Chernobyl

Back in 1986, Europe experienced an event so big the word Chernobyl would become synonymous with the word nuclear, disaster, and exclusion zone. The recent TV series of 2019 has once again thrown this sequence of events back into the limelight so it’s not just those of the eighties generation who remember a time in history where Europe could have looked a very different place.

The sign welcoming you to the city of Chernobyl

Fast forward to 2017 and I was surprised to find out mere mortals such as I could now visit the exclusion zone and after reading up on the dangers and risks, this example of dark tourism shot to my number one ambition. Daily numbers are regulated and can only be done via a small number of approved tour groups from Kiev so with my diligence done, I decided on a two-day tour which included the power plant. Most just go for the one day and spend a few hours in the ghost town of Pripyat, but felt this would leave me wanting more.

Meeting at the Kiev railway station, two Dutch, two German, one Dane and I set off with our guide Helen on the hundred mile trip to the entrance of the exclusion zone which equates to the size of Luxembourg. On arrival, while the guide checked in with security, a series of signs detailed the statistics, the do’s and don’ts, and a map showing the different areas of the exclusion zone with their associated radiation risk. Before long the gates were opened and into the zone we drove.

For many, the first stop will be the village of Kopachi one of the 94 settlements to of been evacuated back in 1986 and one of the very few not to be completely bulldozed over, I can only surmise due to its location on the outer limits of the zone. Being August, the trees and vegetation hid the full size of the village but this was our first experience of what thirty-one years of dereliction looked like. The rusting car, the rotten floorboards of the village hall, a children’s toys left lying by a door.

Next, we reached the small city of Chernobyl whose name is given to the zone and looking very much intact with nicely cut green verges but a total lack of people. A small shop still operates here while a hotel allows an overnight stay and provides meals for visiting tourists. Back in 2017, some 150 tourists were allowed into the zone per day. Stray dogs wander around, several generations on from the pets which were let free when the local population was evacuated at short notice.

The group was equipped with two dosimeters, one of which I hung onto. The herculean effort by the liquidators back in the 1980's saw swathes of trees chopped down, the topsoil removed and re-buried and dust pressure washed off the buildings in an effort to remove the radioactive contamination. But as trees start to regrow with their roots disturbing the soil, hot spots of contamination still reoccur. The guides know exactly where to avoid, where new hots spots have appeared. This is one place where you will not venture off the path into unfamiliar territory. Have a read of https://www.chernobylwel.com/safety if you are considering going and having reservations.

The next stop may well be the once top-secret Cold War Duga radar which dominates the skyline and once included a fully self-enclosed settlement with highly restricted access. I will cover this off in a separate Blog but really is the epitome of the cold war desire to get the upper hand with its location here due to its own massive power needs.

The antenna of the once-secret Duga radar dominates the horizon when viewed from Pripyat

Next, we reached the Atomic city of Pripyat founded in 1970 and built to be a showcase of Soviet design and living. Located just some 3 km’s from the reactor complex, some 43,000 people received the evacuation message to leave the city at 11 am on the 27th of April 1986. By 2 pm, over a thousand buses started moving the families to Kiev with Pripyat a ghost town by 5 pm. They were only allowed to take one suitcase and had the impression they would be returning in a few days, the authorities were still in denial. Climbing to the roof of one of the tower blocks you started to appreciate the size of this undertaking, while looking into the flats brought home the human element. These may have all been looted in the intervening years but the scattering of furniture, books, and papers proves these were ordinary people living ordinary lives.

Video of the homes of the people of Pripyat with the evacuation message as a soundtrack

The next few hours would be spent walking through various buildings, the Azure swimming pool void of water, the number 3 Middle school off Sportivnaya Street, one of five to serve the community. The iconic sight of thousands of gas masks dumped on the floor. Why, no one is sure, possibly looter removing the slivers of silver from the canisters? The science experiments sit on the desks while a paper on the wall is dated the 23rd of April 1986. It’s amazing how the windows have shattered and the paint peeled from the walls.

The fairground is probably the most iconic image of Pripyat, which never officially opened, as was to coincide with a national holiday in May 1986 while the Lenin Square is dominated by the Palace of Culture with its murals, gymnasium, small swimming pool, cinema, and even a boxing ring. An underground shooting range still has its targets with bullet holes from the last session.

It’s said the supermarket was the first of its kind in the Soviet Union and attracted curious visitors from outside the area much to the resident’s annoyance.

One of the most chilling reminders is when you visit one of the fifteen kindergartens with the scattering of toys across the floor, the baby cots and children’s shoes sitting on the window ledge. So many would be affected by the Chernobyl necklace, the post-surgery scar left while removing thyroid cancer, a consequence of the radioactive fallout which would also affect so many in Belarus as the fallout cloud headed northwards into Europe.

The café Pripyat had only been opened a few days with the shards of multi-coloured glass which once made up the impressive window designs laying on the floor.

They said the reactor design was so safe they would happily build one on Red Square, it’s this naivety which leads to the city of Pripyat being built so close to the reactors to house the workers and their families. The latest reactor, reactor number four would be the one which would suffer the explosion, the long term plan was to build twelve reactors making it the biggest nuclear complex in the world.

On the 26th April 1986 at 01:23:40 the two hundred ton lid of Reactor four was blown off, a planned safety test had gone catastrophically wrong with four hundred times more radioactive material released into the atmosphere compared to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

The so-called "golden" corridor which linked the control rooms of reactors 1-4.

The control room of reactor three which is how the control room of reactor four would have looked further down the golden corridor.

The first responders were exposed to lethal levels of radiation with 28 men dying of acute radiation sickness by the end of July.

Walking the corridors of the hospital, it seemed unbelievable that they had no treatments for radiation sickness or isolation units, the authorities really believed a radiation type accident could never occur.

The firefighter's clothing was left in the basement which is now sealed, however, a small piece has been left by the hospital entrance where you can watch the dosimeter jump from 0.9 uSv/h to over 300, a timely reminder.

A piece of the firefighters clothing

By the end of 1989, the total number of people registered as in being involved with the activities to alleviate the consequences of the accident stands at 600,000.

One fact I wasn’t aware of was that this was probably one of the main factors which hastened the end of the Soviet Union having cost the regime an estimated $235 billion in damages. But the real cost will never be known, the official death toll stands at 54, the projected number is 4,000 due to disaster-related illnesses. It is said the Ukrainian government pays benefits to 35,000 people whose spouses have died from Chernobyl caused illnesses.

Back to the present day, scientists have been amazed by the recovery of mother-nature and how animals have moved back into the area and the bird life is thriving without any wholesale side effects. The last reactor stopped energy production in 2000 but decommission is a long process. Multiple sensors now check the environment and the new UK designed 1.5 billion Euro sarcophagus is now in place with a hundred-year shelf life and has lowered the radiation levels leaking from the blown reactor.

In 2017 some five thousand workers were still entering the zone to undertake maintenance and decommission activities, many of which lived at the new worker's city at Slavutych built between 1986 and 1988. This is where we would spend the night and gave an idea of how Pripyat would have looked in its heyday.

I guess some will have mixed feelings on visiting this place, I have to say there was so much I wasn’t aware of and was an education in that sense. But it also gave me an insight into the Soviet Union and the way of life in the eighties which for so long was a mystery to us in the west as we were to them I guess.

Each sign is the name of a village which no longer exists within the exclusion zone

If you decide to look for yourself I really recommend https://www.chernobylwel.com who did a first-class job in all aspects. Browse their website for lots of information.

Standing in front of the only statue of Lenin still standing in Ukraine (Chernobyl city)