At 1.23 am on 26th April 1986, during a planned shut down for routine maintenance, there was a catastrophic explosion at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant’s reactor number 4, which blew off the 1,000 ton roof of the reactor core, releasing huge amounts of radiation in to the atmosphere. A few seconds later, there was a second even bigger explosion that blew the reactor apart, creating a disaster that is widely considered to be the worst nuclear power plant accident in history.
Just over thirty years after this event, I was in Pripyat, the town 2 miles from the reactor, which was evacuated 36 hours after the explosions; the residents were told only to pack what they needed for 2 or 3 days, but they never returned, leaving Pripyat a ghost town. There’s still an 18 mile ‘exclusion zone’ around the reactor.
Much has been written and recorded about Chernobyl, the causes and the consequences, so I’m not going to go into detail here, but I highly recommend Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich, for a haunting historical record.
The following are of Pripyat town – including of a former gym, swimming pool, stadium, apartment blocks, schools etc, and famously the fun fair which was due to open on May Day that same year, so never used.
I think these photos speak for themselves.
cheeky gin travels 