Chernobyl

Rich with Reactor 4, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Originally uploaded by rtw2007.

Partly out of our own interest, but also in large part due to Rich’s mission to visit the “extreme tourism” sites of the world (his trip to North Korea being a prime example), we booked a trip to the site of the world’s world nuclear disaster. Well, why wouldn’t you?

Needless to say, you can’t just pitch up and wander around the site of the Chernobyl disaster. We found a travel company who could organise the permits which we needed to enter and set off in a minibus driven by a large, moustachioed Ukrainian on the two hours ride north. Given our lack of previous experience in visiting nuclear disaster sites, we weren’t quite sure what to expect, so we were a little nervous as we approached the 30km exclusion zone. We stopped for police checks at the exclusion zone border, by the side of several nuclear danger signs, before proceeding towards the town of Chernobyl itself.

On arrival into the 10km exclusion zone, after more police checks, we were surprised at how many people were working in Chernobyl. It is by no stretch of the imagination a “normal” Ukrainian town, as the buildings are a mixture of seemingly bomb sites and run down 1980s facades, but there were perhaps 20 to 30 people on the streets, chatting, smoking or driving old Ladas. We had expected that the only people here would be scientists, but it was immediately clear that there is more going on than we had realised.

We met our guide, Dennis, who gave us a brief introduction to the area. Actually, Dennis was the gruff and silent type, so his introduction actually just involved him standing there in camouflage jacket and black shades; cigarette hanging out of one side of his mouth; waving a long pointy stick at a map, but failing to tell us basic things like how, when and why the reactor exploded.

First stop on our tour was a memorial to the fire-fighters who died trying to put out the fire which resulted from the nuclear explosion. No-one seemed able to confirm to us whether these fire fighters understood what had happened and the risks involved, or whether they believed that they were just putting out a regular fire. Either way, by all accounts they died pretty horrific deaths from significant exposure to radioactivity. Already we were realising that this wasn’t going to be the most uplifting day trip we would make.

From there we headed off towards Kopachi, a village so badly hit by nuclear fallout after the “accident” that the authorities entirely flattened it and buried all of the buildings under the ground. A triangular yellow nuclear marker now stands on the site of each of the houses which were destroyed. All very eerie.

We then drove off to meet Julia, a representative of the International Chernobyl Organisation, who works in a viewing platform overlooking Reactor 4, the reactor in which the enormous nuclear explosion took place in April 1986. Quite an odd office location, we thought, but she seemed oblivious. Julia explained a bit about what work has been done in the last 21 years to stabilise the reactor and the problems which are still being faced. It seems that the sarcophagus which now stands over Reactor 4 was erected in just 206 days stating about three weeks after the explosion. It is balanced precariously on the walls of the reactor itself, and by all accounts is in a bad state, with gaps in the concrete shell and real concerns about it shifting, thus churning up the radioactive dust which still lies within. Although they have recently erected some yellow scaffolding to prop the whole thing up, progress in the last 21 years appears to have been otherwise painfully slow. Plans for a replacement sarcophagus still seem a distant prospect – the technical, financial and (we suspect most significantly) political barriers seems to be too much to deal with. It seems than Ukraine, Russia and Belarus (which lies only 8km up the road and whose citizens have been worst affected by the nuclear fallout) can’t agree on very much. So let’s hope that there isn’t an earthquake or hurricane near Chernobyl any time soon, or Ukraine and much of the rest of Europe may well regret not sorting out that concrete shell…..

We paused to take photos of Rich in front of Reactor 4. The scary thing is that Reactors 3 and 4 are joined together and used the same chimney, but even after Reactor 4 exploded in the world’s worst nuclear disaster, they carried on using Reactor 3 (until 2000). We decided that we might have been a little more cautious and stopped using it immediately. But no, why not carry on for another fourteen years?

From there we drove to Pripyat, which is the closest town to the reactor (closer than the much better known Chernobyl). The experiment to bury Kopachi under the ground had failed, as the whole place stayed radioactive, so they didn’t bother to bury Pripyat. As a result, it still stands as an eerie, deserted town. It was abandoned three days after the explosion (the Soviet authorities didn’t tell people for three days about what had happened, which is a source of much anger in the Ukraine, where they believe that many of the deaths and illnesses which have followed could have been avoided had people been evacuated properly). The swimming pool, fun fair, hotel, restaurant and apartment buildings are all still there, but now surrounded by 21 years of vegetation growing out of the roads, pavements and buildings. The whole place was looted in the weeks after the explosion, too, so there are broken windows aplenty. Again, we still don’t know whether the looters understood the risks when they came back to steal things and presumably ended up with a big dose of radiation.

On the way out of Pripyat, we saw some houses which are clearly still lived in – some of the elderly people who were resettled to Kyiv after the accident never quite got used to it and came back against government advice. It must be such a strange life for these so-called “self settlers”, living in a largely abandoned town, next to looted houses, in a area which looks to all intents and purposes like it has been bombed and never rebuilt. Not to mention the ongoing health effects, which are more severe when you are growing mushrooms and picking berries from the land, as the self settlers do, because those foods absorb high levels of radioactivity.

We had been told to wear long sleeves and covered shoes due to the radioactivity in the area. The local construction workers didn’t seem to care, though, and wore short sleeves T-shirts. Dennis carried around a Geiger counter and was fond of testing the ground from time to time, though I suspected that this was mainly for effect as although the readings were higher than Kyiv, they were still fairly low for most of the time. They only rose at sites where there is still lots of radioactive dust, such as the “Red Forest”, which as its name would suggest is a forest which turned entirely red after the accident and had to be chopped down before being buried. When driving through there, the Geiger counter went crazy and off the scale. Our moustachioed driver’s love of speed suddenly came in very useful, as with his foot to the floor we were out of there in moments.

We ate lunch (which was guaranteed to have come from outside the area) in suitably kitsch Soviet surroundings and then headed out of the exclusion zone, via more police checks and a slightly theatrical fiasco during which we were frog-marched into a Soviet checkpoint building to take our turns standing in tall grey radioactivity testing machines. Thankfully, we all passed with flying colours and were left thinking that the guards were rather playing up to the crowds by making us go through the rigmarole. So, no need to worry, mum. We are not glowing green, so it must be OK….

Then it was back to Kyiv for much discussion over beers and Georgian fare about how odd the trip had been; why people would bother to risk exposure in order to loot some vodka; what the lives of the self-settlers must be like; and how on earth it has taken 21 years to do little more than build some yellow scaffolding. An interesting, if very odd, day trip. And a fitting end to Rich’s twice extended “long weekend” (aka 15 day trip) in Ukraine.