Chernobyl: Day 2 (9/30/19)
Another great day!
So the security checkpoint into the zone isn’t staffed until 9:30am so we got to sleep in and eat a leisurely breakfast at our hostel, which was much appreciated since everyone was wiped after yesterday. Breakfast was some sort of odd egg square that was obviously reheated and a little more sweet than what I was prepared for from eggs, but I was ravenous so I inhaled it along with everything my tablemates didn’t finish off from the shared basket.
First destination: abandoned summer camp for kids near the Duga Radar that doubled as housing for the top secret radar workers in the off season. A good number of tr buildings were collapsing in on themselves but many still had their exterior artwork and may I just say good god was it creepy. Dead silence in the forest (actual forest this time) with nothing but the wind, a rusty swing set, and peeling cartoon characters to keep you company.
After free exploring for a while we grouped up and moved on to the equipment graveyard, where the farm equipment from the surrounding area was gathered up after the explosion and left to rust out of fear that it was contaminated. Ironically, they are totally safe in terms of radiation and the hottest spot in the area was a random rock in the road. The buildings were pretty much just frames and stonework that couldn’t burn down at some point with a little evidence of being inhabited by stalkers, people who are illegally in the exclusion zone.
Our final destination before the power plant tour was an orphanage - the only building still standing of a village that was burned to the ground by liquidators in attempt to deal with the massively radioactive homes and trees. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it takes the cake for creepiest place I’ve ever seen. The first thing you see walking in is the kids’ shoe cubbyholes and two eviscerated dolls starting right at you. Then a dark hallway littered with scattered papers from their journals, picture books, etc. This hallway ends in two rooms, on the right a mostly intact sleeping area with cots populated with more dolls, open books, and a looming sense of dread. On the left, a playroom complete with shattered glass, broken legos, soviet shoots-and-ladders, and a collapsed shelf spewing contents onto the rotting floor. But that wasn’t the end of it, oh no, to top it all off there was also a basement. Accessable only from the outside, the ceiling stood about 5 feet tall and was stocked with a furnace, cooking utensils, and a washing station, all sized for children. Oh and the windows were almost all blocked so you had to navigate by flashlight and avoid puncturing your skull on anything poking out from the ceiling.
After that bone-chilling excursion we finally drove to the Chernobyl power plant itself,, complete with the Statue of Prometheus that once occupied Pripyat central square, the towering sarcophagus, and a row of named plaques commemorating the first responders who gave their lives to put out the fire and prevent an even greater disaster. Oh and also an unfinished mural that was commissioned after the explosion, was left incomplete, and actually disqualified the entire area from UNESCO status and funding. This has, unsurprisingly, made many people very angry.
After a little drama concerning everyone being confused by how to properly sign the safety waver and a radiaiton badge going MIA we were shown inside the plant facility. First stop was the fallback bunker, which actually went unused by many of the staff during the crisis as they did not know the severity of the issue and when they did, opted to remain at their posts to do everything they could think of the bring the reactor back under control. Unfortunately, they did not know at the time that there was no longer an reactor to bring under control, only a gaping hole. We then suited up from head to toe and entered the reactor complex itself.
Several hundred meters down the “Golden Corridor”, which links the reactor control rooms together, we entered the control room for Reactor 3 (if I remember correctly) which is identical to the one for Reactor 4, the site of the disaster itself. It was packed full hundreds of buttons, dials, switches, knobs, and of course, the switch to lower the control rods, which ultimately set off the chain reaction to complete meltdown.
We then set out on a brisk walk down the maintanance hallways to the pump rooms, which once cycled the reactor’s coolant. This part of the tour had to be done quickly to limit our exposure, since the ambiant levels here were comparable to some of the hotspots in Pripyat, which we carefully avoided. On the way we passed the memorial to Velery Ilyich Khodemchuk, a night shift pump operators whose body was never found. The memorial itself was located on the cement partition wall that separates the destroyed area of Reactor 4 from the rest of the pant. Upon reaching the pump room, with its goliath machines, we were given 60 seconds to look around the balcony area and take photos, then we were directed outside via the Golden Corridor once again.
The last step of our plant tour was at the sarcophagus building to learn about the current state of affairs concerning containment, and the eventual dismantlement of the site. Then it was time for a spartan lunch from the on-site cafeteria used by the current plant staff, and then back on the road to Kyiv. Two hours later we pulled up to the central train station, marking the end of our 36 hour adventure packed with information overload, several broken laws, and at least 700 photos. I have mixed feelings about disaster tourism, but I do think this was a valuable experience. And I can now view the disaster at a more human level having heard the story from many different angles and seen the results myself.
I then stumbled my way trough the metro system and to my AirBnB for the next couple of days and totally passed out.
