A visit to Chernobyl - Part 2

The Introduction to my Chernobyl trip is done so right into the day and what a day. From now on things will be a bit more image heavy.

The drive to the exclusion zone was a couple of hours but the guides showed a few videos to fill the time. One was the history of the disaster, how it was handled and the heroic efforts of the people involved in the initial cleanup. Many of those died in the days and weeks that followed their involvement.

It also gave us time to chat with some of the other adventurers. A mixed bag of people from all over the world including an adviser from Canada teaching the new judiciary how to avoid the pitfalls and corruption that had caused the recent revolution that occurred in Maidan Square.

Before we knew it we had reached the 30km exclusion zone. This is when things started to get more real. The guide informed us that we were NOT to take any photographs of the guards or the checkpoint, this was made very clear and repeated at every checkpoint we reached. The checkpoints are simple enough. Guard posts with a few buildings, armed guards that check everyone had their passports registered before the trip and were who they claimed to be. The only photo I have from near the checkpoint is my wife and I stood next to an old militay vehicle used during the cleanup that was off to one side.

I had also rented a Geiger Counter but the radiation levels at the checkpoint were still the same background levels found in Kiev city center, around 0.08 to 0.15 micro Sv/hour. Here it is resting on the seat of the bus.

Through the checkpoint things felt normal. Well kept roads and the odd car and truck on the roads. There was a lot more normal life in the zone than I expected. There are people still manning some towns to support the workers still at the reactor site.

Our first stop was a small village, long since departed. Small trees and shrubs growing upto and in some cases in the buildings. The roads through the village were long since reclaimed by soil, and just mud paths from other visitors to the zone. Unfortunately I can't remember it's name.

You are not allowed in the buildings, many are rotting and in a bad shape. That said it is hard not to have a good look about :)

Many people early on came into the zone, risked the radiation and stripped things bare, including the wiring from the houses. That said there is still evidence of the lives people lived scattered around the floor.