Chernobyl and Pripyat

Day One - Into the Exclusion Zone

I woke up after a restless night with absolutely no idea what was in store. We were picked up outside our hotel in a Land Rover by our Polish guide, Arek just after 8am local time. To be honest, I was relieved to find that he existed at all. Our only contact prior to meeting in person were his email replies penned in broken English, and of course wiring him a sizable chunk of money for our permits. Riding shotgun was a gruff Ukrainian man dressed in fatigues named Sergey, our government escort to be with us for the duration of the trip into the zone. It's impossible to get into the Chernobyl exclusion zone without either a work permit or an escort accompanying the group at all times, and Sergey was our man. After brief introductions, we loaded our gear into the back of the truck and squeezed together into the back seat.

We stopped for gas and I had one of those moments where I realized just how foreign Ukraine felt to me. I looked at the gas pump and tried to figure out which meter was which based on the Cyrillic text, which proved to be more difficult than at first glance. It was the first of many experiences of being a complete stranger in the land.

Entering the Exclusion Zone

It was a quick two-hour ride to the first security checkpoint controlling access to the exclusion zone. Our guide told us to hide our cameras from sight as we passed through, each of us getting our passports checked and re-checked against our permits that allowed us through the gate.

Once through, it was another twenty minutes to the town of Chernobyl, which has around a hundred residents living there despite the increased levels of radiation. We dropped off our bags at the hotel in the heart of the once-great city, and piled back into the truck for our first sightseeing stop.

Radiation Testing Facility

We were giddy with excitement as the guide turned off a main thoroughfare filled with construction vehicles to a less traveled road, and then again onto a road that hadn't yet been cleared of snow. The knee-deep, untracked snow was little deterrent to the four wheel drive Land Rover, and we soon arrived at a nondescript building with a sizable outbuilding adjacent.

Our first stop of the trip was a radiation testing facility where the effects of nuclear radiation were tested on fish and other animals while the power plant was operational. As our first stop, we were still unsure of what level of access we were allowed - the front door of the facility was closed, and our non-English speaking escort was with us. We poked around the exterior of the building, testing our limits with the guide. I looped around to the entrance and asked if we were allowed inside. Our guide just laughed at me and said "why, of course!" I looked around for Sergey, but he had wandered off, literally turning the other way preoccupied with his mobile phone. In I went.

This lone building was awe-inspiring enough for me to want to spend half a day inside photographing and documenting. Compared to the many abandoned facilities I've explored in the US, it was rich with content - not only to photograph but to investigate and look at! Behind every door was a mystery, be it fish heads in jars or locker rooms with work boots still laying on the ground. I ventured on outside to the outbuilding, where there were tanks that were once full of fish being raised only to die.

Little did I know that this was just the beginning, so when our guide beckoned for us to leave I was hesitant at first, but ventured back to the truck to continue.

Getting out through the snow-covered road proved to be more challenging than the trip in. Even in 4WD low with the rear differential locked, the ice and snow on a small bridge proved to be too much for the fully-loaded Land Rover. We got high centered and the wheels could not get purchase on the slick snow - we were stuck. After contemplating how to get unstuck, I asked the guide if the winch on the front of the vehicle worked. He shot me a sideways glance, as if he was the guide and I was not supposed to interfere with operations. When the sticks and branches Sergey was throwing under the tires failed, he gave a deep sigh and trudged to the back of the truck where he revealed a box full of tow straps and the controller for the winch. Rather than take control, he threw me a strap and had me unclip the winch hook. That was the moment we went from "guide and guided", to a team - the five of us working together to get where we were going. I threw the tow strap around a tree and with the help of the winch we worked the truck out of the ruts and on to our next adventure.

Unfinished Cooling Towers

When the Chernobyl power plant was operational, it had four 1,000 MW nuclear reactors and provided about half the electricity for what is now Ukraine. At the time of the explosion, there were two more reactors, numbers five and six, under construction. There were two more cooling towers nearing completion close to the unfinished reactors, and they were our next stop.

When they first came into view I thought one thing: I must climb that. Cooling tower five sits a hundred meters above its surroundings, never to be completed. Approaching its massive cement base was humbling, there's just so much concrete poured there.

Standing inside, looking straight up was an awe-inspiring experience. Construction on such a scale still baffles me - even the bare cooling tower in its decrepit state, never to be completed. We noticed walking around that the radiation levels inside were higher than normal, and even caused the alarms on our Geiger counters to bleep sporadically. We were getting readings between 5-7 microseiverts per hour (uSv/h), and even higher than that when we held the devices closer to the moss that covered the ground. While those levels are certainly higher than normal, a few minutes or hours of exposure isn't anything to worry about. We took note, set our alarm threshold higher and moved on.

I noticed a runged steel ladder going up the outside of the massive structure and told the guide I'd like to climb it. He said that he'd never climbed it himself, even after all his trips to that particular site, and the thought of doing so seemed rather unsafe. After a bit of quibbling he decided we'd climb it, but he would go first in case anything were to happen. I followed him up a steel staircase to a landing already three stories up, but still a far cry from the top.

I took the walkway to the steel ladder bolted to the concrete, the bulk of the massive cooling tower looming over my head. From there it was one hand in front of the other, with each foot following up the rungs of the ladder. The steel was warped in places, and many of the bolts holding the ladder to the tower were loose or missing completely. The ladder itself was heavily rusted, which altogether made for an adrenaline-filled climb to the top.

As we neared the top of the cooling tower we approached the construction scaffolding, still in place decades after construction was halted. The scaffolding was little more than planks of wood held up with shoddy frames, and collapsed or missing in many places. As the top of the ladder met the scaffolding, the metal cage protecting us from a fall disappeared, leaving just the rungs of the ladder to hold on to. The top ten feet of the ladder weren't bolted to the wall, leaving us to sway in the wind as we climbed ever higher.

In order to get to the top, we had to crawl around exposed rebar in place waiting for concrete that will never be poured. There were no harnesses or safety nets, just the failing rebar to hold on to in order to get to the top.

Reactor Five

In addition to the cooling towers, the construction of reactor number five was well underway at the time of the accident. It was our next stop.

From a distance, it's easy to spot as it's surrounded by cranes that were left there after construction was halted. Though unfinished, most of the structure was completed and the actual reactor was starting to be installed. The Geiger counter read 1.78 uSv/h on the ground here, once again elevated but not particularly alarming.

We parked the car in a dirt lot among some local construction workers looking for scrap metal to salvage. We bid them a very gruff hello, and then the guide offered me a shot of vodka. I chuckled, smiling at him until I realized that he was completely serious despite the early hour of the day. He laughed back at me as he made a very healthy pour into a plastic cup, and called it "liquid courage" for the task ahead.

I had no idea.

We entered the building and climbed several flights of stairs, meandering our way through the cavernous hallways. Since reactor five was never operational, most of the metal has been cut out as scrap, much to my dismay as an explorer. The once-mighty boilers have been removed and most of the piping is now gone.

We stayed a short while inside the reactor itself. I was once again humbled by the technology that was laid out before me, even if it wasn't all there. You could see in the walls where the dozens of steam pipes came in, carrying water to be heated by the controlled nuclear reaction below our feet. It's strange to think that for how complicated a nuclear power plant is, the concepts that drive it are quite simple to explain to a five year-old and the technology is still largely unchanged in power generation today.

As the guide had deduced from our experience at the cooling tower, I like to climb. We ventured outside, already six stories up, and he led me to one of the cranes used for the construction. I once again found myself on a rusted steel ladder climbing my way to new heights.

Climbing higher, the full scale of the reactor became apparent. It's a massive structure, with many levels and different wings. The unfinished turbine hall stretched out before me, roofless and massive.

We passed the control room, going higher and higher until we reached the top, where we could look down on the reactor in its entirety.

[Note: your author, going to and at the end of the crane]

From our vantage point, we could also very clearly see reactor four - the one which suffered an explosion on April 26th, 1986. It's one of the most radioactive places on the planet, and there are construction efforts underway to build a new "sarcophagus" to contain the disaster. The sarcophagus is being built alongside the reactor, and will be lifted up and slid into place over the contaminated building in the next few years. The reactor and construction were clearly visible from our vantage point eighty meters up on top of the crane.

Train Yard

On the way back to the hotel, we briefly stopped at a train yard, where there were engines and cars laying abandoned on the tracks. Some of the train cars have had various squatters over the years, and signs of habitants were still lingering.

Reactor Four and the Sarcophagus

Our last stop on day one was the construction entrance to reactor four. As such a dangerous and still radioactive place, it's surrounded by many razor-wire fences and access is extremely controlled. Only specialized construction workers are allowed past this checkpoint, and each are required to carry radiation monitoring equipment at all times. Based on where the workers are, workdays are limited based on exposure - those working inside the reactor are limited to 15 minute shifts per day, sometimes less as the radiation is so severe.

We were also able to get a better vantage point of the construction of the new sarcophagus. The first sarcophagus was hastily put together by several hundred thousand workers in the months after the disaster, and was designed to last two dozen years. At the time of my visit in 2013, it was 27 years after the accident to the month. The new sarcophagus has a life span of two hundred years, a far cry from the thirty thousand years or so the site will continue to be radioactive, but still leaps and bounds better than what's in place currently.

Having climbed many vertical feet, I was exhausted after just the first day. I was more than happy to head back to Chernobyl (the town) and get our first meal at the restaurant and call it a day.