Chernobyl / Chornobyl
Day One - Chernobyl / Chornobyl & Kyiv - 2016
A day exploring both Chernobyl / Chornobyl and the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, including getting up-close to Reactor Number 4.
Editor’s Comment: When I first posted this travelogue, I used Russian-to-English transliterations for place names. However, subsequent events -namely the 2019 adoption of Ukrainian-derived places names by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine- have subsequently compelled me to update this travelogue. Broadly speaking, place names associated with the 1986 nuclear accident will have both versions listed; prominent structures (such as the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant or Pripyat Hospital) will continue to use their now-popularized 1986 names, as will instances where these locations are referenced metonymically (“traveled to Chernobyl,” for example); locations not directly associated with the 1986 disaster (primarily, Kyiv) will use modern Ukrainian-derived nomenclature; and, maps and URLs will continue use names from the original post until such a time as I can update them.
Map Credit: OpenStreetMap
Map Credit: OpenStreetMap
Map Credit: OpenStreetMap
1. Dytiatky Checkpoint
Visitors read information signs at the Dytiatky Checkpoint of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
“I’m using my spare airline miles to go to Chernobyl.”
In 2016, this was a difficult thing to explain to friends, family, and co-workers. “Who does that?” they no-doubt wondered. It may be hard to imagine in the wake of the HBO series and the tourism wave that followed that Chernobyl was ever a strange travel destination. But, yet it was, and only a few years ago….
I don’t tell you this so you’d think that I am sort of clairvoyant or travel trend-setter; fact of the matter is I traveled to Chernobyl for two reasons: first, the original sarcophagus (cover, if you will) of Reactor Number Four -which was installed in late 1986- was about to be covered forever by the New Safe Confinement at some point in the very near future; and, second, I have read that the buildings in the area -particularly, Pripyat- are structurally on borrowed time. So it was, then, in November 2016 that I traveled to Kyiv and onto rarely-trodden ground.
Then as it is now, you cannot just show up at the Dytiatky Checkpoint and expect to be granted admittance. All visitors must be accompanied by a licensed tour operator. Day tours are the most common way to visit the Exclusion Zone; however, I opted for a two-day visit with an evening at the sole hotel in Chernobyl / Chornobyl. This necessitated permission from the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Let me give you the bottom-line-up-front: if you are planning to visit the Exclusion Zone, I highly encourage you to opt for an overnight, if not multi-day, tour. There is so much to unpack here, especially if you are a photographer, that you’ll be wishing you had more time to explore. I did, and still do, wish I had a third day. I’ll also say for the reason I mentioned above: don’t hesitate, this fascinating place won’t be around for much longer.
For me, the HBO series has been both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I haven’t been asked to explain why Reactor Number Four exploded nearly as often as years gone by; for this I am thankful, since I am not a nuclear scientist, and had a difficult time explaining it as simply and as eloquently as the show did (maybe I need a bigger production budget?). On the other hand, I have been pinged by people asking me, “How do I visit?”, “What should I see?”, “Is it safe”, etc. I’ll do my best to answer all these questions and more here.
Beyond hiring a guide as described above (I took the two-day tour organized by Chernobylwel), you must first pass through the Dytiatky Checkpoint, at the southern end of the Exclusion Zone, the 30-kilometer (20-mile) region around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant complex which was vacated in 1986 and where time completely stands still.
2. Zalissya #1
The population of the village of Zalissya was 2,849 before the 1986 incident.
After clearing the Dytiatky Checkpoint, we headed to the Desiatka Hotel to check-in, drop off our bags, and eat a quick lunch. A quick aside: not only was the hotel the only place to stay inside the Exclusion Zone, it was also the only place where meals could be served to visitors. Immediately after lunch we headed out, making the abandoned town of Zalissya -just south of the city of Chernobyl / Chornobyl- our first stop.
There isn’t much to add beyond this is a good starting point for exploring the Exclusion Zone; it doesn’t come too much as an emotional shock to the system as compared to other villages in the area, but definitely lets you know right away that one day in 1986, life here simply stopped and never came back.
The following seven photographs are from Zalissya.
3. Zalissya #2
4. Zalissya #3
5. Zalissya #4
Presumably a store, or “маг”, short for “магазин”.
6. Zalissya #5
This building was likely a House of Culture, a sort of club-house dedicated to Soviet Communism.
7. Zalissya #6
The entrance door (see, that semester of college Russian is paying off….)
8. Zalissya #7
9. Zalissya #8
Photographer’s Comment: I don’t normally shoot in black-and-white, but there was something so … appropriate about doing so in the Exclusion Zone. You’ll see a selection of black-and-white photos throughout the course of this travelogue, and I hope you enjoy this quasi-nostalgic aesthetic.
10. Welcome to Chernobyl / Chornobyl
On 26 April 1986, Chernobyl’s / Chornobyl’s population was about 13,700 people.
Next we made our way back to Chernobyl / Chornobyl, the main town in the Exclusion Zone and the base for our travels over the next two days.
To clear up one matter now: the city of Chernobyl / Chornobyl is not the location of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant; rather, the plant complex lies about 15 kilometers (9 miles) to the north. The closest city to the Power Plant complex is the famously abandoned Pripyat / Prypiat; however, as this was a purpose-built city designed to house plant workers, the complex would not have been named after it. Instead, this honor went to the nearest already-existing city.
11. The Long & Long Abandoned Road
The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone covers 2,600 square kilometers (1,000 square miles).
The thought that occurred to me most immediately and most resonantly in my first few hours in the Exclusion Zone was that the area would be uninhabited for thousands of years … and perhaps uninhabited for the rest of human history. This was a curious idea to me as I could not think of a single similar occurrence in the whole of recorded time. While this was obviously an unintended consequence of the accident, the greatest ecological experiment that may ever be undertaken by mankind began on 26 April 1986. Chernobyl was, is, and always will be fascinating to me when framed in this context.
12. St. Elijah’s Church #1
Church services are still held in St. Elijah’s, making it the only active religious building in the Exclusion Zone.
We next visited St. Elijah’s Church, a beautifully vibrant building amongst the grey sky and the brown-and-green of its overgrown surroundings. The building itself was closed, but we did have an opportunity to walk the grounds.
One of the most interesting (and least-discussed) occurrences relating to the 1986 reactor accident concerns St. Elijah’s Church. It is believed by adherents that a bent pine tree on the east edge of Pripyat / Prypiat -referred to as the Partisan’s Tree as it was possibly used by the Nazis to hang Soviets during World War II- split the cloud of radiation from Reactor Number Four in half, diverting radiation to the north and the south of the city. As the story has it, this is responsible for the higher radiation counts around Pripyat / Prypiat as compared to inside the city itself. This occurrence was memorialized on an icon, the Chernobyl Savior, which was housed in St. Elijah’s. After the 2011 Fukushima Disaster, the icon was moved to Japan as a sign of solidarity.
Another photograph of St. Elijah’s Church follows.
13. St. Elijah’s Church #2
14. V. I. Lenin
Of the once 5,000-plus statues of Lenin in Ukraine, only two remain - and both are in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
We next took a walk through central Chernobyl / Chornobyl, which houses the highest concentration of memorials to the 1986 disaster in the Exclusion Zone. On the way, we passed this statue of Lenin, which will likely stand for all of time. I have heard two reasons for this: the first is that the statue is too dangerous to destroy. I don’t necessarily subscribe to this theory, since so much of the Exclusion Zone was intentionally destroyed and buried in the months following the explosion. The second, more compelling, idea is that the government wants the visage to see the fruits of communism’s labor.
15. “Please Remain Calm, Be Organized, & Maintain Order During the Temporary Evacuation.”
88 villages and cities in Ukraine and seven villages in Belarus were abandoned following the Chernobyl disaster.
Next we walked past signs denoting the names of villages and cities abandoned in the wake of the 1986 accident, formally called the “Alley of Memory and Hope”. A sobering reminder that about 117,000 people had to leave their homes never to return.
16. Monument of the Third Angel
The Monument of the Third Angel was sculpted by Ukrainian Anatoly Haidamaka.
We then saw the Monument of the Third Angel sculpture, which itself is a reference to a passage in the Bible’s Book of Revelations about water becoming bitter from wormwood.
17. Safe Passage
The radiation measured on this dosimeter is 1/1,875,000,000th the radiation estimated to have been at the core of Reactor Number Four at the time of the explosion.
Apologies for the terrible photograph (the glossy cover and the tight quarters in the vehicle helped nothing), but I am including it here as an opportunity to answer the question I most commonly receive when I tell people that I have traveled to Chernobyl - “Is it safe”?
Yes, travel to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is extremely safe so long as you follow your tour guide’s instructions and don’t make a habit of touching things -particularly on the ground- without measuring the radiation first with a dosimeter. There are many reasons for this, first among which is that the cleanup operation mounted by the Soviet government was fairly thorough and all of the most radioactive materials are clustered in off-limits areas. Secondly, in the time since the explosion there has been a concerted effort to denote which areas are of a sufficient radiation level for tourists. And, finally, the safety protocols -particularly the requirement to pass through a full-body dosimeter when exiting the Exclusion Zone- prevent unwanted or long-term incidental exposure.
That said, it is extremely difficult to gauge your overall exposure to radiation while in the Exclusion Zone as the radioactivity varies significantly from place to place. Make no mistake - there are several places and objects in the Zone which are extremely radioactive and dangerous, such as the basement of the Pripyat Hospital and the Red Forest, but you will not be traveling to these locations on a standard tour, but generally the level of radiation you will be exposed to is very similar to that of being in a large city.
I’ll make a good-faith effort to demonstrate this with some rudimentary mathematics. Suppose you were to stand in the room in the basement of Pripyat Hospital with the liquidators’ gear - based on accounts I have seen and read, you might be exposed to 1,000 µSv (1,000 microsieverts) or 1mSv (1 millisievert) of radiation per hour. It is estimated that 100 mSv of radiation would begin to put you at a higher long-term risk for cancer as a result of your exposure. As such, you would need to spend 100 hours in what is considered to be the most dangerous room in the Exclusion Zone to be “at risk”.
Now, concentrating on the measurement shown above: you will absorb many, many times this amount of radiation on your flight to Kyiv. In fact, you will absorb about the same amount of radiation if you were to eat two bananas.
So, again, yes - travel to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is safe. My only recommendation would be to bring a pair of shoes and a camera bag you wouldn’t mind having to throw away at the end of your trip in the very, very unlikely event you step on or place your bag on a spot with higher concentrations of radiation that will result in these items’ confiscation.
18. Reactor Number Five
Originally schedule to open in November 1986, Reactor Number Five was under construction during the Chernobyl disaster.
We next made our way to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant area, first passing Reactor Number Five and its many cranes, still standing exactly as they were in April 1986. Reactor Number Five was about 70% completed on 26 April 1986; in fact, workers were atop the facility working when Reactor Number Four exploded only a few kilometers away. Amazingly, it wasn’t until 1989 when the Soviet government abandoned plans to complete Reactor Five and its planned, adjacent Reactor Number Six.
19. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
Four reactors comprised the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant; amazingly, Reactors One, Two, and Three were in operation until 1996, 1991, and 2000, respectively.
We stopped along the side of the road across from the incomplete Reactor Number Five to get our first glance of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Obviously, the first feature that caught my eye was the New Safe Confinement, the 108-meter (354-foot) tall, 162-meter (531-feet) long arch recently completed and awaiting movement over top Reactor Number 4. As you can see, you could just make out the original “Shelter Structure” -most commonly known as the “sarcophagus”- over Reactor Number 4. I can recall few things which have given me chills just by looking at them, but this sight was certainly one of them.
20. Statue of Prometheus
This statue was originally erected in front of the movie theater in Pripyat / Prypiat as a symbol of the town and its people; it has since been moved to a memorial site nearby Reactor Number One.
We entered the Power Plant complex, first stopping at the statue of Prometheus. In the background is a bridge from which you can commonly see the cooling pond’s giant catfish. However, the catfish are not mutated; they are just gigantic because they are not fished nor are there many natural predators to them.
2024 Update: One of the most powerful images on the first day of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was the sight of Russian forces in front of the State of Prometheus and the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Memorial. You can see footage of this here, which is only a very short distance from Reactor Number 4 and in an area of high radioactivity. In 2023, it was revealed the Russian soldiers sent to this region suffered radiation sickness as a result of military operations here.
21. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Memorial
This monument contains individual plaques for those who died as a result of the 1986 disaster.
At the time of my visit, it was hard to imagine the agonizing pain many endured before finally succumbing to fatal radiation doses. The HBO miniseries obviously does an excellent job giving you an idea of how terrible an ordeal that must have been.
The closing moments of the miniseries also strike upon the controversy concerning the number of deaths attributable to the Chernobyl explosion. I am not familiar enough with the subsequent reports and studies to make an authoritative analysis of the Soviet government’s claims; however, what I am willing to say is I don’t think we will ever be able to make a definitive determination as to how many people perished as a result of the accident. Any loss of life is a tragedy, and -at the end of the day- if it were one soul or one-hundred thousand, you should show reverence all the same.
This leads me to my next topic of discussion: so-called “dark tourism”, and the responsibilities of visitors when traveling to locations which have experienced tragedy. First things first, as evidenced by my travels to Chernobyl and dozens of other places around the world which have experienced some of humanity’s darkest chapters, I will by no means be vilifying the practice of visiting such locations. Following the line of thought of an old adage, history is likely to repeat events it has forgotten. By the same token, mankind has achieved some of its greatest triumphs in the shadows of its greatest tragedies - many examples of this come to mind, but the Apollo 1 tragedy comes to mind as it did not derail mankind’s ambitions to go to the moon, but rather served to fuel it. A collective cultural awareness of Chernobyl helps shape our understanding of nuclear power, the risk-and-reward of scientific endeavor, and the potential destructive power of man.
What I cannot abide, however, is disrespectful tourism in such places, Chernobyl included. Not only did many die as a result of the explosion, Reactor Number Four serves as the tomb for one of the plant workers -Valery Khodemchuk- whose body was never recovered. At the risk of sounding like I’m pontificating, yes, it irritates to see smiling selfies in front of Reactor Number Four on social media. Do travel, but do have respect for those who suffered.
22. Reactor Number 4
Construction of the sarcophagus of Reactor Number Four was completed in November 1986.
Particularly in light of the construction of the New Safe Confinement, there was only place on the grounds of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant where visitors could take photographs of Reactor Number Four, a location dubbed by some the “Observation Platform”. And so it was on the 11th day of November 2016 that my tour group and I found ourselves at said place to gaze at Reactor Number Four with its hastily-constructed, temporary, iconically-drab grey sarcophagus draped over top of it. Little did we know, we would be among the last people to see Reactor Number Four ever again.
What you are looking at is one of the last photographs ever to be taken of Reactor Number Four.
We found out that day that on the 12th of November the entire area around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant would be locked down in preparation to slip the New Safe Confinement over top of the reactor building. As one of the ultimate goals of the New Safe Confinement would be the dismantling of the old sarcophagus and Reactor Number Four itself, the world would never again see the building as it did in 1986.
I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to see it. In the hotel later that evening, a group which arrived the same day as mine did not get word that the Power Plant area would be shut down the following day, and -as such- they were unable to see the building but from a distance.
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23. New Safe Confinement
The New Safe Confinement cost 2.1 billion euros and weighs 31,000 tons. It is the largest moveable land-based structure ever built.
Completed and awaiting slipping, the New Safe Confinement was ready to do a century or more of duty in keeping radioactive debris from leaving the area of Reactor Number Four. One of the most ambitious engineering projects ever undertaken, this photograph does not do justice to the size and scale of this dome. Roughly, it is the size of an entire football stadium - truly a sight to behold.
24. Farewell, Sarcophagus, & We Thank You.
The sarcophagus was estimated to have a 20- to 30-year lifespan. In the end, it went the distance, spending 30 years containing over 200 tons of corium, 30 tons of dust, and 16 tons of radioactive fuel.
Perhaps no other structure built by man has had a more important job than the sarcophagus over Reactor Number Four. I am not saying that to be overly-dramatic - its purpose was to keep a radioactive lava (known as corium) from rendering the water supply of an entire nation undrinkable, and to keep out of the air radioactive material with the capability to render an additional tens of thousands of square kilometers uninhabitable until the end of time. The livelihoods of millions of people rested on the back of this curious steel building hastily-built by man, woman, and robot in a few months time in 1986.
25. “…Those Who Defended the World From Nuclear Disaster….”
A monument at the Observation Platform has an inscription in multiple languages at its base; it reads: “Heroes, Professionals - Those Who Defended the World From Nuclear Disaster. In Commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the Construction of the Shelter.”
Time at the Observation Platform is limited, so I had very little time to contemplate what I was looking at and what it meant. It hadn’t really dawned on me until some time later that every single day workers were on-site building the sarcophagus could have been their last. One collapsing scaffold. One tumbling wall. One beam holding the reactor building’s skeleton roof in place.
26. One Last Look
The corium at the center of Reactor Number Four -commonly known as the “Elephant’s Foot”- emits about 93 sieverts of radiation per hour. One minute next to it will be fatal.
We boarded our van and had one last up-close look at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. En route, I snapped one last picture through the van’s window. Not much else factual I can say about this place that hasn’t been already said by myself or by others. What I can add, however, is it is quite an amazing sensation to be so close to something so destructive, so powerful, and so historically-impactful. A truly magnificent experience.
So, I mentioned at the beginning of this travelogue that I would try my best to explain why Reactor Number Four exploded. I truly think the final episode the HBO miniseries did an amazing job explaining it in terms anyone can understand, so I’d recommend checking that out in case you find the following description difficult to follow. Remembering that I am not a nuclear engineer or a physicist, here we go:
A nuclear reactor makes use of a controlled chain reaction of nuclear material to generate heat which in turn converts water into steam which itself in turn moves an electrical generating turbine. This chain reaction relies on a neutron of an atom colliding with the nucleus of another atom, splitting the latter atom into smaller atoms while simultaneously releasing energy and extra neutrons to continue the chain reaction. Generally, each collision results in several free neutrons, but a balanced nuclear equation seeks to have only a portion of the newly-freed extra neutrons collide subsequently with unused nuclei. While the energy in this equation is used to boil water to generate steam to turn the turbine, the extra neutrons will fly about unless they are absorbed by another material. In the Soviet-style “RBMK” nuclear reactors, this neutron-absorbing material was boron-carbide, which were formed into what are referred to as control rods. These rods could be moved up or down in a chamber to speed up or slow down the rate at which neutrons and nuclei collided. For better or worse, the other “stuff” (technical term) in the reaction chamber where the neutrons and nuclei collided -namely, water / steam and the waste products from the collision- affect the rate at which neutrons and nuclei can collide. Long story short: water and waste products slow the reaction, steam (generally) speeds the reaction up. Keeping this in mind, water needs to be constantly circulated throughout the reactor core as the energy from the neutron-nucleus collision converts it into steam.
Now, onto 25 April 1986. Reactor Number Four had a small design complication - the pumps circulating water through the core had an insufficient back-up system in the event that the power supply to the pumps were interrupted; this back-up system came in the form of diesel generators, which took about one minute after start-up to generate sufficient power to move water through the core. As described above, water constantly needs to be moved through the core to balance the reactor’s energy output. As such, a theory was to be tested where the already-spinning turbine from the reactor’s electrical generator could power the pumps as it spun down. This would (nearly) cover the one-minute gap before the generators could come on and reliably provide water to the core. A test was scheduled to occur on 25 April 1986 to validate this theory, and, since reliable back-up power was required to certify the plant, it would effectively result in Reactor Number Four being deemed fully-operational.
The specifications of the test required that the power output of the reactor be lowered below the normal operating level. This was to be achieved mid-day on 25 April; however, a delay meant that the test itself would not occur until around midnight, and the power level was reduced to a point between “normal” and the test parameter for several hours. As mentioned previously, the extra “stuff” in the reactor effectively slows the reactivity rate, and the delay resulted in an abundance of this extra stuff (namely, the element xenon) in the core; when the power was lowered even further very early on the 26th, the reaction -choked by this extra xenon- effectively stalled, meaning almost no reactivity was occurring. Now, the controllers needed to raise the power output very quickly to the level specified by the test. To achieve this, they had to remove safeguards and pull the aforementioned control rods up to try and boost radioactivity.
Because of the xenon and liquid water in the reactor chamber, this effort was nearly futile since most of the free neutrons were being absorbed rather than hitting nuclei. Raising the power a bit (but well below the specifications of the test), it was decided the water pumps could be turned off and the generator -which was barely turning- could close the one-minute gap before the generators spooled up.
When the water flow was turned off, those once-absorbed neutrons became much more free to collide with nuclei as the liquid water turned to steam. The xenon remaining in the core was unable to keep the reactor in check for long as the tremendous amount of energy generated by this surge in colliding atomic particles resulted in the xenon being burned away. With the control rods up, radioactivity skyrocketed resulting in a power spike. Seeing the power spike, the controllers hit the now-famous “AZ-5” button, which pushed the control rods as far down as they would go, killing the chain reaction.
There were two problems with this: first, the rods moved very, very slowly - in fact, it would take about 18 seconds to move as far in as they would go. Secondly, and unbeknownst to the operators- the control rods had a flaw in that the lower portion of the rod contained a material -graphite- which actually temporarily accelerated radioactivity. So, when AZ-5 was pushed, the graphite briefly accelerated the chain reaction even further, and the tremendous amount of heat generated effectively welded the slow-moving control rods into place. The chain reaction was now completely and totally unchecked. The first explosion occurred at 1:23:44, and the second, catastrophic explosion at 1:23:45 on the morning of 26 April 1986.
Why Reactor Number Four exploded in the violent way it did is, as I understand it, still the subject of some debate amongst nuclear engineers and physicists. The latest theory, however, is this: the first explosion was from the extreme amount of steam almost instantaneously created from the liquid water which remained in the system. This steam explosion resulted in the core being exposed to air, which -through a series of chemical reactions- resulted in the production of hydrogen which exploded violently. In effect, the second incident was a small nuclear explosion.
So, there you have it. If you need any additional information, please consult your local scientist! But, seriously, I hope this explanation makes sense.
27. Cooling Tower #1
Obviously, not a photograph of a cooling tower; rather, what was possibly a trailer discarded near the unfinished cooling tower for Reactor Number Five.
We next made our way to the area around the incomplete cooling tower for Reactor Number Five. Here, a variety of heavy machinery was discarded in the days and months following the accident. Making our way over there also gave us the opportunity to walk inside a cooling tower, something very few people ever get to do.
The following seven photographs are from the cooling tower area.
28. Cooling Tower #2
29. Cooling Tower #3
30. Cooling Tower #4
31. Cooling Tower #5
32. Cooling Tower #6
33. Cooling Tower #7
34. Cooling Tower #8
35. Duga Radar #1
The Duga was an over-the-horizon radar system used to provide warning of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Next, we visited the Duga Radar site in the woods between Chernobyl / Chornobyl and the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. This massive array -along with companion arrays in modern-day southern Ukraine and Siberia- would allow for missile defense warning through the use of the transmittal and receipt of a repetitive pulse. Naturally, the presence of the Duga site in the Chernobyl zone was classified until the fall of the Soviet Union. From when it became operational, it was marked on maps as a summer camp.
The following four photographs are from the visit to the Duga site.
