Chernobyl ... and Pripyat, the city that died!

April 26, 1986 a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Power Station exploded. This accident had the ability to cause widespread chaos and death around Europe as huge clouds of Radioactive dust drifted across the European landscape. 

 

There are officially 59 deaths attributed to this incident however out of 500,000 liquidators (those drafted into going into this radioactive zone and cleaning it up) over two thirds have apparently passed away all before the age of 50. They have since sealed off this radioactive wasteland into two highly restricted military zones. The 30km zone is surrounded by fencing and has secure checkpoints maned by the Ukraine Military. Scientists cleared by the government are given access to this area to study the longstanding effects this has on the wildlife.

The 10km zone is more heavily guarded and all 4 members of our party were checked and double checked against paperwork as passports before being allowed access along with a Ukranian Government representative into the area.

The surprising thing is the reactor itself is quite disappointing. Its a grey rusting steel structure and you are able to get quite close to it with the level of radiation being around 4000 roentgens. This level is quite low as we later found out as this is THE most clean area of the whole 10km zone. 

 

Staring up at it you wonder what all the fuss is about. See its quite odd, if you were looking up the top of a hill to find a raging army running down towards you I bet your heart rate would rise quite quickly. This particular enemy is unseen and because of this it's really quite hard to grasp the danger being greater than my first example. The locals call this accident The Battle of Chernobyl .... and I understand why, their military fought and died to protect their country from the fallout. It was in now way any less brave than any other wars fought throughout time. 

We also managed to sneak a picture of the new construction underway to replace the current coffin which is slowly falling apart. Apparently this will be hermetically sealed and a more controlled environment however we were advised not to take pics of this as we were unauthorised to do this ... Naughty Mr V ... you can imagine my panic as he was taking these!

So we saw the reactor and then moved onto the bit that really interested me ... the city of Pripyat. Haunting images of a once busy city now abandoned and preserved in time looks like a scene from a post-apocolyptic horror movie. It was surreal and quite creepy walking around a city that 20 years ago had been teaming with over 12,000 people. Imagine those 12,000 people all being evacuated within a 3 hours period being told they would be back within a week only never to return. Now a ghost city it seems to have lost all sense of life. Nature seems to be taking hold of the city with trees covering old pathways and roads almost hidden. 

Its very hard to explain just how eerie this experience was so I will attempt to show you with pictures.

 

Finally we drove quite quickly  through the red forrest. Apparently not long after the accident the entire forrest turned from a lush green to bright red. The forrest was bleeding and has continued to do so for the next 20 years. We didn't stop or even slow down here with the Geiger Counter beeping wildly and flashing 9.9 as we drove through. 

Oh and just in case anyone has concerns over whether I now glow in the dark I can safely say after 4 individual checks by government officials and radiation counting machines  ... Im clean.