Finding Slavutych
In 2023 I traveled to Chernobyl with Ivo Mijnssen and our producer Kostia Karnoza. We had planned the trip since the war began. For me it was personal. After years working in Fukushima, going there felt necessary. On the way out, it became clear the story wasn’t where I thought it would be.
THE BACKSTORY
Beyond the Reactors
ISSUE 18
Since working in Fukushima, I had been curious to come to Chernobyl and look for parallels between two nuclear landscapes. The disaster here has been extensively documented. I wasn’t looking to repeat it, but to understand what remained and what happens when things change.
In 2022, Russian forces briefly occupied the Chernobyl nuclear power plant at the start of the full-scale invasion. Since then, nuclear sites remain part of the war. A part of a drone struck the reactor shell in 2025. Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest plant, is still occupied.
Slavutych was built in 1986 to house workers evacuated from Pripyat. Around 25,000 people moved here. Before the war, a train ran daily through Belarus into the exclusion zone.
A woman walks past a Soviet-style block in Slavutych, built after the disaster to replace Pripyat for its workers. I waited for her, with her colourful bags, to step into the soft light between the buildings.
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