Chernobyl

This blog post is an addition to a four-day trip to Kyiv, Ukraine. On the last full day in Kyiv, I took a day-trip to Chernobyl. I wanted to visit the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, get as close to the power plant as possible, and tour the ghost city of Pripyat. Doing so had long been on my to-do list. In fact, the main reason I traveled to Kyiv was to visit Chernobyl. That being said, Kyiv was very interesting on its own. Because of all the detail that I felt was necessary to truly understand Chernobyl, a remarkable event and place to visit, I decided to split the trip into two separate blog posts. Click here to read the blog post about Kyiv itself.

WHAT HAPPENED AT CHERNOBYL?

In the early morning on April 26, 1986, the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. On the day prior, Reactor No. 4 was scheduled to be turned off for maintenance. In connection with this, the power plant’s directors wanted to conduct a safety test. The goal was to determine whether the reactor’s spinning turbine could provide energy to power systems for the control rods in case of an external power failure. The theory was that this would work faster than the time required for activating backup generators.

Up until then, the reactor had been running with a design flaw. There was a long time gap between a possible power failure and the activation of backup generators. External power was necessary to operate the control rods, used to stop the nuclear chain reaction inside the reactor. If the control rods are not inserted in time, the reactor can overheat. The long time gap in case of a power failure was seen as unacceptable. An alternative solution for powering the control rod system was sought out with the safety test at Reactor 4.

The day shift workers were preparing the experiment. Then another regional power plant unexpectedly went offline. Chernobyl needed Reactor 4 to stay active to cover electrical needs in the Kyiv region.

At 11 PM on April 25, the Kyiv grid manager gave an ill-prepared night shift at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant the green light for the shutdown of Reactor 4. What the grid manager didn’t know, was that Chernobyl was planning an experiment in connection with the maintenance shutdown of the reactor. The experiment wasn’t considered a safety risk. Chernobyl’s managers never requested the necessary approvals from superiors in the Soviet government.

However, to conduct the experiment, many safety features had to be disabled or manually overridden. A complex task for a night shift that wasn’t even planned to have taken part in the experiment to begin with. When the experiment began at 1:23:04 AM on April 26, the reactor was in a highly unstable condition. It didn’t even fulfill all the parameters required for the test.

At 1:23:40 AM, the point of no return was reached when an emergency shutdown was manually activated. This caused an unexpected spike in the temperature in the reactor. This set off a chain reaction that culminated in a series of explosions. It blew the roof off the reactor building and damaged the reactor itself, exposing its core. The subsequent fire sent large quantities of radioactive material into the skies across much of Europe.

A picture I found online of Reactor 4 after the accident.

The first response on the night of the accident was to fight the fire inside the reactor with water from firetrucks. Fire brigades from regional fire stations were called in to help the crews stationed at the power plant and in Pripyat. It wasn’t until larger groups of fire fighters from Kyiv arrived, roughly two hours later, that the fires around the complex were brought under control.

All the firefighters had no equipment or uniforms to protect themselves. All despite them probably being aware that they were exposed to radiation to some extent. A handful of the firefighters who went onto the roof of the building that housed Reactor 4 were never seen again. They received lethal doses of radiation within minutes.

CLEANING UP THE AFTERMATH OF THE ACCIDENT

The fire inside the reactor itself kept burning for months. The following morning, helicopters were used to try to extinguish the reactor fire with water dropped from the air. Walking onto the damaged roof above the reactor was too dangerous. The water simply evaporated due to the extreme heat. It had no impact on the fire inside the reactor.

A picture also found on the internet, with a plume of smoke rising from the core of Reactor 4.

The idea was then to drop different chemical substances into the reactor. This work had to be done manually. The helicopters flew with open doors right through the radioactive smoke coming from the burning reactor. Most of those who worked the helicopter missions died within a couple of months. The chemicals had a limited effect, and after months of using various chemical mixes, the fire was eventually put out.

Then came the next problem, cleaning up after the radioactive fallout. So-called liquidators, people tasked with cleaning the Chernobyl region after the accident and the evacuation of inhabitants, would usually attempt to wash the radioactive dust off of the buildings with water. The goal was to wash the dust off and let it sink into the soil. Yes, this would pollute the soil. However, it would keep the radioactive dust from being exposed to the air we breathe.

The liquidators would also have to clean the interior of buildings. Entering buildings, particularly those around the Power Plant itself, the liquidators didn’t always know what they were getting into. Their Geiger counters almost always read off the scale. The trick was monitoring how quickly the needle on the dial reached the maximum. Based on that, they decided to remain outside or continued further inside.

Once indoors, they scanned each item inside with a dosimeter. Anything and everything found to be contaminated was literally thrown out through the front windows. There was no time for politeness. The accident had to be cleaned up as much as possible, as quickly as possible.

When the contaminated objects had been piled up outside, trucks would pick them up. Everything was taken to designated burial sites, where they would simply be buried underground. This was sometimes done responsibly by adding a layer of concrete, to seal off the radiation. Sometimes objects were hastily buried under soil, meaning that the radioactive materials still emitted radiation. Regardless, a sign with a radioactive symbol would be placed next to it. This prevents anyone from unknowingly digging up the contaminated items.

EVACUATING THE LOCAL POPULATION

Despite not being immediately fatal for those living in the city, levels of radiation were still dangerously high for long-term exposure after the accident. The city was evacuated about a day-and-a-half after the accident. There were several reasons for this late evacuation. First, the Soviet government took a while to decide upon evacuation. No emergency plan was in place before the accident occurred. Another reason was that the local Soviet officials wanted to communicate in a way that sounded prepared. If they rushed to evacuate everyone in a chaotic manner as soon as possible, panic would have been widespread. By waiting until a proper evacuation could be organized, it gave the appearance that the evacuation was all part of a prepared plan. It would seem as if everything was under the government’s control.

In the afternoon of the 27th, the majority of Pripyat’s population was evacuated in a long convoy of buses. Each apartment block had its own bus for the local residents. Public announcements told the locals that the evacuation would only be temporary. Many left behind a lot of their possessions, personal effects, clothing, toys and so on. The residents of Pripyat and the surrounding villages didn’t know that most of them would never return again.

Initially, residents inside a 10km (~6 mile) radius from the power plant were evacuated. This included Pripyat, and areas with the worst of the contamination. It was then shortly afterwards decided to evacuate inhabitants of a much larger “Buffer Zone”, extending out to 30km radius. Both of these zones are referred to as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Per definition this includes both the smaller zone centered around the plant and the greater, 30km radius zone.

The Soviet Union didn’t really have a lot of data to support how they came up with these areas for evacuation. In later years, the evacuation zone was adapted according the actual radioactive impact of the disaster. The Soviets evacuated some towns in the nearby region several years after the accident took place.

MONDAY, August 27th

Fast forward about 32 years, and I was preparing to visit Chernobyl. I got up early and packed a backpack with all I needed for a day inside the remains of a disaster zone. I took the metro down to Kyiv’s central train station. From there I walked to a meeting point close by, for a group tour I had booked to Chernobyl.

After everyone had showed up on time, we set off northbound towards the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The drive from central Kyiv to the southern checkpoint of the exclusion zone takes about an hour-and-a-half to two hours, depending on the traffic. On the way, the guide explained some background information about the construction of the Chernobyl power plant. He also mentioned more about the disaster, and obviously covered plenty of the safety rules and do’s and don’ts. A video documentary about the disaster was shown on the minibus’ TV screen afterwards.

We stopped at Checkpoint Дитятки (Dytyatky) on the southern border of the 30km radius Buffer Zone of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

At the checkpoint, our passports were carefully checked. There are some visitors who enter the Chernobyl Zone illegally, referred to as “stalkers”. They enter the zone without approval, usually with the interest of exploring off-limits areas. Obviously, they usually don’t go through the official checkpoints.

The police was very thorough. They made sure that every passenger in the minibus was part of the official, guided tour’s passenger manifest. Everything was in order. I received a Geiger counter, which I had rented from the tour company for the day. I did this out of personal interest. It was not a matter of safety. We obviously had a guide, and weren’t going to visit the most contaminated areas anyway.

ZALISSYA

We drove deeper into the Zone, making our first stop at the village of Zalissya. This abandoned settlement, in the 30km zone, had a few buildings of interest. The first one was a former convenience store/minimarket for the village. It became a good indicator of the condition of the buildings throughout the Chernobyl area.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, the security around Chernobyl deteriorated, particularly outside of the nuclear power plant itself. This motivated looters to comb the villages and towns in the Zone for valuable materials that could be sold. They even ripped cables and wires out of the ceiling and walls, to extract the copper.

Nowadays, security is much more strict, with police and guards at checkpoints throughout the zone, along every road.

The combination of decontamination by liquidators and looting has left a devastating mark. The small store’s windows had all been smashed in. All that remained inside was the skeleton of one of the shop’s counters and several window frames.

We also visited a former theatre building in Zalissya.

The floors were literally collapsing, and there were holes all over the stage, even in the walls behind it.

There were a couple of communist slogans written above the theatre’s stage and on stone tablets beside it.

Before leaving the village we also stopped by the former house of a teacher, pictured above. That is the assumed identity of its former owner anyway, as there are several schoolbooks, in various languages, found inside. It must be mentioned that visitors, particularly the illegal stalkers, sometimes rearrange objects for more dramatic photos.

Outside of the teacher’s house is a parked Lada car. Looters stripped it of everything down to its plastic shell.

During the evacuation, inhabitants were specifically told to leave their cars behind, as public buses picked them up. In several places throughout the Chernobyl Zone, you might see abandoned cars.

Before departing Zalissya, we walked past a memorial for locals lost during WWII. The war was fought on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR between 1941 and 1944. The area surrounding Chernobyl was inhabited long before the power plant came to be in the 1970s. In fact, the Chernobyl Power Plant is named after the nearby town of Chernobyl itself. This town is not to be confused with Pripyat, the city built to house the workers.

DUGA-1 RADAR

After Zalissya, we drove further into the zone to make a stop at a former top-secret military facility. Partially hidden deep inside thick forest, southwest of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, is the Duga Radar. The Soviet Union built the Duga Radar stations as a method for detecting American nuclear rocket launches earlier than their satellites could.

The radars were so-called over-the-horizon radars. They consisted of two pairs of receivers and transmitters placed in the western and eastern Soviet Union. The radar station in Chernobyl was a receiver, its transmitter was placed around 50-60 km (~35-40 miles) away. One of the Duga Radars was built close to Chernobyl. The nuclear power plant provided a stable, large source of electrical power in a relatively remote location.

The transmitter would send a signal out on a frequency tuned to bounce off the ionosphere, and reflect off the ground. This would send the signal over the horizon, hence the name for the type of radar. The signal would keep bouncing off the ionosphere and the ground. In this way, it traveled all around the world, until being picked up at the receiving station.

The radio signal itself was actually quite primitive. The signal was often tuned at a frequency similar to a regular AM radio. In the late 1970s, radio listeners around the world would hear static, tapping sounds on random radio channels. After the interference was determined to originate from the Soviet Union, the interference received the nickname “the Russian Woodpecker”.

The radar signals would detect the rocket fuel used in intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launches. Then it sends a simple positive or negative signal back to the receivers in the Soviet Union. This gave Moscow a 32-minute warning before American intercontinental ballistic missiles would land in the USSR. The idea wasn’t to shoot the missiles down, rather to launch a similarly large number of nuclear missiles back. Essentially this ensured mutual destruction. The radar signals had a 30% success rate. However, it was considered highly likely that the US would strike with many missiles at once. In that case, several ICBMs would return positive signals.

The radar system was built in the late 1970s. It was running in beta mode until it was intended to become fully operational in the summer of 1986. Then the Chernobyl Accident and the subsequent evacuation put an end to those plans.

The Duga Radar itself was 150 meters tall and 700 meters long. The receiver has a lot of geometry behind its design. Receiver coils are all lined up in a system to maximize the effect.

Behind the radar was a long building housing the processing computers, and the control rooms. The signals picked up by the Duga Radar were decoded in those rooms.

If the computers gave the engineers a positive signal, then they would immediately forward this to their superiors in Moscow. The superiors had command over the Soviet ICBMs.

Much of the computer equipment used for processing the Duga’s signals are strewn out on a lawn behind the building. Perhaps it was left so by liquidators cleaning the facility.

Also found inside the building behind the radar is a training area used to teach new engineers how the installation worked. There’s also the server rooms that used to house the processing computers.

The training area has a mock-up of the real control room. It’s complete with original switches, buttons and posters about various NATO missiles used for training scenarios.

The receiver near Chernobyl is the only installation of the Soviet Duga Radar system which remains. Its transmitter in eastern Ukraine, as well as the second pair of Duga receivers and transmitters in eastern Russia, have all been blown up or dismantled.

It would have been too risky to simply blow apart the installation with dynamite. This would kick up a lot of radioactive dust from the surrounding soil. Taking apart the massive radar facility by hand would have put workers at risk of exposure to radioactive sickness. Everyone would be working for long hours inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The system had been replaced with more modern satellites and the technology was outdated by the time the USSR collapsed. It was considered unnecessary to dissemble it manually.

KOPACHI

Our next stop became the village of Kopachi, closer to the Chernobyl Power Plant. This village is within the much more contaminated 10km radius evacuation zone. To even get to Kopachi, we drove through yet another checkpoint on the border between the 30km and 10km zones. The main reason for another checkpoint inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone itself is that people are allowed to live within the 30km zone. However, the 10km evacuation zone still remains off-limits for residential purposes.

Kopachi (Копачі) is one of the most contaminated areas open for tourism within the zone today. The Soviets completely botched the clean-up process here. Kopachi consisted almost entirely of old, wooden structures. This meant that it was already too late to simply wash the radioactive dust off. It had already infiltrated the wood. Government officials decided to demolish the village. Holes were dug in front of each structure. A large, modified bulldozer would then simply push the buildings into these holes, breaking them in the process.

This might sound strange, but it was a necessary step to limit the radiation. You couldn’t just leave the buildings demolished above ground.

However, when the wooden buildings broke apart as part of the process, the radioactive dust was released back into the air. As the buildings were buried, the radioactive dust settled above ground. Additionally, many of the burial sites were hastily covered with just soil. It doesn’t insulate against radiation like cement, used in other places.

We also made a stop at the kindergarten in the village of Kopachi. Built out of concrete, it is one of the few structures in Kopachi still standing. Just outside the kindergarten is a hotspot for radioactivity. The guide, myself and one other visitor had Geiger counters. Placing these just above the soil, there was a noticeable change in radioactivity.

The beeping sound that you hear on the video doesn’t necessarily mean that the amount of radioactivity is dangerous. It simply indicates that the amount of radiation is above a threshold that you can change in the device’s settings. I’ll get back to the topic of radiation doses at the end of this blog post.

Having tested the hotspot outside the building, we continued inside the kindergarten.

Outside of Pripyat, the main city, it’s almost always possible to enter buildings. Buildings aren’t necessarily more contaminated than the outdoors, it’s mostly a question of avoiding being trapped under a collapsing structure. The inside of the kindergarten was very eerie.

Granted, it’s not 100% the same as it was left during the evacuation. It has been subject to looting, and some of the toys have probably been moved about for better photos.

Books and toys are strewn about, and the furniture is broken. The beds in the nursery had been gutted. All of them just have the metal frame left, with some dolls sitting on them.

The paint was peeling off the ceiling, which had gaping holes in it. Documents were all over the place, posters had been ripped off the walls.

It was truly a mess, but a testament as well to the rushed nature of the evacuation and cleanup of the Chernobyl Exclusion Buffer Zone. It was difficult to imagine that this had at one point been a functional, tidy kindergarten.

The dolls and the drawings were a surreal indication of the joy that children once had here, before everything was uprooted in the spring of 1986.

Approaching THE CHERNOBYL POWER PLANT

After having seen the Kopachi kindergarten, we continued further into the 10km Chernobyl Evacuation Zone. We drove towards the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant itself. We stopped at a point roughly midway between the Power Plant itself, and the planned reactors 5 and 6. They are in a separate location at a remote corner of the power plant’s area. Both of these newer reactors were still undergoing construction at the time of the accident.

Reactor 5 was 90% finished, it was scheduled to become operative later in 1986. Some of the parts which were already finished included canteen no. 19. It was designed specifically for workers who were going to be employed at Reactor 5. This canteen has been preserved and it’s still open today. Now it serves those working with the decontamination and decommissioning of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

We made our lunch stop there. Obviously, all the ingredients come from outside of the Chernobyl area. In order to enter the canteen, full of fresh food, one has to go through a contamination scanner.

It scans your entire body, from top to toe. Radioactive materials aren’t just the flashy, neon-green solids you see on cartoon movies. Most of it is invisible. As a day-trip visitor, the risk that you get contaminated is very low. We are not allowed to access any of the nuclear reactors or walk around the buildings of the power plant itself. Visitors usually don’t go to the worst radioactive hotspots.

For the workers cleaning the power plant, it’s a different story. Their job is to clean up the radioactivity, so obviously they sometimes have to pass areas known as being contaminated. If for instance your pants get contaminated and you continue wearing them, then you’ll be exposed to an increased level of radioactivity, even at home.

The entire tour group passed the scanner without issues. The lunch menu consisted of borscht soup with meatloaf, bread, and some fruit juice. It was pretty good considering it’s a worker’s canteen inside a nuclear disaster zone, not a Michelin-star gourmet restaurant. Unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of the food!

As we left the canteen, our tour guide picked up two loaves of sliced bread. He didn’t immediately say why, but told us the reason would become obvious later. After our lunch, we drove towards the very Chernobyl power plant itself. First we drove to some of the administration offices, situated behind the older Reactors 1 & 2.

There’s a bronze dove on the side of the buildings. It’s meant to show that nuclear technology can serve a peaceful purpose.

In the courtyard in front of the administration buildings was a small memorial to those who died during the initial stage of combatting the disaster. The names of the firefighters are written on individual plaques on a wall.

Next to it is a statue of Prometheus. It was moved here from Pripyat. It’s quite an expensive statue. Local officials feared that it would be damaged by looters if the statue remained in Pripyat.

Just beyond this courtyard, beside the administration offices, is a bridge. It leads to an island in the middle of the artificial lake that was created for the power plant’s cooling systems.

After all the other reactors at the plant were finally shut down in the 1990s, the lake was blocked off from the natural rivers it was connected to. This move was simply done without regard for the thousands of fish who were inside. They are trapped, but have kept breeding, so there’s still a significant population. They feed on whatever still grows in the lake and bread, like the two loaves which our tour guide had brought from the canteen.

AS CLOSE TO THE CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR POWER PLANT as possible

Our next stop became the front of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, closest to the encapsulated Reactors 3 & 4. There’s a statue at a roundabout literally right in front of the New Safe Confinement shell. We stopped there for pictures. The pictures outside of the power plant’s perimeter fence was as close as we could get to the reactors of the Chernobyl Power Plant.

After the reactor fire had been extinguished over the summer of 1986, it became necessary to encapsulate the reactor building. The radioactive materials scattered inside of it were still partially exposed to the outside air. A temporary solution was built as an extension of the walls which were still intact. Reactor 4 (left on picture below) was initially covered in a similar way as what’s currently visible on Reactor 3 (right).

I took this picture earlier in the day, at a distance where it was possible to see both reactors.

The temporary solution covered the entire reactor building in thin sheets of lead and concrete. It was only meant to last until 2006. Several leaks had been discovered by then. This initial construction had long expired when the New Safe Confinement, a massive steel and lead sarcophagus, was completed in 2016. The new, solid composite shell was built in one piece and slid on top of the reactor with rails. The original reactor with the original protective layer remains underneath.

Thanks to the New Safe Confinement, I was surprised how low the level of radiation was just outside of the complex. This was where some of the densest nuclear materials landed or passed through. I measured a very modest 1.00 microsievert per hour.

The sievert is a unit measuring the dose of radiation being received. When the unit is denoted as microsieverts per hour, it indicates the rate at which radiation is being received. Based on this, you can calculate how long you would have to remain in the area, to receive your acceptable “annual dose”. The annual dose is a guideline set by governments worldwide.

There’s background radiation everywhere. You’re receiving radiation right now, reading this. Eating a banana means a very tiny dose of radiation as well. The annual dose that is considered acceptable for an average American is 1 millisievert (1000 microsieverts). In Switzerland, the average person receives a radiation dose of up to 4 mSv (millisievert) per year.

PRIPYAT

We departed the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and drove a few kilometres west to the city of Pripyat. It was built completely from scratch to house the workers of the nuclear complex and their families. The construction of the city of Pripyat (Припять) began in 1970 along with the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Everyone from the nuclear physicists to the cleaners of the canteens were provided housing in Pripyat. There were several kindergartens, multiple elementary schools and one high school. Most of Pripyat’s families were young with small children.

Pripyat was one of the Soviet Union’s “Atomic Cities”, a special designation given to cities housing nuclear plant workers. These cities had some of the highest qualities of living in the Soviet Union. Residents enjoyed new housing units, excellent schools and state-of-the-art hospitals. Pripyat had facilities in a quality that citizens elsewhere in the USSR could only dream of. It was literally the place to be in the Soviet Union, a socialist worker’s paradise. It shared this status with a handful of other cities throughout the federation.

Pripyat was home to about 55,000 people at the time of the accident. It was being expanded to house over 80,000 people. Four new reactors were planned to be activated at the Chernobyl Power Plant. Today the city is a ghost town, entirely uninhabited.

Pripyat was spared from an absolute disaster. Thick clouds of very dense nuclear materials, released from the exploded Reactor 4, passed south and north of the city, settling in forests surrounding Pripyat. One of these is known as the Red Forest. The radiation colored all the leaves bright red, before they fell off. Had these clouds of radiation descended upon Pripyat itself, the fatal dose for a human would have been received within minutes.

Many of the citizens were woken up by the explosions. Some even went to a bridge on the outskirts of town. From there, they saw a bright laser-like column of light shoot up from the power plant. Many described it as a “beautiful sight”. The glowing light was caused by the ionization of the air, by the radioactive particles that escaped the burning nuclear reactor.

On the way into Pripyat, we first passed the city’s hospital.

Some of the medical equipment was still lying on the ground below, presumably from the clean-up process.

Oddly, the hospital in Pripyat did not have a department capable of treating radiation sickness. Those who showed severe symptoms were sent to a hospital in Moscow for treatment.

Also on the outskirts of Pripyat was one of its most popular cafés, named Cafe Pripyat. It was on a traffic island by itself, now it is surrounded by trees. The store front was completely wrecked by the clean up crews, and probably by subsequent looting. The café’s characteristic mosaic windows remained though.

Just behind the café was a path leading to a lagoon of the artificial lake created for the Chernobyl Plant. Sail boats used it, and people swam in it. It wasn’t contaminated before the accident, so that was safe. One of the former lakeside restaurants has been uprooted and placed on a different side of the small city-side lagoon. It is halfway submerged in the water, visible in the background.

We continued walking towards downtown Pripyat. This might sound dangerous, simply walking around in a city that was abandoned because history’s worst nuclear disaster occurred next-door. It was perfectly safe to do so, for a limited time. Over 30 years have gone by, which means most of the radioactive materials have decayed. The clean-up efforts and lately the New Safe Confinement have largely ensured that the situation doesn’t get worse.

As we came closer to the city centre, we passed a couple of cultural buildings with incredible murals on them. The murals consist of small pieces of colored stone attached together.

Eventually we passed the former city municipal office. It became the HQ for managers of the clean-up teams after the disaster. A logo outside saying “Nuclear Complex” kept liquidators from entering and throwing all the documents and equipment outside.

The staff slept at a hotel just across the street. While the rest of the city had been evacuated, a significant number of people remained for several weeks, sometimes months. They were exposed to dangerously high levels of radiations.

We continued to the “Energetic” entertainment complex, a large theatre. Our guide had a flip book of old, original black & white photos of Pripyat from before the accident.

The Energetic used to be where hundreds, perhaps thousands of locals came to watch theatrical performances and music concerts. Now the building is just a soul-less skeleton, with the neon logo remaining.

Just beside the building is a small memorial for those workers and first responders who died immediately after the explosion. Also included are those who passed away in the next few months in the radiation sickness ward of Hospital No. 6 in Moscow.

Our guide was willing to let us inside the Energetic building. This isn’t always possible due to safety concerns over the often dilapidated buildings.

Just beyond the entrance, we found several posters scattered in a room along with debris. Inside the theatre itself, the skeleton of the building, as well as the railings used to mount lamps and move curtains, were all visible.

The seating area inside the Energetic theatre had partially collapsed.

The stage held a few pieces of the ceiling which had fallen down. There were two posters on the stage, one celebrating the 60-year anniversary of the USSR. The other depicts Mikhail Gorbachev, but without his characteristic birth mark.

At the time of the accident, preparations were being made to celebrate the upcoming May 1st, otherwise known as Worker’s Day.

As we exited the Energetic, we made our way to the Pripyat Amusement Park, which had never opened. Construction had finished, and the test-runs had been carried out. The amusement park was slated to open on May 4th 1986. It was planned as a post-Worker’s Day gift from the government to the children of Pripyat. Then Reactor 4 exploded at the Chernobyl Power Plant on April 26th, and the Amusement Park never opened.

There were rusty bumper cars, and a merry-go-round which had been stripped of everything except steel and wood.

Perhaps the most famous landmark of Pripyat is the amusement park’s ferris wheel, featured in several video games and movies. It was mostly intact, with the ticket controller’s booth having had the windows smashed in.

Underneath one of the carts on the ferris wheel was a well-known hotspot. The never-used Pripyat Amusement Park became a popular staging area for military helicopters. The helicopters were used to combat the fire in the reactor core. Because they flew right through the smoke, the helicopters likely caught some radioactive particles.

Our guide’s theory was that the helicopters’ spinning rotors threw some radioactive dust into the air upon landing. Some of it must have landed inside the ferris wheel cart. The hotspot itself is on the seat of the cart. Our guide only measured the radiation with his Geiger counter from underneath the cart. It was safer, and we had no way of climbing onto the cart anyway.

It’s pretty clear that these hotspots can be very tiny. We all stood a couple of meters away from the guide. I measured 0.75 microsieverts per hour, which was pretty average for just walking around the Chernobyl Zone all day. The guide measured 116+ microsieverts per hour on the bottom surface of the cart. The Geiger counter’s measuring port is on one side of the device. As our guide flipped the unit on the opposite side, readings dropped to around 75. Just a few centimeters made a large change. If the 116 microsieverts/hour was in the air everywhere around us, it would only take 8.5 hours to receive what’s considered an acceptable yearly dose for people living in the US. 

Our last stop in Pripyat was hard to spot at first. We walked through what had become forest, where parking lots and pedestrian paths used to be.

We were actually still within the city of Pripyat. Eventually, we arrived at the city’s former sports stadium.

The former soccer field is now completely covered in trees and bushes. The concrete athletics track around the grass was like a walkway between the trees. Most of the wooden benches in the stadium’s seating area remained intact.

The Pripyat Stadium was another building we were able to enter. Just behind the seats were the walkways that spectators used to get in and out. The paint was peeling off the ceiling and the walls. Bricks from the pillars holding the ceiling were left all over the floor.

The windows were long gone, and there was trash everywhere. Some of the water pipes and ventilation systems remained, although these pipes had broken off in several places. It was everything you’d expect to see from a building that had been looted and abandoned for more than 30 years. Remember, by Soviet standards, this was a really nice facility when it was built.

We passed the turnstiles which used to be one of the official entrances to the stadium complex. Then our minibus picked us up again. It was time to make our way back towards Kyiv.

On the way, we stopped in the actual town of Chernobyl. It had existed long before the power plant was even an idea. On the outskirts of town, near the still-functional fire station, is an unofficial monument. Its unofficial status comes from the fact that it was funded by private investors. The local government didn’t provide any financial support.

It is called “A Monument To Those Who Saved The World”. The surviving first responders and their relatives paid for it. The monument stands in memory of their colleagues who lost their lives. On the left are the liquidators, who went into buildings not knowing the level of radiation inside. One of them is grabbing his head, indicating a severe headache. That is one of the symptoms of radiation sickness. On the right is a group of firefighters, who rushed to the scene of the burning Reactor 4, without any radiation protective gear.

Some of the liquidators shoveled radioactive graphite debris off the roof of the neighboring Reactor 3, wearing bodysuits covered in sheets of lead. Other liquidators went on a suicide mission into the reactor building after the accident, to shut off the machines and close off valves. Some even dug a tunnel under the power plant. Engineers realized that the hot contents of the burning reactor might burn through the bottom of the building and reach ground water. That would have triggered an even greater explosion underneath the entire power plant. Such an explosion would destroy the remaining three reactors, which had been reactivated after the accident. The tunnel was filled with concrete, so that the ground water was kept safe. 

We continued driving through the town of Chernobyl, where people are slowly moving back. It’s within the outer, less-contaminated 30km Chernobyl Buffer Zone.

About 3,000 inhabitants now live in the town of Chernobyl. We made one last stop at the original town sign, with nuclear symbols still on it.

We then continued towards the Checkpoint Дитятки. There we all had to pass through a contamination scanner like the one at the lunch canteen. Only after that were we allowed to exit the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The guide collected the Geiger counters, and noted down the total dose of radiation received throughout the day. I had received 0,003 millisieverts. About three times more than I would have gotten from background radiation in Kyiv. By spending ~8 hours in Chernobyl, and the remaining 16 hours in Kyiv, I received approximately 0,005 mSv of radiation that entire day. So even if I visited Chernobyl every single day of the year, I still wouldn’t receive more radiation than what’s considered normal for someone living in Switzerland (4 mSv).

We left the Chernobyl area and drove back to Kyiv, and said our goodbyes among the tour group members. I went on the metro to the central Maydan Square, where I found a restaurant serving Tartar food, from Crimea.

Crimea has been annexed by Russia, but previously belonged to Ukraine, who doesn’t recognize this move. Tartars used to live in Crimea but originated from Central Asia. So this meant Central Asian food, including the favorite dish of every Uzbek person – plov! It’s a fried, oily mix of strips of meat, rice and vegetables. The bread that they served along with it was also much alike what I had been served while traveling through Uzbekistan a few years ago.

After dinner I walked back to my apartment. I needed to get to bed, as I had an early flight the next morning.