It’s been ages since I posted my reading list. I have read: Xenophobe’s Guide to Americans, by Stephanie Faul; Anna Karenina, by Lev Tolstoy (translation in English); Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden; The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho; The Constant Gardener, by John le Carre; and Lost and Found, by Jayne Ann Krentz. I’ve also listened to the podiobooks Amerindian 2192, by J. Scott Garibay; and Sonic Fiction, edited by Jeff Kafer.
I finally visited the Exclusion Zone, the 30-km radius area surrounding the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It was a fascinating day.
I had specifically wanted my first (and probably only) visit to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone to be during the spring or summer, as I had heard how beautiful the area is – wild land, more or less untouched by humans for the past 20 years. Most films and photos of the Exclusion Zone that I’ve seen, however, always seem to be made during the winter, as if purposefully trying to emphasize a sense of death and abandonment around the plant. My expectations were not for want, as the areas we saw were absolutely gorgeous. It was breathtaking, even, to see the vast expanse of lush green. At the same time, though, you can never forget that you are standing on contaminated land. The constant chirp of the dosimeter, clicking off the ever increasing level of radiation, won’t let you forget.
We left Kyiv shortly after 9:00 am, and officially entered the Exclusion Zone a mere two hours later. Guards at the entry checkpoint reviewed the list of approved visitors, which must be approved by the Ministry of Emergencies in advance. They checked our identification documents and finally waived us through. We were in the Zone, within 30 km of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
Our guide for the day was Dr. Andriy Archipov, an expert in radiological safety and issues. Andriy is probably one of the most knowledgeable and experienced people working regularly within the Exclusion Zone, as he has been working on Chornobyl-related issues for about 18 years. We watched two documentaries in the van on the trip up that morning, both of which relied heavily on Andriy’s expertise. One was a BBC documentary about the final shut down of the first reactor at Chornobyl in 1991 – many people are quite surprised to learn that two other reactors were still in operation for up to 15 years after the accident at the fourth reactor.
The Exclusion Zone is more or less a randomly selected area with a radius of 30 kilometers surrounding the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP). As I’ve described in previous posts, the cloud of radiation and contamination released during the explosion in April 1986 did not expand and travel in any particular kind of coherent pattern; there is no “bullseye” circle radiating out from the plant in which the radiation levels decrease as you move further away. We actually found higher radiation levels several kilometers away from the plant than when we were standing in its shadow. But more on that in a bit.
Once inside the Exclusion Zone, our first stop was in the town of Chornobyl. This is an ancient town, at least 800 years old, and some people say it’s even older than Kyiv. Before the accident in 1986, there were some 17,000 residents in Choronbyl, which is located about 15 km from the nuclear power station. Today, there are a few hundred permanent residents who returned to the area of their own volition, mostly elderly men and women who prefer to live in their ancestral homes, despite the mandatory evacuation and re-settlement in other parts of Ukraine. One old woman we talked to said she’s been there all 20 years since the accident. “Aren’t you afraid?” we asked. “What’s to be afraid of?” she answered. “You can’t see any radiation here, so it can’t hurt you.” Wow.
Aside from the small number of permanent residents, the town of Chornobyl is occupied on a daily basis by hundreds, if not thousands, of workers. There are still 5000 people working in the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant every day. Although the plant no longer produces energy, the unspent fuel must be constantly monitored and maintained. In addition to the scientists and radiologists, there are cooks to prepare their meals, custodians to clean the buildings and work areas, electricians to maintain the electricity, drivers to deliver people and supplies, and many many police and military personnel to guard the territories. All in all, about 10,000 people work each and every day within the Exclusion Zone. Some commute in every day from the town of Slavutych, others stay in the town of Chornobyl Monday-Thursday. Our guide was careful to make the distinction that these workers do not “live” in Chornobyl; they just stay here Monday-Thursday. This is apparently a very important (political) distinction. (I visited Slavutych in February, here are some photos.)
The number of people we saw was what surprised me the most. I had expected no one, I guess. There was certainly not the normal number of people on the streets of Chornobyl as you would find in a normally inhabited town, but nonetheless, I was surprised to see people and cars. There is even a cafe and small shop. You could almost think it’s a normal town, like so many others in rural Ukraine, with a gradually decreasing population. But then you look closer, and you realize there are no children. And you see that it’s not just a few apartments and homes and shops that are abandoned, it’s most of them.
In the town of Chornobyl, we stopped by Andriy’s laboratory to pick up his dosimeter, which we watched throughout the day with much fascination, as the levels of microroentgens fluxuated. One of the first and most common questions a layperson asks Andriy is (big surprise) “Is it safe?” He answers with an analogy – is it OK to drink a litre of vodka? The answer is, of course, that it depends. Do you drink it in one hour, one day, one week, one month? The same goes for radiation, as Andriy explained it to us, and he offered the following points of reference: the average level in Kyiv is 0.14; the average level in a trans-Atlantic flight is 15.00; there are places in the world with a higher daily level of natural radiation than in any of the areas of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone and people live there quite normally. So, is it safe to go to the Exclusion Zone? It depends. The exposure we received in the 6 hours we spent there was less than the dose I received flying home to Columbus in February. But does that mean it’s a good idea to live there every day? Not really. Andriy has documented that, as he puts it, his body is older than he is. In other words, his body has aged faster than normal because of the extensive amount of time he has spent exposed to higher levels of radiation. But he’s still a healthy and active man, with presumably a lot of years ahead of him. By the way, Andriy has an experimental garden near his laboratory where, among other things, he grows 70 different varieties of cabbage for study. I would have liked to hear more about his garden research, but we had to move on.
We left the town of Chornobyl (where, by the way, the dosimeter read 0.13) and headed deeper into the Exclusion Zone. Ten kilometers from the plant we passed through another control point, where our documents were again checked. We drove through the village of Kopachy, only we wouldn’t have known it if Andriy hadn’t pointed out the small grass-covered mounds. The entire village was demolished and buried after the accident. Andriy says it was not only an unnecessary act, but also a stupid one. The contaminated buildings that were buried have leaked radiation into the soil and the underground water table. But there were nearly 100,000 soldiers in the Exclusion Zone in the months after the accident, and they had to be kept busy doing something, Andriy tells us. The dosimeter read 0.28.
We pause along the road as Andriy points out some abandoned ships in a lake. He tells us that before the accident this area was used for ship repairs. After the accident, the ships were simply abandoned.
We also got our first glimpses of the wild countryside that has grown up after 20 years with no human interference. Several endangered species have been introduced within the Exclusion Zone, with the hope that they will have a chance at recovery and survival in this unusual nature preserve. There are five White-Tailed American Eagles living within the Zone, as well as a herd of wild horses that are all but extinct anywhere else on earth.
We crossed the Pripyat River and paused for our first view of the nuclear reactors. A little farther up the road, we stopped at an abandoned cement transfer station. After the accident, hundreds of “clean trucks” brought in loads of cement every day and transfered it to contaminated trucks a few kilometers outside the power plant. The clean trucks returned to Kyiv, and the contaminated trucks were eventually abandoned near the station. Our dosimeter read 0.70.
We stopped at the sign announcing the V.I. Lenin Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (as all good government industries of the time, this one as well was named in honor of the founding father, Vladimir Ilych Lenin). In the span of a few minutes, the dosimeter jumped from 4.25 to 11.29.
The accident created a “dead zone” of about 500 meters to 1 kilometer around the nuclear power station. Pine trees, Andriy told us, are the most radiation-susceptible plants. All of them died within a few months after the accident. They were cut down and buried, and now there are problems in the soil and groundwater from the contamination being leached from them. Over the past 20 years, new trees and other plants have grown again, but the lush ancient forests that previously filled this region are now populated with small, young trees, some of which have deformed branches and leaves. We saw a few “skeletons” of dead trees. They looked to me like the charred remains after a forest fire.
We approached the 3rd and 4th reactors of the power station, which are covered by what is called “the sarcophagus”. The container was built hastily in the initial six months following the accident. Some 10,000 people, many of them soldiers, worked on its construction. It is now significantly deteriorated, with large cracks that both release radiation as well as let in things like snow and rain water, which leads to further deterioration of the structure. A huge multi-billion dollar project is underway to build a new container to enclose both the destroyed reactor as well as the sarcophagus. A few hundred meters from the reactor and the the dosimeter was over 11.00. At the point closest to the reactor that we went, the dosimeter dropped as low as 2.00.
From the station, we went to the abandoned town of Pripyat, a city of nearly 55,000 at the time of the accident located about 5 km from the plant. 36 hours after the explosion, residents were evacuated from Pripyat in the span of 3 or 4 hours. They were told to take only their most essential items – documents and money – and to leave everything else behind, including pets, family heirlooms, photo albums, etc. Driving and walking through the town is an experience difficult to describe. Modern buildings, empty and crumbling; wide boulevards, cracked and overgrown with grass and flowers; fountains, empty or transformed into ponds; street lights, giving no light but precariously dangling above you. Someone said it was like being in a war zone. I have never been in a war zone, thank my lucky stars, but I felt this was different than what I’d expect from a war zone. There have been looters and trophy seekers over the years who have stolen most of what was left in the city, and who broke windows and tore down doors. But most of the destruction happened bit by bit, over time, not by the sudden impact of a bomb or the riddling of bullets. This town is not destroyed; it is decayed.
We climbed up a decrepit stairwell to the roof of a 17-story apartment building for a spectacular view of the countryside. We went to a football (soccer) stadium, the field is not exactly a field anymore.
We left the inner zone about 3:00 pm, where the car was scanned for radiation, and returned to the town of Chornobyl for a late lunch. As we left the Exclusion Zone a little while later, we all had to pass through a full-body radiation check, and the car was scanned again. We traveled the 100 kilometers back to Kyiv, and were back in the office by about 6:30, tired and full of hard-to-describe impressions of a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Anka in Kyiv 