Helicopters are decontaminating the buildings of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the accident.
Igor Kostin / RIA Novosti
30 years ago, on April 26, 1986, one of the largest man-made disasters in history occurred - the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. An explosion at one of the power units led to the release of an unprecedented amount of radioactive substances into the atmosphere. 115 thousand people were evacuated from the 30-kilometer exclusion zone, several million people in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus received various doses of radiation, tens of thousands of them became seriously ill and died. In the active phase of liquidation of the accident in 1986-1987, 240 thousand people took part, over the entire period - more than 600 thousand. Among the liquidators are firefighters, military personnel, builders (built a concrete sarcophagus around the destroyed power unit), miners (dug a 136-meter tunnel under the reactor). Tens of tons of a special mixture were dropped from helicopters onto the explosion site, a protective wall up to 30 meters deep was built in the soil around the station, and dams were built on the Pripyat River. After the accident, the youngest city in Ukraine, Slavutich, was founded for the Chernobyl NPP workers, their families and liquidators. The last power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was only shut down in 2000, now a new sarcophagus is being built there, the completion of work is scheduled for 2018.
Recording of the first conversations of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant dispatcher
Petr Kotenko, 53 years old - liquidator of the Chernobyl accident, April 7, 2016, Kyiv. He was involved in repair work at the station, and after the accident he worked there for about a year. He says that to enter areas with particularly high levels of radiation, he was given a protective suit, but otherwise he wore ordinary clothes. "I didn't think about it, I just worked," he says. Subsequently, his health deteriorated; he prefers not to talk about his symptoms. He complains that the authorities today do not pay enough attention to the liquidators.
Elimination of the consequences of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, August 5, 1986. The accident led to the fact that the territories of the USSR, where millions of people lived, were exposed to radioactive contamination. Radioactive substances, once released into the atmosphere, spread to the territory of many other European countries.
Vasily Markin, 68 years old - liquidator of the Chernobyl accident, April 8, 2016, Slavutich. He worked at the station even before the explosion, loading fuel cells at the first and second power units. At the time of the accident itself, he was in Pripyat - he and a friend were sitting on the balcony and drinking beer. Heard an explosion and then saw a mushroom cloud rise above the station. The next day, when I started my shift, I took part in the work to shut down the first power unit. Later he participated in the search for his colleague Valery Khodemchuk, who disappeared in the fourth power unit, because of this he was in areas with high levels of radiation. The missing worker was never found and is listed among the dead. A total of 31 people died in the accident and from exposure during the first three months.
Still from the documentary “Chernobyl. Chronicle of difficult weeks" (directed by Vladimir Shevchenko).
Anatoly Kolyadi n, 66 years old - liquidator of the Chernobyl accident, April 7, 2016, Kyiv. He was an engineer at the fourth power unit; on April 26, 1986, he arrived for his shift at 6 a.m. - a few hours after the explosion. He remembers the consequences of the explosion - displaced ceilings, fragments of pipes and broken cables. His first task was to localize the fire at the fourth power unit so that it did not spread to the third. “I thought this would be the last shift of my life,” he says. “But who should do it if not us?” After Chernobyl, his health deteriorated and illnesses appeared, which he associates with radiation. He notes that the authorities did not evacuate the population from the danger zone quickly enough and carried out iodine prophylaxis to stop the accumulation of radioactive iodine in people’s bodies.
Lyudmila Verpovskaya, 74 years old - liquidator of the Chernobyl accident, April 8, 2016, Slavutich. Before the accident she worked at construction department, lived in Pripyat, at the time of the explosion she was in a village not far from the station. Two days after the explosion, she returned to Pripyat, where the station employees and their families lived. He remembers how people were taken out of there on buses. “It was as if the war had started and they became refugees,” she says. Lyudmila helped evacuate people, compiled lists and prepared reports for the authorities. Later she participated in repair work at the station. Despite the fact that she was exposed to radiation, she does not complain about her health - she sees God’s help in this.
Military personnel of the Leningrad Military District participate in the liquidation of the Chernobyl accident, June 1, 1986.
Vladimir Barabanov, 64 years old - liquidator of the Chernobyl accident (on the screen is his archival photo, where he was taken together with other liquidators near the third power unit), April 2, 2016, Minsk. I worked at the station a year after the explosion, spent a month and a half there. His duties included replacing dosimeters for military personnel who took part in eliminating the consequences of the accident. He was also involved in decontamination work at the third power unit. He says that he participated in the liquidation of the consequences of the accident voluntarily and that “work is work.”
Construction of a “sarcophagus” over the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, October 29, 1986. The Shelter object was built from concrete and metal in 1986. Later, in the mid-2000s, construction began on a new, improved sarcophagus. The project is scheduled to be completed by 2017.
Vilia Prokopov- 76 years old, liquidator of the Chernobyl accident, April 8, 2016, Slavutich. He worked at the station as an engineer since 1976. His shift began a few hours after the accident. He remembers the walls destroyed by the explosion and the reactor, which inside “shone like the sun.” After the explosion, he was assigned to take part in pumping radioactive water from the room located under the reactor. According to him, he was exposed to large doses of radiation and received a burn to his throat, due to which he has since spoken only in a low voice. He worked in shifts of two weeks, after which he rested for two weeks. Later he settled in Slavutich, a city built for the residents of evacuated Pripyat. Today he has two children and three grandchildren - all of them work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
The so-called “elephant’s foot” is located in the room under the reactor. This is a mass of nuclear fuel and melted concrete. As of the early 2010s, radiation levels near her were about 300 roentgens per hour - enough to cause acute radiation sickness.
Anatoly Gubarev- 56 years old, liquidator of the Chernobyl accident, March 31, 2016, Kharkov. At the time of the explosion, he was working at a plant in Kharkov; after the emergency, he underwent emergency training and was sent to Chernobyl as a firefighter. He helped localize the fire in the fourth power unit - he stretched fire hoses in the corridors, where the radiation level reached 600 roentgens. He and his colleagues worked in turns; they did not spend more than five minutes in areas with high radiation. In the early 1990s, he underwent treatment for cancer.
Consequences of the accident at the second power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which occurred in 1991. Then a fire broke out at the second power unit of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the roof of the turbine room collapsed. After this, the Ukrainian authorities planned to shut down the station, but later, in 1993, it was decided that it would continue to operate.
Valery Zaitsev- 64 years old, liquidator of the Chernobyl accident, April 6, 2016, Gomel. During the emergency, he served in the army, and a month after the explosion he was sent to the exclusion zone. Participated in decontamination procedures, including the disposal of radioactive equipment and clothing. In total, I spent more than six months there. After Chernobyl his health deteriorated and he suffered a heart attack. In 2007, after the Belarusian authorities cut benefits for Chernobyl victims, he organized an association to help liquidators of the accident and participated in lawsuits to protect their rights.
Taron Tunyan- 50 years old, liquidator of the Chernobyl accident, March 31, 2016, Kharkov. He served in the chemical forces and arrived in Chernobyl the day after the explosion. He recalls how helicopters dropped a mixture of sand, lead and other materials onto the burning reactor (in total, the pilots made more than one and a half thousand flights, the amount of the mixture dropped on the reactor amounted to thousands of tons). According to official data, while participating in the liquidation work he received a dose of 25 roentgens, but believes that in reality the level of radiation was higher. After Chernobyl, he was noted to have increased intracranial pressure, which resulted in headaches.
Evacuation and examination of people after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Alexander Malish- 59 years old, liquidator of the Chernobyl accident, March 31, 2016, Kharkov. I stayed in Chernobyl and the exclusion zone for about four and a half months. Participated in decontamination work. Official documents indicated that he received a small dose of radiation, but Malisch himself believes that he was exposed to more serious effects. He says that his radiation level was measured with dosimeters, but he did not see their readings. His daughter was born with Williams Syndrome, which is a genetic disorder that causes mental retardation.
Modified chromosomes in the liquidator of the Chernobyl accident. Results of a survey conducted by a diagnostic and treatment center in Bryansk. In areas exposed to radioactive contamination, out of a hundred surveyed, such changes were found in ten people.
Ivan Vlasenko- 85 years old, liquidator of the Chernobyl accident, April 7, 2016, Kyiv. He helped equip shower facilities for decontamination, as well as get rid of radioactively contaminated clothing of liquidators working at the accident site. She is undergoing treatment for myeloplastic syndrome, a disease characterized by disorders in the blood and bone marrow and caused, among other things, by radiation.
Cemetery of radioactive equipment that was used during the liquidation of the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Gennady Shiryaev- 54 years old, liquidator of the Chernobyl accident, April 7, 2016, Kyiv. At the time of the explosion, he was a construction worker in Pripyat, where station employees and their families lived. After the emergency, he worked at the station and in the exclusion zone as a dosimetrist, helping to draw up maps of places with high levels of radioactive contamination. He remembers how he ran into places with high levels of radiation, took readings, and then quickly returned back. In other cases, he measured radiation with a dosimeter attached to a long stick (for example, when it was necessary to check the garbage being removed from the fourth power unit). According to official data, he received a total dose of 50 roentgens, although he believes that in reality the radiation exposure was much higher. After Chernobyl he complained of ailments associated with the cardiovascular system.
Medal of the liquidator of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Chernobyl nuclear power plant and Pripyat, September 30, 2015. Before the accident, more than 40 thousand people lived in Pripyat, which became a “ghost town”.
Residents of Pripyat were promised that they would be evacuated temporarily for 2-3 days. During this time, they were going to decontaminate the city from radiation and return it to its inhabitants. At this time, the property left by residents in the city was protected from looters.
In August 2017, one of my favorite photographers named Sean Gallup visited the Chernobyl zone, who brought many unique photographs from the ChEZ, including those taken from a quadcopter. I myself was in Chernobyl this summer and filmed the Chernobyl zone from a drone, which I talked about in a photo report about, but in general I filmed in different places than Sean.
And in this post you will read about one interesting project related to the dogs of Chernobyl - of which, according to scientists, there are about 900 individuals living there. Go to the cut, it’s interesting)
02. The central part of the city of Pripyat, in the foreground you can see a two-story department store building, which also (on the right) housed a restaurant. In the background you can see perhaps the most famous residential buildings in Pripyat - two sixteen-story buildings, one with the coat of arms of the Ukrainian SSR, the second with the coat of arms of the USSR. I talked about what is now happening inside one of these sixteen-story buildings.
03. Roof of a sixteen-story building. Pay attention to the relatively good condition of the roof covering.
04. Another photograph of the central part of Pripyat, it clearly shows how overgrown the city is - the buildings are practically invisible due to the forest already fully formed in the city (with tiers and ecosystem). Swallows love to build nests on the balconies of Pripyat apartments, and I once discovered one nest right there.
05. The roof of the Energetik cultural center, which at one time was a very futuristic building - huge windows with aluminum frames, a bright foyer, decorated with tuff, which was fashionable at that time, socialist realist frescoes covering the entire wall. The frames of all the windows have long been removed and taken away to “non-ferrous metal”, the building is gradually falling into disrepair.
06. Photo "Energy", taken from the lobby of the Polesie hotel, which is also located on the central square of the city. This foyer is a favorite among photographers because of the huge panoramic windows that fill the entire wall.
07. Ferris wheel in an amusement park in Pripyat. Another “Chernobyl myth” and journalistic cliche is associated with this wheel, which I did not mention in the post about - supposedly this wheel was never turned on, since its launch was scheduled for May 1, 1986, and on April 27 the entire city was evacuated. This is not entirely true - the official opening of the entire amusement park was planned on May 1, but the wheel was built a relatively long time ago and repeatedly made “test runs”, giving rides to everyone - this can also be seen in pre-accident photographs from Pripyat.
08. And these are the famous cooling towers of the Third Stage, which are located right on the territory of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The “third stage” refers to the two unfinished power units of the station, which were supposed to be put into operation in the late 1980s, after which the Chernobyl NPP was supposed to become the largest nuclear power plant on the territory of the USSR.
09. Close-up of the unfinished cooling tower of the Fifth Block. Why was such a design needed? First, you need to say a few words about the design of a nuclear power plant - the reactor can be imagined as a huge boiler that heats water and produces steam that rotates the generator turbines. After passing through the turbine hall with steam generators, the water needs to be cooled somehow - while there were only 4 power units at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, this was successfully handled by an artificial reservoir - the so-called cooling pond. For the Fifth and Sixth power units, the pond would no longer be enough, and therefore cooling towers were planned.
The cooling tower is something like a hollow concrete pipe in the shape of a truncated cone with sloping sides. Hot water falls under this “pipe”, after which it begins to evaporate. Condensation forms on the walls of the cooling tower, which falls down in the form of drops - while the drops reach the surface of the water, they have time to cool - that's why cooling towers are built so high.
10. A very good photograph with the cooling towers and the new sarcophagus of the Fourth Block in the background. Please note how vast the territory the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant occupies - the power transmission towers in the haze near the horizon line also belong to the station.
11. Photographed Sean and the dogs who are in large quantities found at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in Pripyat and the surrounding area. They say that these dogs are direct descendants of pets abandoned by the residents of Pripyat in April 1986.
12. Chernobyl dogs right next to the Fourth Power Unit:
14. The guy aims at the dog with a pneumatic tube. Don’t be alarmed, this is not a dog hunter at all - he is a scientist and participant in the “Dogs of Chernobyl” program, he shoots the dog with a special tranquilizer.
15. This is what a syringe with a tranquilizer looks like, which is used to shoot a dog. Why is this being done? Firstly, in this way the participants of the “Dogs of Chernbyl” program help sick and wounded animals - they are examined by a veterinarian and, if necessary, performs various operations.
16. Secondly, scientists are studying the effects of radiation on dogs and living tissues. Sleeping dogs are placed under devices that very accurately record radiation contamination of tissues, as well as perform a spectral analysis of this contamination - thanks to this, it is possible to determine which radioactive elements are involved in the contamination of certain tissues.
17. Does radiation affect the lives of dogs? Yes and no. On the one hand, cesium and strontium do accumulate in the dog’s body, but during the short period of its life (no more than 7-10 years in the wild) they simply do not have time to do anything.
18. So, in general, the dogs in Chernobyl have a pretty good life)
Well, the traditional question - would you go on an excursion to the Chernobyl zone? If not, why not?
Tell me, it’s interesting.
The famous international journalist Gerd Ludwig spent many years filming the consequences of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In 1986, a series of mistakes at a nuclear power plant led to an explosion that forced about a quarter of a million people to flee their homes forever to escape radiation and fallout.
Ludwig, commissioned by National Geographic Magazine, traveled to the site and surrounding areas several times in 1993, 2005 and 2011 and documented how people and places were irrevocably changed by the tragedy.
In 2011, his trip was partially funded by Kickstarter. Now Ludwig has released an application for iPad, which features more than 150 photos, videos and interactive panoramic footage. Below is a small selection of the photographer's work made during the years of the ongoing tragedy.
1. On April 26, 1986, the operators of this turbine room of reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, while carrying out routine maintenance, made a series of fatal errors that led to the destruction of the reactor and the most serious accident in the history of world nuclear power. Today, the turbine hall of the fourth power unit is still abandoned, and there are still very high levels of radiation here.
2. Workers wearing respirators and plastic protective suits stopped briefly to rest. They are drilling holes to install additional piles inside the sarcophagus. It's a dangerous job: radiation levels are so high that they have to constantly monitor Geiger counters and dosimeters, and the permitted work time is limited to 15 minutes a day.
3. Over the years, desperate attempts have been made to strengthen the roof of the Shelter and prevent it from collapsing. Inside the sarcophagus, dimly lit tunnels lead to gloomy rooms littered with wires, pieces of twisted metal and other debris. Due to the collapse of the walls, everything around is covered with radioactive dust. Work to stabilize the sarcophagus has been completed, and today the radioactive insides of the reactor are waiting to be dismantled.
4. Previously, workers had to climb dangerous stairs to reach the area below the reactor's molten core, even though the extremely high levels of radiation make it possible to stay in this area for only a few minutes. In order to speed up the descent, a gentle corridor was built, the so-called inclined staircase.
5. Workers who are building a new Shelter, costing about $2.2. billion, receive dangerous doses of radiation while near the sarcophagus. The new arch-shaped structure, weighing 29,000 tons, 105 m high and 257 m wide, will cover the existing sarcophagus and allow the dismantling of the outdated shelter. To create the strongest possible foundation for the new structure, 396 huge metal pipes will be driven into the ground to a depth of 25 m.
6. The roof of the Polesie Hotel in the center of Pripyat offers views of the ill-fated Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Previously, 50,000 people lived in Pripyat; now it is a ghost town, gradually overgrown with weeds.
7. Pripyat is located less than three kilometers from the reactor. The city was built in the 1970s. for nuclear scientists and employees of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Once the population of Pripyat was almost 50,000 people, life was in full swing here. The authorities did not immediately notify the population about the accident; the evacuation began only 36 hours after the explosion.
Abandoned school in Pripyat. Ukraine, 2005. Photo: Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE
8. When the authorities of the Soviet Union eventually announced the evacuation, many simply did not have time to gather. Soviet Union The disaster was officially announced only three days after the explosion, when the radioactive cloud reached Sweden and Swedish scientists in the laboratory discovered radioactive contamination on their shoes.
9. Nineteen years after the disaster, empty schools and kindergartens in Pripyat - once largest city, which fell into the exclusion zone, with a population of 50,000 people, remain a silent reminder of the tragic events. Part of the abandoned school building has since collapsed.
10. On the day of the disaster, unsuspecting children were calmly playing kindergarten in Pripyat, a satellite city of the nuclear power plant. The next day they were evacuated. They had to leave everything, even their favorite dolls and toys.
11. The wind is blowing in an abandoned city. On April 26, 1986, the amusement park was preparing for the May Day holidays. At this time, less than three kilometers from here, the 4th reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded.
12. When the reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded on April 26, 1986, this amusement park in Pripyat with a race track and a Ferris wheel was preparing for the May 1 celebration. 25 years have passed since then, and the dilapidated park has become a symbol of the abandoned city. Now it is one of the attractions for tourists who have flooded Pripyat recently.
13. In 2011, the Ukrainian government officially allowed tourist travel to the exclusion zone. In the photo: tourists wander through the garbage-strewn corridors and empty classrooms of one of the Pripyat schools. The dining room floor is littered with hundreds of discarded gas masks. One of the tourists brought his own - not for protection from radiation, but for the sake of a funny photo.
14. The nuclear disaster led to radioactive contamination of tens of thousands of square kilometers. 150,000 people within a 30 km radius were forced to flee their homes in a hurry. Now almost all wooden huts in the villages that fell into the exclusion zone stand abandoned, and nature is gradually taking over these remnants of civilization.
15. 92-year-old Kharitina Decha is one of several hundred elderly people who have returned to their villages in the exclusion zone. It is important for her to die on her own land, even if abandoned and forgotten by everyone.
16. In the sink are tomatoes from the garden of an elderly couple, Ivan Martynenko (he’s 77) and Gapa Semenenko (she’s 82). They are both deaf. After being evacuated, several hundred elderly people returned to their home. These people live mainly on what they can grow in contaminated soil.
17. Oleg Shapiro (54 years old) and Dima Bogdanovich (13 years old) are being treated for thyroid cancer at the Minsk hospital. Here similar operations are performed every day.
Oleg is a liquidator of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant; he received a very large dose of radiation. This is already his third operation.
Dima’s mother is sure that her son got cancer due to radioactive fallout, but his doctors take a more cautious point of view. Officials are often ordered to downplay the dangers of radiation.
18. Sixteen-year-old Dima Pyko is being treated for lymphoma at the Children's Oncology Center (Oncology and Hematology Center) near Minsk in the village. Lesnoye. The center was built with serious financial support from Austria after the number of childhood cancers sharply increased in those regions of Belarus where there was a lot of radioactive fallout after the Chernobyl disaster.
19. Five-year-old Igor was born with serious mental and physical defects. His parents abandoned him, and now he, along with 150 other disabled children, lives in a specialized orphanage.
This is just one of similar institutions in southern Belarus that is supported by the international charity organization “Children of Chernobyl”. It was created by Edie Roche in 1991 to help child victims of the worst nuclear disaster in the world.
20. Veronica Chechet is only five years old. She suffers from leukemia and is undergoing treatment at the Center for Radiation Medicine in Kyiv. Her mother, Elena Medvedeva (29 years old), was born four years before the Chernobyl disaster near Chernigov - after the explosion, a lot of radioactive fallout fell on the city. According to doctors, the illnesses of many patients are directly related to the release of radiation as a result of the accident.
21. A mentally retarded boy smells a tulip in one of the orphanages in Belarus.
It is believed that in regions where radioactive fallout occurred, more children are born with various developmental defects and mental disabilities. This belief is shared by many—but not all—in the scientific community. International charities created after the disaster continue to help families in need of support and orphanages where children affected by radioactive fallout live.
22. Every year on the anniversary of the accident - April 26 - a nightly memorial service is held at the Firefighters Monument in memory of all those who died as a result of this disaster. Two people died directly during the explosion, another 28 firefighters and nuclear power plant employees died shortly after the disaster, having received a lethal dose of radiation. Since then, many thousands more have died from cancer and social upheaval due to mass evacuation.
Translation from English by Olga Antonova
Stela Chernobyl
When the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 cut short the lives of many communities, the residents of Chernobyl also had to leave their city. After all, although this city is located several kilometers further from the station than Pripyat, it is, one way or another, included in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone.
Chernobyl today for many people who are incompetent on the issue of the Chernobyl accident is the same as Pripyat. However, if in Pripyat life stopped for many millennia, then in Chernobyl the situation is much better.
Streets of Chernobyl
Chernobyl today in 2018 is a time machine that sends tourists back 30 years. Clean, well-groomed streets, painted curbs and whitewashed trees, peace and tranquility - Chernobyl can boast of all this now.
Modern tourists who have managed to familiarize themselves with the topic of the Chernobyl disaster and read useful, and possibly unconfirmed information, will certainly be interested in the question of whether there is radiation in Chernobyl.
For many, it seems surprising how one can live in a place that is contaminated with dangerous elements. However, if you look into this issue, then everything turns out to be not so scary.
Apartment buildings in Chernobyl
So, life in Chernobyl is now safe, because the level of gamma radiation here does not exceed 0.2-0.3 microsieverts per hour. Similar values are noted in Kyiv, and they are quite acceptable. In other words, the radiation background in the Chernobyl territory is normal.
At the same time, the population of the city is somewhat different from the population in other cities of Ukraine. Residents of Chernobyl today are self-settlers who have returned to their homes despite all the risks and inconveniences. These are mainly middle-aged and elderly people. The number of self-settlers in Chernobyl, as of 2017, is 500-700 people.
Pripyat is a small town of power engineers in the Kyiv region, near which there was a large nuclear power plant, which received its name from the regional center of the same name located not far from it. This is how many people remember Chernobyl before the accident. And after the accident, this name is already associated only with one of the most terrible man-made disasters of its time. The word itself seems to bear the imprint of human tragedy and at the same time mystery. It frightens and attracts. For many years to come, Chernobyl will remain the object of increased attention throughout the world.
A little history
The small town of Chernobyl has been known since 1193. Mention of it is found in the chronicle list of large and small Russian cities of the 14th century. From the middle of the next century it was already under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Not far from it, a hard-to-reach fortress was built, surrounded by a deep ditch, which can still be seen today. In the 16th century, this town became a county center, making its presence felt in Europe, engulfed in wars after the outbreak of the 1789 revolution in France, thanks to “Rosalia from Chernobyl,” as Rosalia Chodkiewicz (married to Lyubomirska) was nicknamed. She was one of the active participants in those distant historical events, sharing the sad fate of supporters of the royal family of Bourbon and Marie Antoinette.
In 1793 the city became part of Russian Empire. It was inhabited by Ukrainians, Poles and Jews. For quite a long period, Chernobyl was the center of Hasidism, a religious movement in Judaism.
Chernobyl was such a little-known town in general before the accident. And after the accident, the attention of the whole world suddenly turns to it, and its name itself is increasingly used in a common noun with an ominous meaning, generally associated with the words “trouble” and “catastrophe.”
Before the accident
In the 70s of the last century, a kind of boom in the development of nuclear energy was observed around the world. In those years, many nuclear power plants were founded in many countries, one of which was built near the confluence of the Pripyat River with the Dnieper. The launch of the first power unit at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant took place in 1975. By the spring of 1986, four power units were already operating at the station.
In the immediate vicinity there were small towns with shift workers and service personnel - Chernobyl and Pripyat. The latter was designed on the principle of nuclear power plant satellite cities. To ensure employment for family members of energy workers, it provided for the construction of a number of industrial enterprises. The city's infrastructure also received a lot of attention, since the average age of the population of the Polesie nuclear city was 26 years.
Pripyat in those days was one of the most prestigious Ukrainian cities. Its convenient transport links, spacious wide streets, distribution of residential areas and amusement parks attracted residents from surrounding villages and cities, including Chernobyl.
It is still not entirely clear to many people that the modest regional center of Chernobyl had little connection with the nuclear power plant in the years leading up to the accident. The rapidly developing young city of Pripyat, located three kilometers from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, was a kind of capital of energy workers. The accident in Chernobyl is connected specifically with it, but received its name from the name of the regional center of the same name, located southeast of the station at a distance of 18 kilometers. Pripyat was founded in 1970 only thanks to the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Chernobyl itself was a small town with a population not exceeding 13 thousand people. Currently, approximately 5 thousand people live in the entire exclusion zone, of which about 4 thousand live in the regional center of Chernobyl.
Accident
What happened this year divided the history of the city into two periods: Chernobyl before the accident and after the accident.
At power unit No. 4, during a design test of one of the turbogenerators, an explosion occurred, completely destroying the reactor. Over 30 fires arose, the elimination of which was initially started only with the help of helicopters due to the difficult radiation situation. In the first hours after the accident, it was possible to stop the neighboring third power unit, turn off the equipment of the fourth power unit, and check the condition of the emergency reactor.
As a result of the disaster, it was thrown into environment about 400 million curies of radioactive substances. This was a new type of disaster, which went down in history under a word that acquired an ominous meaning - “Chernobyl”. The 1986 accident at the most powerful nuclear power plant in the USSR confronted humanity with an intangible, invisible enemy - radioactive contamination.
Causes of the accident
The Chernobyl accident was one of the worst disasters in the history of nuclear energy. Many people died and suffered in the first three months. The subsequent years after the disaster also made themselves felt by the long-term consequences of radiation exposure. The cloud formed from the burning reactor spread a considerable amount of radioactive material to nearby areas in the Soviet Union and large parts of Europe.
The socio-political significance of the Chernobyl accident for the USSR could not but affect the progress of the investigation into its causes. The interpretation of the facts and circumstances of the accident has been modified several times. A consensus has not yet been reached.
Among the causes of the accident are errors in the design of the nuclear power plant, a number of design flaws in the RBMK-1000 reactor, and unprofessional actions of the working shift personnel, due to which an uncontrollable chain reaction occurred in the reactor that ended in a thermal explosion.
Among the reasons given were also the lack of a training and methodological center for effective training, equipment failures that went uninvestigated in the period from 1980 to 1986. Among the various hypotheses was a narrowly directed earthquake with a magnitude of up to 4 points.
Officials and medicine told only big lies; responsibility for the accident was shifted only to the operators and their mistakes; they refused to see the causes of radioactive exposure in the illnesses of the victims. There were constant attempts to minimize the scale of the disaster.
Land of Exclusion
The Chernobyl zone is a land of exclusion. This was due to the significant territories that are located in close proximity to the nuclear power plant. This area was divided into three zones under control: the nuclear power plant itself, the so-called special zone, the ten-kilometer zone and the thirty-kilometer zone.
Strict radiation monitoring is carried out at their borders vehicles, decontamination points have been deployed.
In Chernobyl there are law enforcement agencies that protect the territory of the zones and control the illegal entry of unauthorized persons into their territory. The main enterprises, utilities and other structures that carry out work to maintain alienated land in an environmentally safe condition are based here.
Second life
A little-known town with unremarkable gray two-story buildings and clean green streets - this was Chernobyl before the accident, and after the accident it instantly becomes known to the whole world, a town forever frozen in the time of the Soviet Union.
It attracts post-apocalyptic lovers from all over the world. Chernobyl and Pripyat, once confidently striding into a bright future, are now in the exclusion zone and are included in the visit program as part of official excursions. This land gained particular popularity in 2007 after the release computer game"S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl."
According to Forbes magazine in 2009, the Chernobyl zone was included in the list of 12 tourist destinations recognized as the most exotic.
In some places, the radiation level in the zone exceeds the permissible minimum by 30 times, but this does not stop those who want to see with their own eyes the most grandiose monument to the man-made disaster. Over the past ten years, 40 thousand tourists have visited Chernobyl. Every year, a considerable number of stalkers are detained, illegally entering the site of a local “apocalypse”, a place where a person will never be able to live. However, the tourist flow creates its own supply and demand, which seems to allow the city to find a second life.
