones include 2,293 villages with 1.6 million inhabitants.

It’s been three years since the Fukushima disaster. When the earthquake and tsunami hit and caused the nuclear fallout, I knew I would eventually go to Fukushima. Last year, I started a new documentary project there. Wary of becoming another helicopter journalist, I tried hard to find a few typical people and stick with them long enough to witness their stories unfolding. Currently, about 82,700 people remain evacuated from Fukushima’s exclusion zone. Many expect they’ll be allowed to return home eventually. Generally, older residents of Fukushima Prefecture are eager to go back to their villages while younger generations are more willing to resettle elsewhere.

In Fukushima, the experience of radiation is new—at least for anyone under 70—and the impulse is to flee. For many, the search for safer ground has now shifted to worry that no ground is safe; the Japanese will have no choice but to learn, like the Ukrainians, to abide that anxiety. Why do people stay? A lack of alternatives. A sense of duty. Deep ties to the land. Decent jobs. Because this is home.

If you lived here, would you stay?

From Michael Forster Rothbart‘s 2013 TED book, Would You Stay? Part of Forster Rothbart’s After Chernobyl project ran in 2010 on MotherJones.com: “Chernobyl’s Half Lives.“