UKRAINE

Chernobyl: radioactive jungle...and new tourist hot spot

Issued on: 21/04/2011 - 17:22Modified: 22/04/2011 - 17:54

Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. The ill-fated power plant lies abandoned in a jungle of overgrown weeds and forest, like an apocalyptic sci-fi movie set. Yet the site of the world’s biggest nuclear catastrophe is attracting a growing number of tourists.

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The Chernobyl power plant. Photo taken by a tourist and posted on this forum.

On April 26, 1986, a sudden power surge at reactor n°4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant led to a series of explosions, sending a plume of smoke 200 times more radioactive than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs into the atmosphere. After the disaster, authorities cordoned off a 30-kilometre security perimeter around the site. Only the 3,000 workers in charge of supervising the plant were allowed inside the zone.

Nevertheless, in recent years, certain specialised travel agencies based in the Ukrainian capital Kiev have begun offering one-day tourist excursions to decontaminated areas inside the exclusion zone. For 110 euros a day, you can pass the Dytyatky checkpoint at the entrance of the site, take a photo in front of infamous reactor n°4 or admire the “red forest” around the plant, thus named for the ginger-brown colour the trees took on after absorbing high levels of radiation. In 2010, over 7,500 visitors signed up for this unusual tour.

A 2006 report by the environmental group Greenpeace, a long-time opponent of nuclear power, estimates that 200,000 people have died due to nuclear contamination in the past 15 years in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. One of the most polluting fallout particles, caesium-137, will take over 300 years to disappear entirely from the environment.

Furthermore, the site remains potentially toxic. After the accident, the leaking reactor was sealed with concrete as an emergency measure, but today some cracks have appeared. Further confinement measures are currently being negotiated, but are not expected to be completed before 2015.

Post written with FRANCE 24 journalist Ségolène Malterre.

With love from Chernobyl

The following photos were taken by Jean-Philippe Perron during a trip to Chernobyl on September 2010 and posted on his blog, Silphi.

More photos on Perron's Flickr page.

"It’s impressive to see how much nature has taken over the site"

Nicholas Rush-Cooper is completing a Ph.D. in geography at the University of Durham. He is writing a thesis on tourism at Chernobyl.

I went to Chernobyl over 20 times between April and September 2010 for my research. Most of the time, I left from Kiev with a group of tourists and spent a day on the site, but I have also spent the night in the only hotel in Chernobyl that is open to visitors. It is in a part of the town that was decontaminated after the explosion. The hotel is nearly always empty, except for a few workers on shift in the plant or the occasional scientist.

The exclusion zone around the plant itself remains very closely monitored. You can’t enter it unless you are part of a group led by an official tour guide. The main rule is to follow the guide’s indications to the letter and not go off on your own. Certain parts of the plant are not too radioactive – just two or three times more than usual levels – but if you stray just a couple of metres you might suddenly enter a zone that’s 1,000 times more radioactive. If that happens, you’d better get out fast, and avoid touching the ground or the plants. Luckily, most visitors are equipped with a Geiger counter so they can watch what they are doing.

“You can’t stay more than 10-15 minutes around reactor number 4; the radiation is too dangerous”

In general, a bus drives you up to 300 metres close to reactor number 4, just long enough to take a photo and see the monument erected in honour of those who were killed in the blast. You can’t stay for more than 10-15 minutes, the radiation is too dangerous. Here, visitors are exposed to 6.04 microsieverts per hour, the highest they are exposed to during the day. That’s about 30 or 40 times the level of radioactivity in the air in Kiev.

What most impresses me is to see how much nature, left untouched since the disaster, has taken over the site. When you arrive at the abandoned city of Pripyat [located 3 kms away from the plant], the tour takes you up to the roof of the city’s main hotel. A large bush has grown up there, somehow. And the view is incredible: at places it looks like a few buildings sprouted up from a thick forest bed, not the other way around. Obviously, this nature is contaminated. You can get near it, but definitely do not pick the flowers or eat fruit from the trees.

“Many visitors work in the nuclear industry”

The people who come generally have some kind of connection with the nuclear field. Many visitors work in the industry, and see it as their duty to get a closer look at the damage this kind of energy can cause. Others are anti-nuclear activists, so the visit just confirms their convictions.

There are also science-fiction fans who come to see a real Mad Max-style abandoned city [the third movie of the Mad Max series takes place in the aftermath of a nuclear war], or are looking for an atmosphere similar to that of the “Call of Duty” video game. Those visitors are usually disappointed because today the exclusion zone is very green.