Travel Week Part IV
Friday…
I suppose I should just say it and get it over with: I went to Chernobyl’.
I still am not entirely positive why I went, but I do not regret my choice in going. I think that there are some parts of history and of human destruction that must be witnessed and that we must make an attempt at understanding.
After visiting the Chernobyl’ museum in Kyiv earlier in the week, I thought that I had a decent idea of what to expect, and yet still I was unprepared for the reality of it.
Chernobyl’s is a place halted 20 years past. Cranes loom over projects that stand unfinished.
Even now, perhaps more now that I have allowed time to pass I am not sure how to describe the place.
What was most haunting to me was not the reactor encased in the “Sarcophagus” but the town of Priyat’. I’ve been to ghost towns before, but never a ghost town this large, nor this modern. 50 thousand people were told to evacuate this city in less than 36 hours. Most left, carrying only the clothing on their backs and nothing more.
Much of the city has been cleaned up – so there are few personal remnants left behind after all these years. One place where items have not been removed is a former kindergarten, seeing toys scattered on the floor and indoor shoes still left infront of painted cubbies suddenly drives home the fact that this was once a city filled with people of all ages, a place where families lived – not just worked.
I think what hit all of us in my group hardest though was the grounds of a former amusement park. A highlight of our time in Kiev had been bumper-cars. Here too stood a bumper-car rink, cars sitting in what is now grass, rusted through somewhat eerily they sit hodge-podge not even pushed over to one corner as if their former occupants simply stood up and walked off.
Though the sight of skeleton buildings is eerie and haunting – what is perhaps worse to contemplate is the fact that people once again work at Chernobyl’s and at the site of the exploded reactor. Close to the Sarcohagus radiation has not yet been clean-up to entirely safe levels like much of the rest of the site (or at least the places that are used frequently.)
Our guide warned us over and over again not to step off the concrete road. The roadways have been cleaned; in many cases soil was stripped several meters and then clean soil put-down and new concrete placed over the top, yet we saw workers sitting in the grass to eat lunch. Several hundered people work at the Chernobyl’ plant again, while they are paid more than the average village worker makes their wages are not all that high, especially when one considers the fact that all of them will probably die of cancer caused by repeated exposure to high radiation levels. One day it is possible that a new functioning reactor will be built in this same site. Right now preparation is underway to start tearing down the two reactors that were never finished, and to build a new sarcophagus over reactor number 4. The old sarcophagus is starting to weaken. It was never meant to be a long term solution to containing the radiation, only a quick temporary fix while something else could be thought up. The new sarcophagus will hopefully buy us humans another hundred years worth of time – then we will be back in the same predicament again: How do we contain dangerous nuclear radiation, and prevent a second catastrophe from occurring?
I am also glad that in this trip I as able to catch a glimpse of life in the Ukrainian country side. It seems much more in-between worlds than does Kyiv. I know I saw a Dedushka sitting in the back of a horse drawn wage parked behind a nice Mercedes Benz in one village we drove through. The country side still has a feel of an older time to it, I wonder how Ukraine as a whole country will progress when cities like Kyiv are becoming increasingly wealthy, capitalistic, and global, and the villages remain agricultural and impoverished?
A Note:
I still have one more part left to post - hopefully that will be up this week. Also, photos should be coming soon. Sorry to keep you all hanging.
Update from Ed: Gwen has successfully uploaded perhaps 150 photos via FTP to our server. I have downloaded the images and I will be posting these to the photo gallery for her. However, I am currently at the NAB convention in Las Vegas and will not have time to upload to the gallery until about Thursday of this week. Check back later this week for a massive photo update!
I suppose I should just say it and get it over with: I went to Chernobyl’.
I still am not entirely positive why I went, but I do not regret my choice in going. I think that there are some parts of history and of human destruction that must be witnessed and that we must make an attempt at understanding.
After visiting the Chernobyl’ museum in Kyiv earlier in the week, I thought that I had a decent idea of what to expect, and yet still I was unprepared for the reality of it.
Chernobyl’s is a place halted 20 years past. Cranes loom over projects that stand unfinished.
Even now, perhaps more now that I have allowed time to pass I am not sure how to describe the place.
What was most haunting to me was not the reactor encased in the “Sarcophagus” but the town of Priyat’. I’ve been to ghost towns before, but never a ghost town this large, nor this modern. 50 thousand people were told to evacuate this city in less than 36 hours. Most left, carrying only the clothing on their backs and nothing more.
Much of the city has been cleaned up – so there are few personal remnants left behind after all these years. One place where items have not been removed is a former kindergarten, seeing toys scattered on the floor and indoor shoes still left infront of painted cubbies suddenly drives home the fact that this was once a city filled with people of all ages, a place where families lived – not just worked.
I think what hit all of us in my group hardest though was the grounds of a former amusement park. A highlight of our time in Kiev had been bumper-cars. Here too stood a bumper-car rink, cars sitting in what is now grass, rusted through somewhat eerily they sit hodge-podge not even pushed over to one corner as if their former occupants simply stood up and walked off.
Though the sight of skeleton buildings is eerie and haunting – what is perhaps worse to contemplate is the fact that people once again work at Chernobyl’s and at the site of the exploded reactor. Close to the Sarcohagus radiation has not yet been clean-up to entirely safe levels like much of the rest of the site (or at least the places that are used frequently.)
Our guide warned us over and over again not to step off the concrete road. The roadways have been cleaned; in many cases soil was stripped several meters and then clean soil put-down and new concrete placed over the top, yet we saw workers sitting in the grass to eat lunch. Several hundered people work at the Chernobyl’ plant again, while they are paid more than the average village worker makes their wages are not all that high, especially when one considers the fact that all of them will probably die of cancer caused by repeated exposure to high radiation levels. One day it is possible that a new functioning reactor will be built in this same site. Right now preparation is underway to start tearing down the two reactors that were never finished, and to build a new sarcophagus over reactor number 4. The old sarcophagus is starting to weaken. It was never meant to be a long term solution to containing the radiation, only a quick temporary fix while something else could be thought up. The new sarcophagus will hopefully buy us humans another hundred years worth of time – then we will be back in the same predicament again: How do we contain dangerous nuclear radiation, and prevent a second catastrophe from occurring?
I am also glad that in this trip I as able to catch a glimpse of life in the Ukrainian country side. It seems much more in-between worlds than does Kyiv. I know I saw a Dedushka sitting in the back of a horse drawn wage parked behind a nice Mercedes Benz in one village we drove through. The country side still has a feel of an older time to it, I wonder how Ukraine as a whole country will progress when cities like Kyiv are becoming increasingly wealthy, capitalistic, and global, and the villages remain agricultural and impoverished?
A Note:
I still have one more part left to post - hopefully that will be up this week. Also, photos should be coming soon. Sorry to keep you all hanging.
Update from Ed: Gwen has successfully uploaded perhaps 150 photos via FTP to our server. I have downloaded the images and I will be posting these to the photo gallery for her. However, I am currently at the NAB convention in Las Vegas and will not have time to upload to the gallery until about Thursday of this week. Check back later this week for a massive photo update!
posted by gewreinn at 11:06 AM (St Petersburg time)
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