My visit to Chernobyl
April 09, 2022
I visited Kyiv with some friends a few years ago. The most remarkable part of the trip for me was our day tour to Chernobyl. I wasn’t aware of this, but turns out you can visit the area, and it is perfectly safe if you follow the instructions and precautions. There are organized day trips which we took.
Now with the war, currently there is no tourism to Ukraine, and the status of the Chernobyl area is unknown. Russian orc troops were there, and it’s not clear how much they destroyed or what happened (other than some of them getting radiated). I hope tourism to Ukraine resumes soon, and you can visit Chernobyl again too.
I previously shared this series on Instagram a few years ago. I’ve since closed my Instagram account, and, well, the Russian invasion to Ukraine happened. Feels like a good occasion to re-post the memories.
Abandoned kindergarten.
The ginormous Duga radar installation. 150m high, 800m long. Secret Soviet military complex in the Chernobyl region. Not strictly part of the nuclear power plant area, just happens to be nearby. Though the radar did use so much power that it used a significant part of the power plant output.
Pripyat Amusement Park. It was scheduled to be opened on May 1, 1986. On April 26, disaster struck. A few days later, the city was evacuated. No kids have ever been on these rides.
What’s so interesting about this average-looking bunch of trees? Well… 30 years ago, this used to be the football stadium of Pripyat. Incredible how quickly and completely nature returns.
Pripyat ghost town.
Ground Zero. Inside this dome is Chernobyl Reactor 4 that exploded on April 26, 1986. How can I be so close to it? It’s perfectly safe these days. For many years, we were all at risk because the hastily constructed first sarcophagus was crumbling and threatened to release more contamination. Fortunately, before that happened, the New Safe Confinement structure was installed on top of the whole thing a few years ago. Inside it, work can safely continue to dismantle, decommission, research, without risk to the outside world.
