Destruction road trip: Friday, Day 6: Tour Chernobyl

The most anticipated day for us was of course the trip to see the blown nuclear reactor in Chernobyl and the deserted nearby city called Pripyat'. Trip started with a bus ride to north from Kiev, about two hours long. First safety and passport check was 30 km mark before the actual site and it was also the safety zone radius for the reactor. We entered Chernobyl city, which currently a has a population of 4 000 and consists workers for the site. They are restricted to first be inside the 30 km zone for 15 days, then 15 days outside, then 4 in and 3 out. Obviously because of the high radiation issues.

In the city we met our tour guide and after waiving off all our rights to claim anything if we got ill or something because of being exposed to radioactive materials, we started driving to the site. We saw the power plant - or the rusting remains of it - before driving through the "red forest", the most contamidated area. Some tourists and the guide had geiger meters to show the radiation amounts live and every alarm in the meters went off to warn from high radiation. There were collapsed trees, which had died instantly after being contamidated, but otherwise as the time has passed, the forest was blossoming again.

Pripyat' view from hotel balcony

After the badly contamitadet area, we entered the completely abandoned city of Pripyat', which was built in 1970 and because of the jobs in the power plant. 50 000 people had total of 3 hours to evacuate and the city was fully deserted, before the radiation was safe enough for people to visit it again decades later. The city is pretty mind-blowing. Nature has totally taken over of anything that had built earlier, trees grow inside the buildings and everything is rusting and falling apart day by day.

We got the chance to see city center by walking the badly damaged streets and enter some buildings like a hotel, a school and a spa. The aging and no repair works had made the buildings almost like death traps, broken glass all over the floors and items hanging by a thread from the walls and ceilings. 50 000 people used to live here, now it's a ghost town. It was really fascinating to visit Pripyat' and the guides let us wander around pretty freely in the buildings. There were only two rules; Stick together and only walk on the paved areas to avoid higher exposure to radation, as plants and grass were highly contamidated.

After Pripyat' we had an excellent meal in a local eatery for the workers. Before anyone entered to the eatery, we had to do a radiation test in a machine specifically made for it. Then it was time to see the famous catfish that had lived in the cooling channels. After feeding and looking the amazing size of the fish, we drove as close to the blown reactor as it's safe to do. At that point, the radiation levels were really high, but yet 500 times less than inside the reactor. And that would be deadly without any proper equipment...

The trip was a big success. We had high hopes what the tour was about, but every location that we had the chance to see was even better. It's obviously horrible that the reactor blew back in the 80's, but today it's a good thing that they let people to see what it had caused. Enjoy the photos...