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motodraconisYou are 5 years old, you have 2 hours to pack... so choose your toys carefully because you can't take them all.
Looks like bunny didn't make the grade.
So... a tour of Chernobyl? Have you lost your mind? I remember when it happened, watching the news plotting clouds of fallout drifting inexorably towards the UK. My mother snorting at the French radio because they were being so tight-lipped about it all. "They've got loads of nuclear power stations in France! They're hushing it all up!" The fall-out in Wales - Kill the lambs, kill them all!
In truth, it was a lot worse than anyone realised, and very nearly could have been even more horrific. If you've not seen the documentary I posted earlier, check it out. For now, back to the tour...here we are at the entrance to Chernobyl the town, that's our guide...
All praise the atom! The ships are from the docks at Chernobyl, once a busy inland river port. The town itself is some distance away from the plant. Within the exclusion zone, but with a background radiation level of less than Kiev. People have returned to work here - administration work and such. They stay as temporary workers, in the flats, children and families are forbidden. You get a subsidy for working in the exclusion zone.
But don't get excited, it's about 30 quid a month. (Or per year?)
Some people have returned illegally to their homes to live, this house in the suburbs is inhabited, and surrounded by derelict companions.
These are the Babushkas of Chernobyl. These ladies are allowed to stay, though their presence is technically illegal. Many cut through the fence and walked back to their homes. Some food is brought to them by the authorities, but mostly they grow their own food, eat animals raised in the zone, and drink the water.
At her cottage, Hanna Zavorotyna brews homemade moonshine and slices thick chunks of salo, raw pig fat - though it is strictly forbidden to eat local food.
“Starvation is what scares me, not radiation,” she says."
If you take the 2 day tour, you can get to meet one of these indomitable ladies, and drink a tot of their home-made vodka with them!
The Third Angel...
"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." (Rev 8:10–11)
чорнобиль or "chornobyl" is the same as a local Ukrainian name for Artemisia vulgaris (mugwort) otherwise known as common wormwood.
SPOOKY!!!
One of the remote controlled diggers that were brought in to shovel radioactive material off the roof of the reactor after the disaster. These machines were not much use, as the high levels of radioactivity fritzed the electronics very quickly. One machine (according to the Battle of Chernobyl documentary) "went mad" and hurled itself off the roof into the maw of the reactor.
After which, they started shipping in people from all over the USSR to do the shovelling by hand. These guys, many of them young men, were known as Liquidators.
Our first stop, an evacuated nursery school. (That's where bunny came from.)
OK, some stuff has been posed. Though not by tourists. Tourists are forbidden from entering the zone without a registered guide. We are not allowed to touch anything, or eat and drink outside in the zone, and we have to be registered as visitors and pass through several military checkpoints and a passport control.
However, our guide told us that once per year, people are allowed back into their homes for a special memorial day "they drink beer and vodka, have barbecues, bring their children" (children are forbidden in the zone.) There are also Stalkers, kids and young adults who sneak into the exclusion zone for a laugh. Drinking the water on a dare, partying and looting anything of value. You'll see the odd empty can of red bull or bottle of beer kicking around.
Hot spot - A variety of radionuclides were released. In the first few weeks, radioactive iodine (half-life 8 days) was in the air, easily breathed in and stored by the body in the thyroid gland. The iodine is now gone or negligible. The next is radioactive cesium, (half-life 30 years) thickly spread in ejected particles and dust. It's not quite 30 years since the disaster but the yearly action of rain and snow is washing the contaminants downwards at a rate of about an inch per year. This coupled with the clean up operation (basically burying all the nasty shit) means that the level of surface radiation in most of the zone is less than in Kiev itself (and less than most cities with a lot of granite architecture.) Obviously, you might not want to be eating anything that's grown out of the ground here though, or rolling in the dirt and eating it. However, the hot spots are from other chunks of material expelled by the explosion, plutonium for example, with a half-life of 24,000 years. It's getting washed down deeper and deeper, so the insulating properties of a thick layer of earth will eventually render the surface safe. The problem is... well, there's a huge aquifer under the zone. That plutonium will eventually get into the water and the water supply beyond Chernobyl will become contaminated (again.)
Next stop - the reactor! Here we are driving up to it, you can see the shiny new sarcophagus being put together to cover the old sarcophagus (which er... is starting to rust up, crack and leak.)
The reactors - number 4 is on the far left, under its rusting sarcophagus
Reactor Number 4! (Zoom lens) Surely we'd get no closer than this.
Wrong!
AAAARRRGHH!
AAAAARRRGH!
There's like... just so many people just wandering around. Workers at the plant! For security reasons, inside the base itself, you're only allowed to take photos in 2 directions - the one above, and this...
The new sarcophagus.
Next stop, Pripyat. Here's me in my radiation suit.
Actually, no radiation suit. You are required to wear long trousers, long sleeves and covering boots, presumably so these might be discarded if you pick up a sticky bit of plutonium onto yourself. Though I did wear a plastic mac coat and plastic wellies in case I needed to be hosed down in the decontamination area.
Pripyat! A flagship city, conventions and foreigners were invited to it as a showcase. No usual security measures as you might get with other power plants in the USSR because nuclear power was completely safe.
The nuclear power plant was originally planned to be built within 16 miles of Kiev, but various scientific types made a fuss (goddammed fussy scientists!) and the plant was moved 62 miles away, with Pripyat built to house the plant workers in an easy commute distance of 2 and a half miles from the reactors.
No worries...
Uuurgh!
DON'T STEP ON THE MOSS!
No really, don't step on it.
The disaster occurred on the 26th April, 1986. Just a few days from the annual May Day celebrations.
Speaking of which, a fun fair was scheduled to open that May Day.
Bumper cars!
Not so funny now are you Dismaland!
Now it's often said that Pripyat funfair was never used, as it was scheduled to open on Mayday and the disaster occurred on the 26th April. However, our guide told us that on the morning after the explosion, many of the citizens of Pripyat (average age 26 years old) were going up to a particular bridge to oogle the smoking power plant, trying to work out what the fuck was going on. So some bright spark thought it would be a great idea to open up the funfair early, to distract the populace.
So just when they should have been evacuating, or at the very least, sheltering inside behind closed doors and windows, let's get everyone, especially children outside in the fresh air and zingy particles, breathing in all that lovely radioactive iodine and other dodgy contaminated dust. Bloody hell!
Also unused, children's gas masks in the local school.
Stalkers came in to loot, opening up loads of unused boxes of gas masks to strip out useful components to sell on. Discarding them in a pile.
Are you my mummy?
Basket ball anyone?
How about a nice dip in the swimming pool? it was still being used by liquidators in 1996, 10 years after the disaster.
Hmmm, a relief to escape Pripyat at last... here's the street outside the sports complex.
Idyllic. We did see deer at one point, (too fast to snap) but no fabled bears, wolves or giant catfish. Birds too, though they tend to have smaller brains than they ought to have. While parts of the forest are UNDEAD.
And our final visit of the exclusion zone, what could be behind these doors?
A sekrit Russian military base!
Wait wHUT?
WHUT???
It's the Russian Woodpecker!
It's TOP SECRET!
The tour ended with dinner in Chernobyl (the town, and the food is imported!) Pork steak 'n' chips.
Pancakes for pudding.
Souvenirs, I've been to Chernobyl and all I got was this lousy radiation sickness...
...and for afters, 2 decontamination checkpoints, for both inner and outer exclusion zone...
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_vargr_ getting scanned.
So... that was Chernobyl. If you want to go too, we used SoloEast Travel.
Phew!
Looks like bunny didn't make the grade.
So... a tour of Chernobyl? Have you lost your mind? I remember when it happened, watching the news plotting clouds of fallout drifting inexorably towards the UK. My mother snorting at the French radio because they were being so tight-lipped about it all. "They've got loads of nuclear power stations in France! They're hushing it all up!" The fall-out in Wales - Kill the lambs, kill them all!
In truth, it was a lot worse than anyone realised, and very nearly could have been even more horrific. If you've not seen the documentary I posted earlier, check it out. For now, back to the tour...here we are at the entrance to Chernobyl the town, that's our guide...
All praise the atom! The ships are from the docks at Chernobyl, once a busy inland river port. The town itself is some distance away from the plant. Within the exclusion zone, but with a background radiation level of less than Kiev. People have returned to work here - administration work and such. They stay as temporary workers, in the flats, children and families are forbidden. You get a subsidy for working in the exclusion zone.
But don't get excited, it's about 30 quid a month. (Or per year?)
Some people have returned illegally to their homes to live, this house in the suburbs is inhabited, and surrounded by derelict companions.
These are the Babushkas of Chernobyl. These ladies are allowed to stay, though their presence is technically illegal. Many cut through the fence and walked back to their homes. Some food is brought to them by the authorities, but mostly they grow their own food, eat animals raised in the zone, and drink the water.
At her cottage, Hanna Zavorotyna brews homemade moonshine and slices thick chunks of salo, raw pig fat - though it is strictly forbidden to eat local food.
“Starvation is what scares me, not radiation,” she says."
If you take the 2 day tour, you can get to meet one of these indomitable ladies, and drink a tot of their home-made vodka with them!
The Third Angel...
"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." (Rev 8:10–11)
чорнобиль or "chornobyl" is the same as a local Ukrainian name for Artemisia vulgaris (mugwort) otherwise known as common wormwood.
SPOOKY!!!
One of the remote controlled diggers that were brought in to shovel radioactive material off the roof of the reactor after the disaster. These machines were not much use, as the high levels of radioactivity fritzed the electronics very quickly. One machine (according to the Battle of Chernobyl documentary) "went mad" and hurled itself off the roof into the maw of the reactor.
After which, they started shipping in people from all over the USSR to do the shovelling by hand. These guys, many of them young men, were known as Liquidators.
Our first stop, an evacuated nursery school. (That's where bunny came from.)
OK, some stuff has been posed. Though not by tourists. Tourists are forbidden from entering the zone without a registered guide. We are not allowed to touch anything, or eat and drink outside in the zone, and we have to be registered as visitors and pass through several military checkpoints and a passport control.
However, our guide told us that once per year, people are allowed back into their homes for a special memorial day "they drink beer and vodka, have barbecues, bring their children" (children are forbidden in the zone.) There are also Stalkers, kids and young adults who sneak into the exclusion zone for a laugh. Drinking the water on a dare, partying and looting anything of value. You'll see the odd empty can of red bull or bottle of beer kicking around.
Hot spot - A variety of radionuclides were released. In the first few weeks, radioactive iodine (half-life 8 days) was in the air, easily breathed in and stored by the body in the thyroid gland. The iodine is now gone or negligible. The next is radioactive cesium, (half-life 30 years) thickly spread in ejected particles and dust. It's not quite 30 years since the disaster but the yearly action of rain and snow is washing the contaminants downwards at a rate of about an inch per year. This coupled with the clean up operation (basically burying all the nasty shit) means that the level of surface radiation in most of the zone is less than in Kiev itself (and less than most cities with a lot of granite architecture.) Obviously, you might not want to be eating anything that's grown out of the ground here though, or rolling in the dirt and eating it. However, the hot spots are from other chunks of material expelled by the explosion, plutonium for example, with a half-life of 24,000 years. It's getting washed down deeper and deeper, so the insulating properties of a thick layer of earth will eventually render the surface safe. The problem is... well, there's a huge aquifer under the zone. That plutonium will eventually get into the water and the water supply beyond Chernobyl will become contaminated (again.)
Next stop - the reactor! Here we are driving up to it, you can see the shiny new sarcophagus being put together to cover the old sarcophagus (which er... is starting to rust up, crack and leak.)
The reactors - number 4 is on the far left, under its rusting sarcophagus
Reactor Number 4! (Zoom lens) Surely we'd get no closer than this.
Wrong!
AAAARRRGHH!
AAAAARRRGH!
There's like... just so many people just wandering around. Workers at the plant! For security reasons, inside the base itself, you're only allowed to take photos in 2 directions - the one above, and this...
The new sarcophagus.
Next stop, Pripyat. Here's me in my radiation suit.
Actually, no radiation suit. You are required to wear long trousers, long sleeves and covering boots, presumably so these might be discarded if you pick up a sticky bit of plutonium onto yourself. Though I did wear a plastic mac coat and plastic wellies in case I needed to be hosed down in the decontamination area.
Pripyat! A flagship city, conventions and foreigners were invited to it as a showcase. No usual security measures as you might get with other power plants in the USSR because nuclear power was completely safe.
The nuclear power plant was originally planned to be built within 16 miles of Kiev, but various scientific types made a fuss (goddammed fussy scientists!) and the plant was moved 62 miles away, with Pripyat built to house the plant workers in an easy commute distance of 2 and a half miles from the reactors.
No worries...
Uuurgh!
DON'T STEP ON THE MOSS!
No really, don't step on it.
The disaster occurred on the 26th April, 1986. Just a few days from the annual May Day celebrations.
Speaking of which, a fun fair was scheduled to open that May Day.
Bumper cars!
Not so funny now are you Dismaland!
Now it's often said that Pripyat funfair was never used, as it was scheduled to open on Mayday and the disaster occurred on the 26th April. However, our guide told us that on the morning after the explosion, many of the citizens of Pripyat (average age 26 years old) were going up to a particular bridge to oogle the smoking power plant, trying to work out what the fuck was going on. So some bright spark thought it would be a great idea to open up the funfair early, to distract the populace.
So just when they should have been evacuating, or at the very least, sheltering inside behind closed doors and windows, let's get everyone, especially children outside in the fresh air and zingy particles, breathing in all that lovely radioactive iodine and other dodgy contaminated dust. Bloody hell!
Also unused, children's gas masks in the local school.
Stalkers came in to loot, opening up loads of unused boxes of gas masks to strip out useful components to sell on. Discarding them in a pile.
Are you my mummy?
Basket ball anyone?
How about a nice dip in the swimming pool? it was still being used by liquidators in 1996, 10 years after the disaster.
Hmmm, a relief to escape Pripyat at last... here's the street outside the sports complex.
Idyllic. We did see deer at one point, (too fast to snap) but no fabled bears, wolves or giant catfish. Birds too, though they tend to have smaller brains than they ought to have. While parts of the forest are UNDEAD.
And our final visit of the exclusion zone, what could be behind these doors?
A sekrit Russian military base!
Wait wHUT?
WHUT???
It's the Russian Woodpecker!
It's TOP SECRET!
The tour ended with dinner in Chernobyl (the town, and the food is imported!) Pork steak 'n' chips.
Pancakes for pudding.
Souvenirs, I've been to Chernobyl and all I got was this lousy radiation sickness...
...and for afters, 2 decontamination checkpoints, for both inner and outer exclusion zone...
_vargr_ getting scanned.So... that was Chernobyl. If you want to go too, we used SoloEast Travel.
Phew!
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no subject
Date: 2015-11-06 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-06 09:10 pm (UTC)There's the 2 day tour - overnight in Chernobyl town, meet babushkas. They even do bespoke tours, the longest our guide had done was 10 days, taking a bunch of photographers everywhere.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-06 09:13 pm (UTC)Yikes. Bits of it do look posed, but it still looks bloody terrifying.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-06 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-06 11:32 pm (UTC)Wow
no subject
Date: 2015-11-07 07:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-07 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-08 10:17 pm (UTC)Never thought I'd see it myself!
Astounding stuff, Moto!
Date: 2015-11-07 09:18 am (UTC)I was at school in Yorkshire when it happened. My Physics teacher measured the radiation levels rising even at that distance and helped establish the impact across Europe.
Re: Astounding stuff, Moto!
Date: 2015-11-08 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-07 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-08 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-07 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-08 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-08 09:03 pm (UTC)off the charts interesting. Thanks.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-08 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-09 09:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-09 02:25 pm (UTC)There is a danger, though small, of inhaling or swallowing a hot particle. Unlikely after all the sluicing action of rain and snow, so no digging.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-09 10:15 pm (UTC)I'd personally not recommend it, it's unmaintained and gently rusting away.
The plant on the other hand, is still a vulnerable place. Usually when governments are cagey about photos, it's because they're worried terrorists might access the pics and use them to plot a suitable bomb point. In the case of the plant, I'm happy for them to be as strict as they please, all things considered.
Fantastic!
Date: 2015-11-24 11:12 pm (UTC)