Hi Edward,
Its staying as far as im aware!
Ive always fancied a look at that city after seeing several youtube/blogs and programmes.
cheers
waff
No probs, glad its met with approval!
I love seeing pics of this place, very spooky. Pripyat looks great in this condition and I hear that the wildlife is fantastic, with species of certain things in abundance, where they were close to extinction in the past. I also heard that some folk have ignored warnings and have moved back, quite succesfully. Can you confirm that?
Your site is going straight into my favorites! Thanks very much for the photos,
Rob
Yes to both, i saw people that had moved back, but unfortunately didnt have time to stop and chat to them. It was mostly older people form the villages, in Chernobyl itself there are about 3000 Ukrainian and foreign workers working on the decommissioning of the nuke plants (the last one closed in 2000). They live there for 2 weeks then have 2 weeks off in Kiev.
As for wildlife, we saw stacks, cuckoos in massive numbers, and loads of other stuff, wolves from a super long distance to through a scope. The birdsong was really something else, and there were hundreds of dear and hedgehogs.
Were there anykind of time restrictions that you had inside the cooling towers because of it being that hot or anywhere else for that matter? Great pictures too by the way?
No there wasnt, the hottest place we went to was the sand bucket crane which was about 3000 times background, but we would have to literally sit inside it solid for 2 weeks before you would get sick. To put it in perspective I got exposed to more cosmic radiation on the flight there and back than i did in the whole time i was in the zone, i was in the zone 58hours - the usual for foreigners is 4 hours but we knew one of the guides so stayed for longer in the workers area. The only restrictions we had were to stay with the group at all times, no sitting on the grass, long sleeves and trousers all times and no eating/drinking inside the 10km zone, it was 30degrees C so the no drinking was a genuine problem, and we got round it by having small bottles of water sealed outside the zone, opening them and draining them in one inside the mini bus after washing our hands. this was to protect against alpha particles.
My total exposure for the whole trip was the equivalent of one chest xray in a hospital. Interestingly the background radiation was lower in chernobyl than luton lol.......
Great photos. I see in some of them there is new looking graffiti on the walls. Even in the most radiation contaminated area in the world, kids still manage to get in to do graffiti?!
Also, in the police and fire area, any idea how the truck ended up on the roof?
Do you have any idea how they guard the whole area against scrap metal scavengers? That place looks like a scrap hunter's dream.
Its a weird place, quite busy actually we saw about 30 people inside the exclusion zone lol. As for scrap, it was a genuine issue hence the armed guards at the borders, the biggest issue was stealing of car parts - these are still radioactive and people get stopped at customs borders because there car fails a radiation check (common in the areas around chernobyl) because it had been fitted with parts that were contaminated in chernobyl, another story we were told was the stealing of scrap radiators that were then melted down and made into other furniture and then shipped abroad where it was found they were radioactive. As with anything ex-USSR money lubricates the wheels and im sure in the past a blind eye has been turned, also it must be impossible to police and area of some 200,000 Sq KM.
