To the gost town of Chernobyl
The disaster of Chernobyl has been the worst nuclear disaster in history. The 26th of April 1986 is the date of a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the ex USSR.
During the accident itself 31 people died and long-term effects such as cancers and deformities are still being accounted for. We will never know how many people really died and will die because of it.
The disaster began during a systems test on Saturday 26th of April 1986 at reactor N°4 of the Chernobyl plant. There was a sudden and unexpected power surge, and when an emergency shutdown was attempted, an exponentially larger spike in power output occurred, which led to a reactor vessel rupture and a series of steam explosions. These events exposed the graphite moderator of the reactor to air, causing it to ignite.
The resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area, including Pripyat town.
The plume drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union and Europe.
Prypiat was evacuated only a few days later, nobody was known to be exposed to a letal dose of radiactions.
More than 600,000 civil and militar personnel "Liquidators" worked on the construction of the Sarcophagus, a massive steel and concrete structure covering the nuclear reactor N°4 building of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant designed to limit radioactive contamination. The Sarcophagus was completed at the end of October 1986, after 206 days. It was constructed under extremely dangerous conditions, this because of the high levels of radiation and liquidators received fatal doses of radiation in less than a minute.
We should always say thank you to those people who have sacrificed their own life to make the world safe.
An area of 30 km radius, "the exclusion zone" was permanently seperated from the world and it is estimated that the area will not be habitable for humans for another 20,000 years.
This is the proof that men will destroy the world...
Kiev/Chernobyl 15-18 August 2013
To get there from Italy I had to fly to Kiev then drive about 135km from Kiev to Chernobyl.
VERY IMPORTANT: to be authorized to go inside the exclusion zone you need a special permit from the Ukraininan government, armed guards are in different checkpoints all around the exclusion zone so better to be authorized to avoid problems even because some part of that area, if not all, are extremely dangerous due the high level of radiations still present.
Unfortunately illegal activities have been registered into the exclusione zone; despite the control intruders removed potentially contamined materials such as furniture and personal belongings of people who had to leave everything behind during the evacuation.
I flew from Napoli to Kiev the 15th of August 2013 with a stop over in Frankfurt.
Kiev is a nice city and it seems to be a quite safe city. I can not remember the name of the hostel but it was in the centre of the city, more than hostel it was an apartment used as hostel.
I still remember that the girl who was there for the check in could not speak english either italian so she asked me to write on her ipad using google translation to communicate, it was very funny!
The room was ok and I also made a couple of friends there in Kiev.
After the check in I had to go and see Kiev and of course take some photos.
The thing of Kiev that impressed me the most was the Motherland Monument (Батьківщина-Мати), a monumental stainless steel statue 62m tall upon the Museum of The History of Ukraine in World War II.
When saw it was night and the light on the statue emphasize its austere look.
Unfortunately I did not have time to visit the museum but I will return there, I have to.
My roadtrip to Chernobyl began the morning of the 16th of August at 8am.
On the way, there is "the egg", a big white, egg-shaped memorial in the middle of a large roundabout. From that point the civilization ends, nothing growing there can be consumed, nobody can live there, the radioactivity is an invisible enemy that is still there.
My roadtrip to Chernobyl began the morning of the 16th of August at 8am.
The interesting thing was that more I got closer to the exclusion zone more I could feel the desolation surrounding that area.
The first check point was right on the border of the exclusion zone, and take photos of it it's forbidden.
