Ararat Valley, Armenia
We are in
Armenia, the least extended of the fifteen former Soviet Socialist republics.
About thirty kilometers from Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan, and twenty from
the Turkish border, sits the antiquated Metsamor nuclear power plant. Under the
communist regime the region had had a strong industrial impulse, especially in
the transformation of raw materials and semi-finished products, which
exponentially had increased its need for energy. So, in 1969 the construction
of the Oktemberyan nuclear power plant began. The plant, located in a town also
called Metsamor, has long been a cause for concern for at least two reasons: It
was built without containment vessels, and it sits in a seismic zone. In fact,
it was closed in 1989 after a devastating earthquake, which claimed twenty-five
thousand victims, hit nearby. The epicenter was in fact only seventy-five
kilometers away. In 2011, National
Geographic even
suggested that it might be the world’s most dangerous nuclear plant.
According to
a 1995 Washington
Post article the plant was reopened because Armenia was desperate to have
energy after its neighbor, Azerbaijan, imposed an energy blockade. According to
the article, back then, “As many as one-third of Armenia’s 3.6 million people
have left, for months at a time or longer, because winters are unbearable and
factories stand idle.”
Despite the
risks, the power plant is still open, and people still live in the town created
for the plant’s workers. There seem to be few alternatives, considering that
the plant produces a significant chunk of the country’s energy. According to
the World
Nuclear Association the
power plant provided 31 percent of the total electricity for the country in
2016.
I began my
long term project in January 2017 for the centenary of the Russian Revolution,
to document its way of life. What I found was 10,000 people, 1.000 who still
work at the plant, living in a town of old Soviet buildings, caught in
suspension between doubts and fears, between poverty and survival, between life
and death.
