Radioactive wreckage: inside Fukushima's nuclear exclusion zone – in pictures

Supermarket aisles strewn with packets. A school blackboard covered with notes for an unfinished lesson. Cars tangled with weeds in an unending traffic jam.

These are eerie pictures from inside the 20km exclusion zone around Fukushima nuclear plant, which went into meltdown after a tsunami and earthquake struck Japan in March 2011. Photographer Arkadiusz Podniesinski donned protective gear to visit the “terrifying” ghost towns of Futaba, Namie and Tomioka last month and this is what he found.

Arkadiusz Podniesinski

  • The photographer, Arkadiusz Podniesinski, stands on one of the main streets of Futaba. The writing above him says: “Nuclear energy is the energy of a bright future.”
    The photographer Arkadiusz Podniesinski stands on one of the main streets of Futuba, a Fukushima village. The writing above him says: “Nuclear energy is the energy of a bright future”.

  • A street that has been taken over by nature.Four years after the catastrophe – which drove 160,000 people from their homes – much of the region is still too dangerous to enter.
    A street in the Fukushima exclusion zone which has been taken over by nature.

  • The KFC Colonel and mannequins left standing in a supermarket.“Here time has stood still, as if the accident happened yesterday,” says Podniesinski of the most-contaminated areas.
    The KFC Colonel and manikins are left standing in a Fukushima supermarket.

  • An aerial photograph of abandoned vehicles.
    An aerial photograph of abandoned vehicles.

  • An aerial photograph of dump sites, taken by a drone. Contaminated radioactive topsoil from the fields has been bagged for removal and there have been efforts to clean deeper layers. To save space, the soil is stacked in layers.
    An aerial photograph taken by a drone of dump sites with sacks of contaminated radioactive soil. To save space they are stacked in layers, one on top of the other.

  • A restaurant table with crockery left behind by guests.The huge task of decontaminating the area, site of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, continues. Thousands of workers move from street to street through villages, spraying and scrubbing the walls and roofs of houses.
    A restaurant table with crockery left behind by guests.

  • Car bumpers overgrown with weeds.Some of the people Podniesinski spoke to doubt the official line that the area will be safe again in 30 years. “They are worried that the radioactive waste will be there for ever,” he says.
    Car bumpers overgrown with weeds.

  • A classroom on the first floor in a school. There is still a mark below the blackboard showing the level of the tsunami wave. On the blackboard are words written by former residents, schoolchildren and workers in an attempt to keep up the morale of all of the victims, including “We can do it, Fukushima!”All photographs ©Arkadiusz Podniesinski/REX Shutterstock
    One of the classrooms on the first floor in a school in Fukushima
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