One day in April

The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.                                                               - Revelation 8,10-11

Our guide quoted the Bible when she was telling us about the statue of an angel with a trumpet inside the exlusion zone around Chernobyl (or Chornobyl as it is really named in Ukraine). Chornobyl is the Ukrainian name for wormwood. I have wanted to go to Chornobyl for years, but haven't gotten aound to it. But this Easter, I decided it was probably time. I booked the tour, and then asked some friends if they wanted to come along. One friend said yes.

26th of April 1986

Just after midnight. The shift at reactor 4 of the Chronobyl nuclear power plant has just started an experiment. And in order to conduct it, they have to turn off the safety systems. A few minutes later, huge explosions are heard. The 2000 ton concrete lid on the reactor is blown off and a plume of glowing gas rises almost a kilometre into the night sky. The firefighters on site are the first to the scene. Thinking it is just an ordinary fire, they rush to put it out. Unprotected. No matter how much water they spray on the fire, it doesn't die down. This is the beginning of a several months long fight with the worlds worst nuclear accident. The firefighters all perish from radiation sickness in the matter of days.
A cloud of radiactive smoke creates a cloud that blows with the wind towards the nearby town of Pripyat. In Pripyat, the citizens awake the next morning, unaware of the danger they are in. And nobody sees the need to give them any information either. Even though a radiactive cloud of dust is decending upon them. Exposing them to potentially lethal doses of radiation. Even the authorities think the accident is just a fire. It would take days before they realize that the fire is actually the white hot core of the reactor. And the "smoke" is actually radiactive dust leaking from the core. In the end, it is Swedish authorities that first note the rise in radiation levels in the atmosphere a few days later. They contact all known nuclear power plants to find who is leaking radioactive dust into the atmosphere. In the end, they learn about the accident at Chernobyl. Soviet authorities have seen no reason to warn anybody or inform anybody about the accident.
The year is at the very beginning of glasnost and the old communist state is not ready for full openess about what has happened. The leaders know the seriousness, but they refuse to acknowledge it amongst even their own people. Even when the scale of the disaster is known to the rest of the world, the national newspaper Pravda (which is Russian for "Truth"...) only notes the accident as a "minor incident" in a small note inside the paper.
Only today do we know how close to a major, almost global catastrophe we were. Secrecy, denial and outright lies kept this from the public.
During the tour to the exlusion zone around Chronobyl, we were told more of the full story. One of the things that shocked me, was to learn that they were actually close to a nuclear chain reaction in the melting core of the reactor. If this hadn't been prevented by people that more or less sacrificed themselves, Chornobyl reactor 4 would have turned into a megaton nuclear explosion that potentially could have made most of Europe inhabitable due to radioactive contamination. The cloud of radiactive dust that spread to Europe was just a minor thing compared to what could have happened if they hadn't stopped it.
How many people died to prevent the disaster, and to clean up after the accident, is unknown. Only a few dozen casualties are officially attributed to the accident. But unofficially, thousands have died. And even more thousands are still to this day being treated for the after effects of exposure to huge doses of radiation. No studies have ever been conducted on the after effects of the accident. And most of the numbers and facts have been clouded by secrecy. Even to this day.

2nd of april 2015

We met our group a short walk from the central train station of Kiev. Oksana, our guide for the day, took our passports to check that we were on the list. We needed to bring our passports for the two checkpoints inside the exclusion zone around Chornobyl. I was handed my dosimeter for the day. There are two zones. The outer, 30 km zone, and the inner, 10 km zone. No-one is allowed to live inside the 10km zone and only selected people can live inside the 30 km zone. Both are guarded to prevent terrorism and looting.
It was a two hour drive to reach the outer exclusion zone. Everybody off, passports were checked against a list. "No photo of the buildings and the millitary personell!", Oksana informed us. I took some photos of the road and the sign on the gate to the exclusion zone. And checked out the toilet facilites. Reminds me of some muddy places by the roads in Norway. The dosimeter showed a minor increase in radiation. 0.12 is normal in any city, including Kiev.

Country toilet.

A few minutes later, we were driving on the almost deserted road. It felt a bit creepy. Although it is safe now, it felt a bit weird to be here. In a place that less than 30 years ago, was more or less a nuclear wasteland. Where thousands of people lived and worked up until the day they were rushed out. Never to return.

Well almost. A few of the original inhabitants of Chernobyl, a small town with a history dating back to the 12th century, moved back when it was concidered safe. "And the only one still alive today, is an old school teacher, Rozaly. She is 87 years old." Oksana told us. A few minutes later she expelled "There she is! Everybody! Look, the only original inhabitant of Chornobyl!" I looked out the front of the car, and saw an elderly woman, walking slowly by the road.

"Shall we offer her a lift?" Oksana asked. We all agreed. The minibus stoped beside her, and Oksana invited her in. A warm smile greeted us as she looked at us while climbing aboard.

Just after picking up Rozaly, we arrived at our first stop. A small village. I took out my dosimeter. It was still ticking away at around 0.15 uS/h. Barely higher than Kiev. The town had almost been reclaimed by nature. Trees everywhere.

Chornobyl town

Rozaly got off as we entered Chornobyl. She thanked us for the ride. We got off at the name sign for our mandatory selfies in front of it.

The town was deserted. At least mostly. Some buildings were still used by workers at the nuclear plant. And we actually had dinner here at the end of our trip.

DUGA-1

This is one of the places that was only opened a few years ago to the public. Not because it was particularly radioactive, but because it used to be top secret. It was a radar built during the cold war to see if there were any missiles launched from the US. It never worked, but it got the US millitary on their toes. Trying to figure out what it was. Everything from mind control to a radar was suggested. On official maps, the site was marked as a "non-functional summercamp for kids". To sell the story, they even put up a bus-stop with a cute bear painted on the wall. It was nicknamed "the Russian woodpecker" because of the sound it made on the radio. Like a light tapping. Transmitting signals at 10 Hz.
The road there was the first time that the dosimeter jumped above its default trigger setting. It started beeping. It showed 0.31. Almost 2.5 times higher than normal. I set it to 4.0 to prevent it from going off all the time.

The antennas were gigantic to say the least. 17 000 tons of metal was needed in the construction. 135 meters high and 300 meters wide. And it was designed to withstand a nuclear blast in nearby Chornobyl. They will start to dismantle it within a few months, so we were among the last to see it.
Standing beneath the gargantuan antenna was humbling, to say the least. And my photos can only barely do it any credit.

I shot some photos of the area around the antenna, and came across a mask that were used to protect people from inhaling radioactive dust.

Some Soviet era propaganda on a wall. "The Red Army needs you!" To fight Uncle Sam I guess...

Abandoned barracks.

Then we stopped at our first "hot-spot". A place where the radiation was much higher than everywhere else. It was a tree outside a former kindergarten. I took out my dosimeter and held it up in front of me. 0.2 uS/h. I then walked closer and the dosimeter jumped to above 1.0. Then I lowered it towards the root of the tree, and the alarm of the meter went off. It was above 4 uS/h.

The town the kindergarden belonged to, had been levelled and all houses buried. It had been an experiment to try to eradicate the radiation from the houses, but it failed. So they just buried everything. Except for a few concrete buildings. One of them was this kindergarden. We walked inside. A lot of the items left from when the town was evacuated, was still there. Toys, some kids' shoes and children's books.

Back outside, my dosimeter still read high. This was definitely a contaminated area.

Pripryat

We drove past the Chornobyl power plant on our way to this town. "This road is the only road in the world where you are encouraged to break the speed limit". All our dosimeters started to scream. I took out mine. It was above 5.0. Oksana placed hers on the window on the reactor side of the car. Hers showed above 9 uS/h. "And this is inside the car! Imagine what it would be outside!" We quickly drove to the road sign at the entrance of the dream city of Pripyat.

The city was opened in 1970. The year I was born. It only lived for 16 years before it was emptied. Left to die and be reclaimed by nature. Walking around in this now deserted ghost town was somewhat sad. This was once a dream city in the Soviet. People here made twice as much money as everywhere else. And they had everything they needed. And then some. And when they were finally rushed out of town, with only two hours to gather their most important belongings, they were told they would only be gone a short while. But they never returned. They lost everything. Some, even their life. We were allowed to walk through the town, but since the buildings have started crumbling, it was illegal to enter any of them. But not illegal to walk up to them and taking photos through the windows. The town had been looted through the years. Even the radiators had been removed. Some had taken highly radioactive clothes and artifacts. So radioactive in fact, they would constitute a health hazard. Now, there is a 1 to 7 year jail sentence for anyone bringing anything from the town out of the area.

This fun fair was to open on May 1st 1986. Four days after the accident. The town was evacuated before it opened. Now it was just rusting away. As a sad monument.

Some places in Pripyat was still active compared to the rest of the area.

Old Soviet-era vending machine. You put a glass in the machine, put some money on, and chose between three drinks. Then you drank it, washed the glass and put it back in the machine. Wow. That's...well...old school.

The view from a beautiful spot down by the lake.

Chernobyl reactor 4

Our final stop was the reactor that started the whole thing. Reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl power plant. We stopped at an observation spot with a monument about 500 meters away. The sheer size of the power plant was way more than I had previously though. And the sarcofagus covering it was gigantic. Imagining that the whole thing was built by people who could only work for a few minutes at a time to avoid radiation sickness. They tried to make robots. But they normally died in hours or days. So they had to use "bio-robots", or as we call them : "Humans". How many people died building the sarcofagus, nobody knows.

But it was rotting away. And a new shell was being built a few hundred metres away. The new seal was built on rails, and when finished, it will be rolled over the old sarcofagus, and sealed airtight. The new cover is meant to last for 100 years. The old was meant to last 30 years. Which means it was supposed to last until next year. But the new one is planned to be finished in 2017. I guess the old will last two more years. The wall in front of the sarcofagus in the picture above is a new wall built to protect the workers working on the new sarcofagus, from the radiation.

Surprisingly, this side of the power plant had a lot less radiation than on the road on the other side. I measured only 2.8 uS/h when standing in front of the monument.

This inscription is very true. They did save the world. And they sacrificed their lives doing so.

In 1986 I was 16 years old. The accident sent fear through me. Like most people, I guess. What would happen with the plant? The radioactive cloud decending upon us? Now I had been a tourist to the same site. Seen and heard about what could have happened. And the sacrifices made by so many people. And the lies and cover-up. Not just by the Soviet government, but also by western governments and agencies. Trying not to scare people. The trip was enlightening. And scary at the same time.
When standing at the spot for the photo above, my mind drifted to the almost unreal thought of where I was.

When leaving the exclusion zone, we had to go through radiation checks to see that we hadn't accidently been contaminated by radioactive dust or something. We had to go through two checks. One at the 10km zone border and an even more sensitive one at 30km border. On the picture below I am being scanned. If I got a yellow light, I was clear, and could walk through. If not, I had to be decontaminated.

After leaving the area, we all got our "certificate" that we had visited the area, and the radioactive dosage we had received during our stay. 3 micro-Sievert. This is about as much as a flight attendant receives in a day. So not much to be scared of. Of course, we were careful. If we had been wandering around in the woods or rolling around in the grass, we would have seen much higher doses. But the thousands of people in the "liquidation"-group have done an outstanding job cleaning most of the area. After all, they where trying to make it habitable again. They sacrified their health and some even their life to do so.

Afterthought

Standing in front of the ruins of reactor 4 was a stark reminder of the fact that we do not control nature. Even though we would like to think so. We need to face this fact, and take the consequences of that. Not pretend otherwise. That goes for any human endeavour. When seeking even more energy for our daily needs, and an ever increasing population of this planet, we need to stop and think before we act. Not just opt for the easiest solution. Sometimes, we need to sit down and think about our options. And the consequences. Not just downplay the dangers. And pretend we can control them. There have been a few accidents involving nuclear powerplants around the world. Some small, some big. And I am not saying that shutting them all down is the solution to all our problems. Replacing nuclear with coal isn't necessarily any better neither for the planet nor us. But we definitely need to think about all the consequences of the choices we make. Not just the economics. But also the human cost. And we need to get all the facts. Not only "how many jobs will be created" by this and that option. Have we thought of all the alternatives?
It is, unfortunately, almost impossible to implement anything that will negatively affect peoples lives. We all have a "me first" thought. If something affects me negatively, I'm all against it. Because I am thinking that if it affects me, the world will go down the drain. But if one looks at history, we see that this has happened before. When the industrial revolution came about, many people thought there would be massive unemployment. Why would anybody need workers if they had machines? Now we are many times more people in the industrialized world than then. And unemployment is not any higher. Why not? Because inventive people found other jobs. Other uses of people that had been replaced by machines. This is what we call progress. And I am still amazed when friends and aquintances that are engineers only see the problems of today's energy crisis. And not see it as an opportunity to shine. I wish they did. They could have been part of finding the solution to the problem instead of being just another voice in the screaming choir of discontent.
Chernobyl is a testament to human ingenuity and endeavour. But also a testament to our biggest problem. We still think we can build unsinkable ships. That we can control nature. That we can build safe power plants. We can't. But we can make it possible for more people to survive a shipwreck. And we can protect people better when nature throws a tantrum. And we can make sure that when our powerplants do get out of hand, the damage isn't potentially global. No luxurious hightech life is worth that.
I have for many years tried to be conscious of my energy usage at home. I have reduced it significantly. And I wish that most people would. Because no matter how much energy we produce, it will some day be too little (read up on exponetional growth and you will see why). We only have one planet. One set of resources. Let's not consume it like we had a spare tucked away somewhere for a rainy day.

Ragnar
Only visiting this planet