
In April 1986, near the city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine, to the north of Kyiv on the Dnipro river and close to the border with Belarus, a test was being run in Reactor Number 4 to simulate the conditions of a temperature drop in a reactor during electricity blackout conditions. At the time there was an incidental drop in reactor power, but the test was undertaken anyway with the result that the reactor stopped functioning completely. Those familiar with nuclear fission technology will know the result: a dramatic power surge, as the coolants used to keep the uranium reactor core stable effectively stopped working and the core overheated. The reactor melt down, reaching temperatures in the thousands of degrees that caused the reactor coolants to explode out of their pipes in bursts of hot radioactive steam. Next the concrete bunker containing the facility melted, and the reactor core burned for several days uncontrollably.
Over 500,000 personnel were involved in the containment operation as the fire was put out, and it is estimated as the costliest disaster in human history, with an estimated expenditure of some USD$700 million. Several dozens of people involved in the rescue are estimated to have died, either directly on the scene or subsequently due to acute radiation sickness or longer-term exposure to radiation; nobody really knows the total human death toll. Initially a 10 kilometre exclusion zone was established around the site, later extended to 30 kilometres, and it remains there to this day. Radioactive fallout was spread across what was then the USSR and it was believed that some radioactive fallout spread to western Europe. It became a defining incident in the gradual collapse of the Soviet Union, that, much like Russia today, they had no control over their technology that they had allowed to corrode and degrade to the most atrocious of standards.
Over 100,000 people were permanently evacuated from Pripyat and the surrounding area as a result of the incident, and some parts of the site remain extremely radioactive to this day. However at one point after Ukrainian independence, in the first decade of the twentieth century, some enterprising Ukrainians decided to set up tour companies in Kyiv offering all-inclusive tours of the Chornobyl site and surrounding areas. Radiation exposure for a day or two was considered considerably moderate, as long as you didn’t go around digging up the top soil because the soil just underneath was heavily radioactively contaminated. And so a steady stream of tourists took expensive day trips in minivans up from Kyiv courtesy of private tour operators, and a nice little business arrangement was put in place.
And then came the events of February 2022, when the Russians invaded northern Ukraine (amongst other areas) in an attempt to take the capital, Kyiv, from the north. One of the sites they occupied was Chornobyl, and they took selfies with them standing next to the reactor core and all sorts of other crazy things, apparently oblivious to the risks they were taking. No doubt the Russian Armed Forces had not briefed their troops properly on the risks of entering a radioactively contaminated region; this is typical of the unprofessionalism of the Russian Armed Forces and they put their own soldiers at risk. And then the Russians withdrew in their entirety from northern Ukraine, having halted their advance on Kyiv in the realisation that the city was heavily defended and would be impossible to take with their dilapidated, undisciplined and inexperienced armed forces. So they did an about-turn with their armoured column and drove it straight back again, abandoning the Chornobyl site that they had also been occupying.
At this point the war was on, very few tourists travel to Ukraine during wartime, and the Kyiv tour companies offering their private tours dried up entirely. Now they are just empty shells of websites, offering services they don’t really provide and email addresses and contact forms to which their is no response. But that was not going to deter a hardy team of four individuals, as we decided we wanted to look round anyway. We would hire our own car and drive up there, and we would deal with the government formalities ourselves. It turns out still to be possible to go there, but absolutely nobody does it. Except us (if we’re lucky, because at the time of writing we still haven’t got there). You apply to one Ministry for permission, and they tell you to obtain military press accreditation from the Ukrainian Armed Forces: a cumbersome if relatively straightforward process that involves criminal record checks and the like but the passes will be handed out for legitimate journalistic purposes. And travel to Chornobyl to see what remains amidst the war is regarded as a legitimate journalistic purpose.
You have to take an independent guide, so we learned, and there is a fee for permission to enter the exclusion zone although it is not exorbitant. Without the right paperwork you won’t get past the military checkpoint north of Kyiv to enter the exclusion zone, so it is quite a chase of pieces of paper but so far the process seems to be going smoothly enough that two of our group are travelling from Lviv to Kyiv tomorrow and two more are waiting patiently in Kyiv for us to arrive. So the group is shortly to be united. I have bought a high quality Geiger Counter. There is the question of where to stay. There used to a hotel in the exclusion zone but I’m almost certain it’s closed now. I can’t find its telephone number or any other contact details. However some enterprising soul is renting out his whole house in the exclusion zone along with kitchen and bathroom and a series of bedrooms, so I think I have the accommodation sorted. We just have to bring our own food and drink, and we can cook for ourselves.
It’s not sure what grim and ghastly sights await us but I am sure our compulsory guide will have an idea of where to take us. We need a car big enough for the four of us and our guide, whose identity is a complete mystery; and I don’t suppose I’m going to give the car hire company our itinerary. I have had a few problems with my unusual car hire itineraries in the past in Ukraine; they always somehow seem to cause disquiet (for example where the hire car’s transponder finds you driving towards the Zero Line at Kupiansk). No doubt some sort of exorbitant deposit will be required but that’s pretty typical in Ukraine, particularly in light of the quality of the roads. I have always had my car hire deposits returned in full, however; Ukrainians remain quite honest by European standards, at least in my experience. This is all the more surprising given the complete lack of a functioning civil court system.
We’re packing the minimum: no body armour, and IFAK yes in case one of us gets injured in the middle of nowhere. After the Russian occupation, I imagine the area will be heavily mined and even booby trapped, and there will be tank traps everywhere, so we will have to take care. It’s an eccentric adventure, but undertaken in the best spirits of wartime journalistic folly, and I hope the trip comes off and I can write to you all about what we saw and the condition of the site now amidst this dreadful war. Chornobyl is one more problem that needs to be resolved to European standards once this war has been brought to a close.