In October 2022, just as the monsoon was ending, Kalpana pulled me and my field partner, Sandeep, into her house in the rehabilitated village of Popharan, one of the five villages we visited to understand people’s experiences of living next to India’s first commercial nuclear power plant. Popharan was relocated in 2002 to make room for Units 3 and 4 of the Tarapur Atomic Power Station (TAPS). These rehabilitated villages flood severely every monsoon. Kalpana showed us the marks that water had left all across her house; her furniture was entirely ruined. During the worst weeks of the rains, she told us, her sons had to carry her and her grandchildren out of the house to keep them from drowning. Virendra Patil, who has spent two decades advocating for the rehabilitated villagers, walked us past rows and rows of houses abandoned due to their poor construction, each crack in their walls overtaken by plants and shrubs that grow at an astonishing rate in the wet coastal climate of Maharashtra. (read more...)