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.
Photographer Stefano Morelli visited the town in January to document its way of life. What he 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.” Here’s what he saw.
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