Chernobyl, Part 1

I do have some things to say about Kiev, but I'm too eager to tell y'all about Chernobyl, so I'll get to that later. 

Even though most of you reading this were alive when it happened, many of us were too young to remember it, or too far away to pay too close attention to the catastrophe happening half a world away. 

On April 26, 1986 at 1:24 am, some scientists were doing research on one of the nuclear reactors, Reactor 4, in the middle of the night.  Suffice it to say, science happened, and it wasn't pretty.  There was an explosion, resulting in a fire.  The roof of Reactor 4 blew off.  The Chernobyl firemen responded to it, thinking it was just a fire.  They ran in without any protection against radiation, receiving such high doses of radiation that they all died very painful deaths from radiation poisoning within weeks of the incident.  Their sacrifice ensured that the Zone of Exclusion (because Zone of Contamination just doesn't sound good) had only a mere 30 kilometer radius, instead of hundreds. 

Radioactive dust blew over the area.  The wind carried particles as far as Sweden, although the main recipients of fallout were Ukraine (obviously), Russia and next-door neighbor, Belarus. 

The Soviet Union didn't notify any civilians at the time. 

The official Soviet death count is 31. 

Which is bullshit.



We began our tour in Kiev, where we met our small group of co-adventurers.  Our group consisted of about 24-26 people from all over: a couple from Italy, a few guys from the Netherlands, a few from Germany, a couple from Latvia, some from the Czech Republic, a guy from New Zealand, and some others I didn't catch.  There was one other guy from the US, and me.  There were 3 other women in our group, all accompanying their significant others, exhibiting varying levels of interest in the trip at all.  Almost everyone spoke great English.  I watched with fascination as people from two countries, neither English-speaking, spoke to each other in their common language, English.  It made me feel very lucky that I grew up in a country where my native language is so widely utilized.

Following a 3 hour drive to the Zone of Exclusion, we arrived at The Edge.  Chernobyl is still guarded by the Ukrainian military and we required special permissions and documents for entry, provided by the company, Chernobylwel.com (e), whose motto is, "See, feel, experience...but do not touch!"  We filed out of the bus and showed our passports to a nondescript uniformed man with a checklist of our names.  No one was arrested on the spot, so I suppose that was a good start.

They don't allow you to take pictures of military installments, specifically the checkpoints.  Our guide, Michaela, informed us very seriously not to point a camera at them, stating that they tend to, "shoot first, ask questions later."  I'm sure that this is an exaggeration, but none of us were willing to test the hypothesis.

That says, "Chernobyl."  Obviously.

 Three thousand people still work in Chernobyl and 200 people have remained there in full-time residence.  There are two working shifts to minimize radiation exposure to their employees: 15/15- 15 days in the Zone and 15 days away from it, and 3/4- 3 days in the Zone, 4 days away, then switched. 

I'm getting to the pictures, hang with me.  Or skip ahead if you want, I won't mind.  Hell, I won't even know.

We arrived at our hotel, the touted Chernobyl Hotel, boasting 2 whole stars.  Seriously, they shouldn't have tried so hard.  Most of the group had been living out of hostels, so sleeping 3 to a room was a pleasure for most.  I shared a room with Michaela, seeing as how there were so few females around.

Our first stop was a memorial garden (there seemed like there were about 50 memorials) in Chernobyl Town, where the employees live.  There were a lot of themes from the Book of Revelation and Wormwood references. 

Revelation 8:10-11:
The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters. The name of the star is called Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the waters, because they were made bitter.

The third angel.

There were rows of signs labelled with the names of the settlements, white on one side and black with a red stripe diagonal across it, symbolizing that they will never again be inhabited.  In fact, most of the settlements were small, rural villages consisting mostly of wooden buildings.  Wood cannot be decontaminated, so they were razed to the  ground with bulldozers and buried.  

It rained pretty much the entire time we were there, so excuse the rainspots.

 The people who were brought in to clean up the mess were called "liquidators" and they had very little protection against the radiation.  They also had a memorial, along with the firefighters who perished in the initial fire.  

Next to Chernobyl Town fire station

Our next stop was a kindergarten.  Our guides pulled out their Geiger counters to show us how the radiation has soaked into the ground. 

That says 11.69

Now might be a good time to talk a little about radiation.  I won't get too much into the details (mostly because I don't know them), but the basics are these: there are three types of radiation: alpha, beta and gamma.  Alpha is the most dangerous, but we weren't in contact with any.  It can also be stopped with a piece of paper- it doesn't carry a lot of punch power.  Beta stays in your body forever, but won't penetrate a thin piece of plywood.  I was only around this when we were right next to the reactor.  Gamma is the most common around the Zone, and the least dangerous.  Your body figures it out and gets rid of it eventually. 

There is background radiation everywhere.  You're sitting in it now.  It's usually pretty low, way below 0.50 microsieverts per hour.  The average American gets about 6 microsieverts per year, the global average around 3.  Inside the Zone, there were many places where it was well below 0.5/hr, mostly inside.  However, the soil in the Zone absorbed the radioactive dust from the fallout and is still radiating.  Therefore, most of the radiation I received was from the ground, not the Reactor.  Moss absorbs and radiates even more than the dirt.  During my two-day stay in the Zone, I received approximately 4 microsieverts of radiation, the equivalent of about one x-ray or one intercontinental flight.  The "safe" amount to be exposed to is about 100 microsieverts a day.  Sorry if I got any of that wrong, but I don't think it's blatantly wrong.  Correct me if I am.

In any case, I was made to leave long before I wanted to.  I shot 3 rooms out of about 6.  Bummertown.

Well, it's late and I just realized I'm only about 13% through my photos, so expect several parts to this post.  I'll also probably create a slightly different album on Facebook, so if you're really into more, there'll be these and others.  Stick with me, shit starts to get real.