Foreword: Why something so dangerous?

Photography has brought me many interesting and often fleeting experiences over the years. With landscape photography it usually means getting away from the hustle of daily life and into quiet, remote and peaceful areas where I can relax, take a breath and appreciate the natural world. Another interest of mine is going off the beaten track and visiting places that people don't normally go, over the years this pursuit has garnered the moniker of Urbex (Urban Exploration) photography. While it is true that the Chornobyl exclusion zone has become an "extreme" attraction to a certain crowd of people over recent years, it is still not a place you would want to take the kids on holiday. I can still remember sitting in front of the TV after dinner back in 1986 in Norwich, England, listening to the news reports of a massive explosion at a power plant in some far away land called Ukraine. They told us that there was a radioactive cloud floating over the UK and settling on the Welsh farmland, possibly contaminating the crops and livestock. In the weeks following the accident, with my naivety as a young boy, I would go looking to the sky in the school playground thinking, "Well I don't see anything up there"

Over the years since, nuclear power has always piqued my interest, from atomic weapons and eerie-looking gas masks to the invisible dangers of radioactive particles. For me it is the most frightening human discovery and something that requires the utmost respect from all of mankind, both as an efficient energy source and as a weapon of mass destruction. Heading into the 21st century, it had become apparent to me that Chornobyl might actually be a place to visit. With information on Chornobyl growing at such a speed online and various video games being released making it possible to see the area virtually, it rekindled my interest and got me researching the possibility of visiting what most people still think of as some radioactive dead zone. And since I have not only visited Chornobyl and the surrounding areas once, but now twice. It is at this point I would like to show some of the images I took of the area in 2008 and during my return visit in 2009, offer some new facts and dispel some myths I learned during my time in such a fascinating place. So settle in, grab yourself a coffee and join me on this journey.

The Accident

In the early hours of April 26, 1986, the night shift in reactor number 4 of the V.I. Lenin Memorial Chornobyl Nuclear Power Station was performing tests that were postponed from the previous day shift. They were testing whether the plant could operate if all electrical power was lost on its systems and backup generators were brought online in its place. A poorly designed RBMK-1000 (Reactor Bolshoi Moschnosti Kanalynyi) reactor, in combination with inadequate operator training and knowledge, led to the reactor's overheating. A sudden and excessive increase in steam caused the 1,000 ton lid to blow clean off the reactor into the air, destroying the roof of the building and spewing tons of nuclear waste including fuel and radioactive graphite into the atmosphere and surrounding areas. Atomic agencies set this disaster at Level 7 -- a total nuclear meltdown -- one hundred times stronger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many radioactive elements were released into the environment and atmosphere during the explosion including Cesium, Plutonium, Strontium and Iodine. It has been calculated that given plutonium's half life of 24,100 years that it will be a very long time before the area is fit for general population again. It is also worth noting that due to wind patterns at the time of the accident and other environmental factors, not all areas of the 30km zone are polluted. Some areas have been proven safe and even have people living there today, as I will talk about later.

From the photo above you can clearly see the concrete sarcophagus that was hastily erected in the weeks and months following the accident. Experts on hand knew they had to cover the remaining nuclear waste left in the reactor to lower the radiation levels in the immediate vicinity. Radiation today is measured in sieverts. On any normal day the background level that exists anywhere on Earth is roughly two to six micro-sieverts (µSv) per hour. In the areas immediately surrounding the sarcophagus, levels are approximately six milli-sieverts (mSv) per hour -- some 6,000 times above normal background levels everywhere else on earth. Once standing behind or inside the Chornobyl visitors center (the pale building on the right of the image), levels drop down considerably lower. The yellow and grey structure you can see attached to the right of the sarcophagus was installed in 2006/7 to strengthen the outer wall which was showing signs of collapsing.

These are the unfinished cooling towers for reactors 5 and 6. They were still under construction at the time of the accident and have been left unfinished to this very day. There is a lot of debris scattered around this area -- from what exactly, it is hard to tell. Radiation levels vary greatly here, and at one point the dosimeter gave a loud warning, enough to make us jump. Interestingly, the famous 1986 explosion is not the only incident to occur at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP). In 1982, reactor number 1 experienced a partial core meltdown, but due to Soviet secrecy the accident was kept quiet for many years and the compromised reactor was only out of service for a few months before it was repaired and put back into operation. No resulting fatalities are known. In 1991, five years after the 1986 explosion, a fire broke out in the turbine hall of reactor 2. It was at this point they decided to close down reactor 2 for good. Reactor 1 was shutdown in 1996 and the remaining reactor 3 was switched off by then-Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma on December 15, 2000. A new containment structure for the dilapidated reactor 4 and its sarcophagus was commissioned in 2007 and is now in the design phase. Construction is expected to cost roughly $1.6 billion dollars. Once the 190-meter wide and 200-meter long steel arched-shaped structure is completed and wheeled into place, engineers can start working out how to break down what is left of reactor 4 safely. Note: The new sarcophagus was finished in July 2019, you can see the finished structure in this infographic on wikipedia.

Pripyat

Pripyat, as the sign above says, was a relatively new city founded in 1970 to house the workers of the Chornobyl plant. At the time of its evacuation following the 1986 explosion it was a young city, where the average age of its populous was only twenty-six years old. Surprisingly, in the morning after the accident, most people went about their business unaware of the magnitude of the disaster that was unfolding less then 3km away from their homes. Radiation levels throughout Pripyat were extremely dangerous and most people were going about their daily lives completely oblivious to this fact. Some people who had noticed something was afoot had gone to the bridge (pictured above) just outside the city on the road to the power plant to watch what was happening from there. They all received fatal doses of radiation and thus the bridge has been nicknamed "The Bridge of Death." Today, it has been completely cleaned of any radiation contamination and is safe to cross or walk on, and serves as the main road into Pripyat.

It was only after Forsmark Nuclear power plant in Sweden measured elevated levels at their facility and concluded it must be coming from somewhere in Russia, did the Soviet authorities admit they had a problem. The following warning message was reported on local radio: "An accident has occurred at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. One of the atomic reactors has been damaged. Aid will be given to those affected and a committee of government inquiry has been set up." By the evening of April 26, 1986, a committee had been formed (including the then head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Hans Blix, who would later go on to lead the search for Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons in Iraq) and had arrived at the sight of the accident. By this time at least two people directly linked to the explosion were dead and approximately fifty people had been hospitalized, some of them in Pripyat hospital. More than twenty-four hours after the explosion, the committee ordered the evacuation of Pripyat.

At 14:00 hours on April 27, 1986, the order for the evacuation of the city of Pripyat begun. It took just three hours to evacuate a little under fifty-thousand people. Residents were told the evacuation was temporary, lasting for only a few days, and were instructed to take only necessary belongings such as personal documents and enough clothing for less than a week. To this day, over twenty years later, no one has ever returned to live in the city. It is this which makes Pripyat an attraction for certain people like me to visit. However, over time and mainly at the turn of this century, most of the city has been looted and vandalized. Little is left in the buildings and apartments now, but occasionally you will run into artifacts -- broken vinyl records, sheet of newspapers, a school book or child's toy -- all left in haste during of the final hours of the city's habitation.

Above are typical Pripyat apartment buildings. Most are in bad shape. With water running through much of them in the spring, its not uncommon to find trees now growing through floors and up on the roofs. The interiors have been looted of anything valuable, including the heating system on the walls, which have all been stolen for scrap metal. Also a point to note is that most of the trees in Pripyat now were not there when the accident occurred in 1986, they have mostly all grown since then. Now that the looters have stolen everything of value, mother nature is slowly taking back the rest.

Above is Pripyat town square. The picture on the left is taken from the top of Hotel Polissia, one of two hotels in Pripyat. On the right of the picture you can see the Palace of Culture, Pripyat's cultural center. In the distance is a shopping complex, and towering above are 16-story apartment blocks. Shown on the right is the hardware store Raduga, once located at the base of an apartment block in the town center on Lenin Avenue. After the accident and evacuation, the town of Slavutych was constructed 50km northeast of Pripyat to house all displaced residents and workers, some who still to this day work at the plant. These workers travel in to the Chornobyl area on a special train which does not stop at Bellarussian border control and arrives directly at the CNPP.

On the southwest side of the city is Pripyat Police Station. Behind it are many abandoned vehicles which, like all other remnants here, have been robbed of anything valuable. These vehicles were used by a collection of military and volunteers known as liquidators. These liquidators were charged with clearing the zone of radiation contamination by washing and scrubbing all surfaces. Certain villages with high radiation levels such as Kopachi, less than 4km south of the reactor, were completely buried. All that remains is a monument and mounds of land with radioactive signs on poles warning passersby, it is also worth noting that the name 'Kopachi' means 'gravedigger' in Ukrainian.

Pripyat was completely washed down using tanks and other machinery, effectively clearing the whole city of radioactive elements, which are now being absorbed into the soil at a rate of about 1cm per year. It is estimated that between 600,000 and 1,000,000 liquidators were involved in the Exclusion Zone cleaning process. Varying reports estimate that about 25,000 of them are now dead and another 70,000 are ill or suffering the effects of the radiation doses they received while on the job.

Above was the main center for sports and recreation in Pripyat at the time. These facilities were still used up until 1998 (some 12 years after the accident) by plant workers, scientists and other people who were still working in the zone. Now, like everything else, it has been completely looted and trashed.

There were many schools and kindergartens in Pripyat, and I have visited three of them over my two trips. One of the schools libraries as it stands today is three or four feet deep in books on the floor, which is quite a sight. All windows are broken and the room looks like something from a war zone. This made me feel a little emotional as it seems such a tragic waste that this place will never teach or hear the quiet whispers of young children ever again. All the corridors of the schools were equally unsettling with remnants of an ex-soviet regime scattered everywhere -- from posters of what to do in the event of a possible cold war U.S. attack to children's gas masks littering the floors. This area had a big effect on me. The first school to start collapsing was school #1 in which a third floor collapsed to the ground.

Pripyat Amusement Park

Above is Pripyat Stadium, once home to a running track, football pitch and many other sports amenities. In the days after the accident, the stadium was used as a base to land helicopters employed to contain reactor fires and limit further radiation leaks at the CNPP. The open grounds also served as a landing hub for transporting the sick and wounded from the plant to the hospital. Needless to say that due to the presence of contaminated helicopters in the center of the stadium, radiation levels are high, but we could safely walk around the perimeter and onto the abandoned amusement park.

Without a doubt the most interesting part of visiting Pripyat is the amusement park, located behind the Palace of Culture in the center of town. The park had four attractions: bumper cars, swing boats, a carousel and a Ferris wheel. Radiation levels around the park vary greatly. For the most part, liquidators did an effective job of washing most of the radiation into the soil, so the concreted areas are relatively safe. Through all of my initial research, I thought the bumper car ring was one of the most contaminated areas. However, our guide pointed out that in fact the bumper cars are relatively clean. The areas around the edges -- where leaves and moss have built up -- is where most of the radiation still resides near the surface. Our guide also pointed out a patch of moss about ten feet away from the ride that has extremely high levels for the area. Dosimeter readings over the spot (roughly one square meter in size) show 25 µSv/h, one of the most radioactive in the city. Most of this can be attributed to helicopter landings in the park during rescue and cleanup after the accident.

Interestingly, the amusement park was rumored to open on May 1, 1986, just five days after the nuclear explosion took place. It has long been believed that these rides were never actually used. Some theories suggest the amusement park rides were opened early during the 36 hours before emergency evacuations to keep Pripyat residents distracted from the accident. No one seems to remember for sure.

Yanov Station

On the way out of Pripyat, roughly half a kilometer west of the 'Bridge of Death' is Yanov railway station. Access to this area had to be granted by special permission of the ChornobylInterinform, reasons for which are still unclear, also, the main station building is now a storage area, but for what our guide wouldn't say. Fortunately, we were lucky enough to be given permission to explore the yard. Yanov station was the vital passenger pickup point for those arriving by train into Pripyat in the hours after the CNPP explosion. Our guide explained to us that people who arrived here during this time were moved directly from the trains onto buses and sent right back out of the area for safety.

Yanov is an interesting area to explore on foot, the railway lines and what's left of the platform are still accessible. There are many train cars still sitting around on and off the tracks, and most in a very bad way. Some are extremely rusty and even too dangerous to enter because of contamination. Also, along the sides of the tracks are lots of large (and strange) metal debris similar to that found near the unfinished cooling towers of CNPP. Besides all the obvious hazards were several grass snakes slithering around our feet. Yanov was an exciting addition to my second trip into the zone, and it gave some great photos.

The City of Chornobyl

The city of Chornobyl (Chernobyl being the old Soviet way of spelling the Ukrainian name) is situated about 14km south of the CNPP. The plant is actually named after the city, which has been settled since the 1100's, and prior to the accident occupied around 14,000 people. Today the city is home to around 400 who work within the zone: scientists, military, guards and zone staff and administration personnel (chornobylinterinform). The latter are those who take visitors on guided tours and keep a watchful eye on everything that goes on in the zone.

Like Pripyat, the whole city was washed down after the accident, on top of this, top layers of soil were removed and all water piping systems were moved above ground. Despite these efforts, there are still areas of contamination in Chornobyl, but they are well documented and known. Workers here respect these risks and are only allowed to work two weeks on and two weeks off to minimize extended exposure. There are also some who have moved back full-time since the accident -- they live in their houses with signs outside reading, "Owner of This House Lives Here." to deter looting.

The monument above stands in Chornobyl city in memory of all the firefighters and liquidators who lost their lives in the aftermath of the explosion. Many are still alive but suffering with illnesses and disabilities related to their heavy radiation exposure both on the night of the accident and in the weeks and months during clean up. This fitting tribute was actually built by the current firefighters of Chornobyl city and it stands in front of their station, which you can just make out on the left of this picture.

In the evening's during our stay in the zone we would walk from the Interinform hotel and across part of the town to the local store where we could buy snacks, drinks, cigarettes and other items. Our guide stayed with us the whole time while out in the city as the military presence in Chornobyl is quite extensive. Anyone unrecognized or found wandering on their own is immediately approached, questioned and better have the relevant documents on their person and a good reason for being there. The newer building in the last photo is the hotel in Chornobyl in which I stayed in on both my trips.

Rossokha

As I have been asked many times about visiting the Chornobyl truck graveyard in Rossokha So I will explain. There are some great photos online of this area 20km southwest of Chornobyl city where most of the vehicles and helicopters from the accident, evacuation and cleanup were hastily laid to rest, unfortunately we were a few weeks too late to visit this site. Our guide explained that as these vehicles where all used in cleanup operations that radiation levels there were extremely high even some 23 years on, and because of the dangerous mass looting of the vehicles for parts the zone administration stopped visits to this area in April 2008, in fact since then most of the cars, tanks, fire trucks and helicopter remains that were there have since been moved to other sites or buried. To visit there now there is pretty much nothing left to see and radiation levels on what is left there and in the soil can reach 300 milli-sieverts per hour, roughly one third of a lethal dose after prolonged exposure. Given these high levels it still amazes me that a lot of the vehicle engines and helicopter parts were robbed over time, smuggled out of the zone and sold for scrap in Kyiv and surrounding areas.

Final Thoughts

It is difficult to put into words how I felt being in the Exclusion Zone. It obviously had a profound effect on me to lure me back for a second visit, and the thought of a third will always sit in the back of my mind. Maybe a few more years down the road when the new reactor containment shelter is completed it would be worth considering, but for now I think I've absorbed enough gamma rays. I have tried to elaborate on some of my experiences in this article, which readers will hopefully understand.

Previously, when I would tell others about my plans to visit the Choernobyl zone, many would stand back in horror and think I'm suicidal for wanting to visit such an obviously dangerous place. What people do not realize is, yes, while there is radiation in the area the actual health risks are low. Firstly, your guide knows his way around and keeps you away from the heavily contaminated areas. Secondly, when dealing with radiation exposure, it's all about how much you absorb over time and not "if you come in contact with it your dead" as most people seem to believe. Most of Chornobyl city and Pripyat has been cleaned extremely well by the liquidators and all the radiation now lies in the soil. Therefore, keeping to paved roads and pathways limits exposure greatly. It has been said that spending a day or two in the zone is no worse than being in the thin upper atmosphere of a 35,000-foot altitude long-haul flight or spending an entire week sunning on a beach. Of course, there is no real way for me to prove this, but having been to the zone now twice I feel safe in not having done myself any harm. For added precaution, contamination and our total exposure was measured after leaving the Chornobyl zone by two different radiation detection machines. We always came up all clear.

During the two trips, I took over 700 photos and three hours of video totaling some 30 gigabytes of data. Since, I have been trying to edit the material down to a more manageable level. There are countless other photographs I could have included on this site, easily making it over 30 pages longer, but there are other Chornobyl enthusiasts on the internet and I will leave some coverage to them. I also managed to enlist a different friend to visit the zone with me on each occasion. I never thought I would find someone crazy enough to join me in No Man's Land, but I did... twice. Many thanks to Paul Colley and Philip Morris for their support and assistance throughout this project, The zone is a fascinating place and I think I speak for all three of us when I say it changed us forever.

All excitement and adventure aside, there is an extremely serious side to this tragedy and my article. There are many conflicting reports on the after effects of the Chornobyl accident. My heart goes out to the children affected by the disaster, especially when I reflect on all the young children that should still be living in the area, enjoying the amusement park and attending the schools. Charities have been established to help children who are suffering from illness related to radiation poisoning. 

It is also important to me to dispel some of the untruths and misconceptions surrounding the Chornobyl aftermath. Firstly, Elena Filatova and her Kiddofspeed.com phenomenon was partly a hoax. While it is true she visited the zone like other people, she never rode through on a motorcycle. My personal guide confirmed that motorcycles are strictly forbidden by zone administration, and another guide I spoke with remembers her visit and thought it odd she was carrying a motorcycle helmet around and used it for photos. While Elena's story is a romantic -- and at times, mystical -- portrayal of life in the zone today, she was no more than a guided tourist like myself and others. Also, sightings of three legged chickens and other deformed animals around Chornobyl are all myth and have never been confirmed. There have been some scientific reports of minor abnormalities in some species of small birds, but nothing as grotesque as some of the suggestions being made. Also, the area is no nuclear dead zone or wasteland. Flowers, trees, plants and many species of animals such as horses, boars and deer are all thriving here and make it a truly beautiful place to visit.

It appears that mother nature is reclaiming the land back after the catastrophic human errors that will contaminate Chornobyl for centuries to come. Ironically, the only species on Earth unable to inhabit the zone and live freely is humans. Being we're the ones responsible for the disaster, I think it is fitting for us to be prohibited here, punished in a sense, to learn valuable lessons about atomic energy and what happens when it is not shown the respect it deserves. This article is dedicated to my stepfather Ian Gilmore, who passed away in-between my two trips on September 9th 2008 from a Cancer related illness. Passing through the UK that April on my way to Choernobyl, I got to see him what would be for the last time. Naturally, he thought I was nuts visiting Chornobyl, but supported me wholly nonetheless.

If you've made it this far then thanks for reading. Please feel free to comment below or share via social media. If you appreciate my work and would like to make a donation or maybe by me a coffee then easiest way to do this is to use my crypto payment address - grahamgilmore.eth

Graham Gilmore - June 30th 2009