UNDERSTANDING THE DARKER SIDE
Yves Alarie
In April of 1986, in Pripyat, Chernobyl, a safety test gone wrong caused the facility's fourth reactor to explode, killing 31 people, affecting an estimated 115,000 more with radiation-related illnesses, and sending nuclear debris across the European continent.
The initial cleanup, which is the focus, took roughly six months and half a million workers, as each person could only be exposed to a limited amount of radiation.
Ilja Nedilko
Ilja Nedilko
Due to the HBO series Chernobyl’s Nuclear Today, Recently there has been a rise in popularity of visitors who want to understand some of the more darker and tragic places on the planet. Power Plant in Ukraine as been one of them. To visit Pripyat, Chernobyl, it requires a day pass issued by the Ukrainian government. The abandoned buildings, classrooms, and structures are a living museum, images being particularly powerful.
The city of Pripyat was built three kilometres from the site to house the plant's workers and their families and, at the time, it had 49,000 inhabitants. Within a 30 kilometre radius of the power plant, there was a population of up to 135,000 people. All were evacuated after the accident and most of these towns and villages including Pripyat are now ghost towns. In 2011 Chernobyl was declared safe enough to be recognised as a tourist attraction.
Yves Alarie
Yves Alarie
On a tour with a local guide you can explore Pripyat, from the haunting abandoned city to standing metres away from the ruined reactor itself, time in the Chernobyl exclusion zone feels like nothing else on Earth.
Visiting the abandoned villages, walking through empty hospital hallways and coming across entire schoolrooms filled with abandoned gas masks provide surreal glimpses of the way humanity reacts in times of unprecedented crisis, it was and continues to be a site of immense tragedy, sadness and anger.
Yves Alarie
Hoshino Ai
If you do decide to visit Pripyat, please remember that a terrible tragedy occurred there. Compose yourselves with respect for all who suffered and sacrificed. Don’t move or remove anything from the site, take ‘selfies’, follow curfew and safety restrictions, learn from what happened here and be respectful of the area's history. http://visittoukraine.com