The Eerie Repopulation of the Fukushima Exclusion Zone

But in fact, the government has been aggressively decontaminating and rehabilitating Fukushima prefecture, and life is slowly returning to the exclusion zone.Giles Price explores this eerie transformation in his new book, Restricted Residence, documenting construction workers, office drones, and even a taxi driver who the government pays to roam the half-deserted streets, since customers are still few. It also cut the monthly $1,000 stipends evacuees received from the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the nuclear plant.Price learned about Fukushima’s rehabilitation while researching sites for the Olympics, a subject he’s shot since 2008, when construction began near his house for the London games. Price carried a Geiger counter at all times, and he noticed when he strayed too far, “the radiation started jumping all over the place.” After surveying the area in October 2018, Greenpeace concluded that contamination will remain well above 1 millisievert per year for several decades.Some residents he spoke with weren’t concerned about the radiation; others were but felt they didn’t have anyplace else to go.