Stephan Jarvis for Metropolis
Every day 5,000 workers commute into the nuclear exclusion zone as part of decontamination and decommissioning project that will likely span their lifetimes.
In 2018, I spent several months reporting this cover story for the Tokyo-based magazine Metropolis, which considers the labor issues behind the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. I travelled inside the nuclear exclusion zone and toured the crippled nuclear plant. The story centers on an engineer, Masahiro Yamamoto, who has spent over 20 years working at the plant despite the displacement of his family and evacuation of his hometown, Futaba.
The nuclear disaster is often wrongly framed as historical. As an editor for Metropolis, I helped produce a special print edition of our magazine that explored the ongoing disaster through the stories of those most impacted: decontamination workers and the tens of thousands of survivors who are fighting for continued government support, their health and a return to their land.
October 2018, Metropolis
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