Glowing in the dark (Chernobyl ~ Ukraine)

September 2019

A chance to visit Chernobyl was one of the main reasons for visiting this part of the world. The only way to visit Chernobyl is with a tour group as access us strictly controlled, though this doesn't stop fans of the computer game "Stalker" from sneaking in and trying to get to Pripyat and the Power plant. About three times a week people get caught and, depending on the mood of the police for paper work either told "naughty naughty" and put on a bus out or arrested. Will I play Stalker when I get back? Yup.

Entrance is strictly controlled i.e. passports are required, closed top shoes, long pants and long shirt sleeves. Don't meet these criteria and you don't get in.

Once through the check point you are issued with dosimeters and if desired a geiger counter.

During the day you are taken to a handful of sites the first of which is the remains of a small village. It, and all of the sites in the exclusion zone, are slowly being reclaimed by nature.

The second site was a bit of a surprise to us as it was part of the cold war early warning system. The Duga Radar aka the Russian Woodpecker - so called because of the dok-dok-dok-dok noise it made on all radio receiving stations around the world when it was operating.

This thing is massive and was designed and built around the principal of a separate sending station that sent out low frequency radio waves that would bounce off the ionosphere and the earth's surface and in essence act like a sonar/radar. i.e. if a missile was launched on America then this would be picked up by the receiveing station.

Prior to building this montrosity a small trial version was built, tested and found to work. BUT this station had one fatal flaw and that was the sending station sent signals out over the north pole (shortest route between Russia and USA). Unfortunately the ionosphere over the North Pole is highly unstable.

About a month before the station was due to go live and fail spectacularly which in turn would result in the execution of all those responsible for it Chernobyl happened. Chernobyl fried all of the custom built computers which has lead to one conspiracy theory that Chernobyl was deliberately set off so as to cover the arses of those responsible for the Duga station.

The next stop was the actual power plant. What I didn't realize was that the plant had four reactor's, and that reactor number four was the one that went bang. Reactors 1, 2 and 3 stayed operational for about a decade and a bit. In the picture below reactor 4 is the one on the left big metal cover, reactors 3, 2 and 1 are the sticky up bits in the same building!

Lunch break was in the local canteen in the power plant and must admit the food was better than expected. Prior to getting to the canteen you needed to pass through a radiation check point.

Post lunch went round to the rear of the plant. Must admit standing 300m from the site of the reactor explosion is an odd experience. Assured the background radioactivity level was surprisingly low.

The last major site was the township of Prypiat. Prypiat was designed as a show case of the future. Salaries were four times higher than elsewhere in Russia, it had an actual supermarket, hospital, nice modern cafes, a fun fair, a sports stadium and hotel for foreign delegation visitors. You had to be invited to live there. The famous ferris wheel and the stadium were never actually used as they were due to be opened on the May Day holiday and 5 days before the explosion happened.

The most radioactive and dangerous place on earth is in the reactor under the protective shell, the second most is the basement of the hospital in Pripyiat where the radioactive clothes of the first responders were dumped. The radiation level isn't overly high but if you were to go in unprotected you would stir up the dust and inhale radioactive particles which would basically kill you. Also very weird standing about 10m from the Hospital.

On leaving the inner and outer exclusion zones you are checked each time for radioactivity. If you fail it's just a case of washing your shoes clean. So far there hasn't been a case where washing your shoes didn't work.

On the way back had a look at some of the roof clearing Robots...

and a memorial built by the local firefighters to honour the technicians at the plant.  Of the people who first responded the bulk of them were the technician's but the Soviet State attitude was Soviet Technology doesn't  fail people do. Hence the technicians were deemed to be to blame. The local firefighters decided that this wasn't right.

All in all a fascinating 12 hour long tour that gave a lot of context to the disaster and corrected the errors shown in the HBO mini series (not that there were many).

A much needed coffee was required at the end of the day.