Chernobyl and Pripyat

More Pictures to be added soon.

"The discovery of nuclear reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than the discovery of matches."

-Albert Einstein

On the night of the 13 of August, I took off from Chisinau solo with a mission to see the infamous site of the Vladimir Illych Lenin Nuclear Power Plant, better known as Chernobyl, and the famous ghost town of Pripyat, Ukraine. This was a trip that I set up and planned myself, so no other Projects Abroad people were going. Some of them asked me if I was scared or nervous about traveling alone, to be honest I was more than excited to be able to get out and see one of the most eerie sites I can think of. Four weeks ago during the Projects Abroad trip to Kiev I found a tour group that took visitors to visit the site of Chernobyl and Pripyat. There was too short of notice that weekend to catch a ride on a trip and since then I was unsure of the ability to be able to go at all. But this weekend being my last here in Moldova (I fly out next Saturday) I decided to delve further and see what options were still available to me. Ultimately, it included some emails back and forth with the tour group manager to discus certain logistical issues, my buying a bus ticket to Kiev, and then just being at the right place at the right time.

Friday the 13^th was our director Igor’s birthday and we all met at a large Andy’s Pizza to celebrate. We had some great pizza, got to see everybody that was in Moldova with Projects Abroad at the time, say goodbye to the young British girls and French after their two weeks spent here, and to Vicky, last of those whom welcomed me with open arms that first night of mine in Moldova at the World Cup final game. A great time was had by all, but the time came when I needed to return home to gather my things for my 7:00pm bus ride to Kiev. I was planning far too conservatively with time (thanks mom and dad) and so I had a lot of time to spare at home and at the bus station once I arrived. Better to be early than late, but there’s got to be a limit. After a couple of hours waiting, our bus boarded, my ticket was checked, border papers filled out and I knew that I was at least safely Kiev-bound.

The bus ride was typical. An hour and a half combined at the Ukrainian and Transdniestr borders, but this time I was able to see everything in the daylight. Ukraine eventually gets pretty flat, but the drive out of Moldova was one of the most beautiful drives I’ve taken and by far the most beautiful I have seen in the last five weeks. The hills surrounding meadows, pockets of small houses here and there and a great deal of spacious land in between it all made for a very enjoyable ride out. Then there was the ten hours until arriving in Kiev just after 5:00am. The meeting was to be outside the Kazinskii Hotel on Independence square at 8:45am, I had more than enough time so I meandered around the city some more. All to places I’ve already seen and been, but this being my second time in Kiev, I took in as much as I could. After some small, cheap breakfasts in McDonalds and reading next to the fountains I met with the group going to Chernobyl.

They say that group sizes are usually between twelve and fifteen people. Our group had forty-two. If I was trying to stay away from large groups by going solo, I failed. However it was an English speaking tour and I could talk with everybody. There were Irish, British, Canadian, a few other Americans whom I never met, Germans and Ukrainians. Despite the large size, it was actually a good group to be with. After everyone had paid and been checked in, we boarded our charter bus and headed up to the town of Chernobyl, about ten kilometers from the power plant and twenty kilometers inside the 30km Exclusion Zone. Two exclusion zones surround the power plant, 30km and 10km. During the accident more than 100,000 people were evacuated from the whole area and were forbidden to return, however because completely restarting their lives was impossible, some people chose illegally to return to their homes and villages. Today there are approximately three hundred people living within the 30km zone. We crossed through the border of the 30km zone and arrived at Chernobyl after a little more than an hour and a half drive. There was a very interesting video playing about the accident on the bus, but since I got little sleep on the bus from Chisinau to Kiev I was fighting to stay awake the whole way up, but once there I was as alert as could be.

We met our guide, Max, and he gave us the rundown on the people living there, what we will do that day and see, some details about the accident and a few jokes, which turned into very many jokes later in the day. I guess if you live and work around Chernobyl you have to have a certain kind of sense of humor. All of the workers in Chernobyl live elsewhere and are on one of two shifts: a fifteen day on fifteen day off shift, or a four day on four day off shift. Tourism has jumped in the last few years since the two computer games Stalker, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (more so COD 4, I don’t think people are actually aware the game Stalker exists, it sucks) were released because of the presence of Pripyat in the games and Forbes Magazine selected Chernobyl and Pripyat as one of the most exotic tourist places. Some of the tourists purchased the radiation meters and after signing a paper that says we’ll all follow the rules, we were off to finally begin seeing the area.

Our first stop was a former stadium which was turned into an open air museum. There were a few tanks and trucks sitting inside surrounded by radioactive signs(Max insisted we could walk anywhere and around them all). Max used one of the meters to show us that the treads of the tanks were still fairly radioactive since they had the most contact with the ground, and after a few pictures we went to the Chernobyl Fire Station. Outside this station is a monument dedicated to the firefighters who immediately responded to the fire at the plant. Having no knowledge of the radiation leak, they were immensely unprepared for what they were facing and all lost their lives within a few days of exposure. The monument erected outside the station was paid for completely by the friends and families of the firefighters, no state funds went into the monument. Then we drove to the plant.

On the way to the plant, we drove through the town of Kopchi, or rather what used to be the town of Kopchi. More than 1,000 people lived in this town inside the 10km zone, but after the accident bulldozers and tanks completely cleared the area of all buildings and had them buried in the ground with cement. The outlines of foundations are all that remains of this town.

Upon getting closer to the plant, we stopped several times. The first stop was on the road where you could easily see reactors five and six which were under construction when the accident happened. They were abandoned and the cranes being used to build the reactors lay in stasis, half up and appearing in mid-use. Two large cooling towers were also abandoned, one almost completed and one half way built. The plan was for twelve reactors total, but none were pursued after the accident in 1986, though the last reactor, number three, wasn’t shut off until around 2000 amid international pressure, even though experts agreed the reactor was safe and incredibly beneficial for Ukrainian energy. At this time there are still nearly 4,000 people that still work at the Chernobyl power plant. Across the street from what would have been reactors five and six stand what is known as Ukraine’s most expensive monument. A 30 million euro nuclear containment facility which was supposed to be responsible for holding the nuclear fuel that is still stored in reactors one, two and three. Unfortunately the designers (the French) made a ‘slight’ measuring mistake. The storage spaces are too small to hold the nuclear rods; kind of ironic when nearly 90% of French energy comes from nuclear power.

We rounded the corner for another photo opportunity, all four reactors in one picture. Reactors one through four can be seen across the horizon, four covered in its steel sarcophagus. Upon entering the facility, we were forbidden to take any photographs except for two places: the catfish under the bridge and the steel sarcophagus. No pictures of the perimeter, other facility buildings, guard houses or anything. I wish I could describe these catfish in full detail, and while I took many pictures of them I don’t believe any picture portrays the shear enormity of these fish. Without exaggerations I’ll say easily five feet long with heads as large as basketballs. These things were as big as deepwater tuna. Finally we arrived at our destination, about 300 meters from the wall of the steel sarcophagus (which isn’t very good and has many holes in it). The radiation levels weren’t close to dangerous, but we were standing in the same places where so many workers were exposed to beyond toxic levels of radiation just twenty four years earlier. We took our pictures, soaked up the surrealism, and boarded the bus for the most eerie place I may have ever been.

The city of Pripyat, Ukraine used to be home to more than 50,000 people. It was the center of all things great for the Chernobyl Oblast. The prices were cheap and you could buy anything imaginable (at least for the Soviet Times). The apartments buildings were newer and very well taken care of and the streets were lined with rose bushes and neatly trimmed trees and bushes. When we entered the gate and began driving down “Main Street” it seemed more like a forest. After almost a minute of driving through this unrecognizable manmade expanse, buildings finally became visible behind the trees. We pulled over at the city center. It was just as has always been described, an overgrown ghost town.

There was rubble and debris everywhere. Windows blown out, fallen ceiling panels, concrete chunks having broken away from their buildings; the place was completely falling apart. We climbed the eight stories or so of the Polisia Hotel to the top floor where we could really see the magnitude of how overgrown the city was. The insides had been looted, so there wasn’t much left in terms of hotel remedies (no room service), but after walking around all the floors by myself and finding my way into rooms here and there, the place was actually becoming a little scary. These weren’t ancient Greek or Roman ruins where people lived thousands of years ago. People lived here less than twenty years ago and many of them are still alive today.

After the hotel, we saw the library, where books were tossed all over the floor. Ironically there was a book with a page opened to Lenin’s face and name…coincidence?(I stepped on it) We then saw the gymnasium, boxing ring, pool, and finally went outside to see the fairground. The famed Ferris Wheel stood in the rear of the park and everybody immediately was drawn to it, however Max had to keep coaxing people away from one of the other rides. Apparently it was still very radioactive, as was a pile of moss on the ground on the other side of the park. Still nothing to worry about, but you wouldn’t want to lick it, or stand around it for more than an hour. After the amusement park, we started to head back to the bus to return to Chernobyl. On the way out we drove over the ‘Bridge of Death’. This is a bridge which is high enough to see the power plant and where many inhabitants of Pripyat watched the fire happen at the plant, despite many announcements that “nothing had happened”. All of the people who were on that bridge died days later from radiation poisoning. The town of Pripyat was evacuated in only a few hours after the announcement came (which was thirty-six hours after the explosion happened). They were told to bring only enough for three days before being able to return to their homes and to leave all domestic animals in the city. More than 1,500 busses took 50,000+ people out of Pripyat, this was the last time they ever saw their homes.

An experience I will never forget. After the tour, back in Kiev some of us had drinks and discussed the trip and happenings of the disaster. One of the men on the trip was a University student from London and doing his doctoral thesis on tourism at Chernobyl. He wanted to recorded and hear what we had to say. It was only five of us, but it was a good discussion to capture the events of the day and really discuss the event from different perspectives; a German, two South Africans, a Ukrainian and myself with the London student.