Work on the new sarcophagus meant to contain Chernobyl’s reactor 4 is a decade behind schedule. But significant problems will remain even once it is complete. For one, it is only meant to last for 100 years. For another, no one knows what to do with the vast quantities of radioactive waste left behind.
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Old Ganya is one of the last of her kind: the people of Chernobyl. The 78-year-old wraps a white scarf around her head and tames her unruly eyebrows with a comb. Then she steps out of her wooden hut and walks across the courtyard with small steps. The syrupy tree sap trickling from the large maple tree behind her house gives her ‘the strength of the bear and the agility of the rabbit,’ she says. ‘I’m not afraid of the radiation.’

The Ukrainian farmer returned to the restricted zone only a year after the massive explosion at Chernobyl. She refused to simply forget her native village of Kupowate. ‘I prayed for Jesus to walk in front of me, so that the guards wouldn’t catch me,’ says Ganya. More than 1,000 others like Ganya also returned home illegally.

Now the ‘Zone of Alienation,’ as the restricted area around Chernobyl […]