Today, the history of Pripyat is shrouded in the darkness of secrets and terrifying stories about radioactive zombies and five-headed wolves that roam the city. But before the settlement of Pripyat turned into an Exclusion Zone with a couple of hundred wildlings, it was quite a prosperous city in the USSR. How was the ninth atomic city of the Soviet Union built? What happened to the satellite city after the Chernobyl accident? What do they say about Pripyat today of the electric power industry of the world?
We have collected only the most interesting facts from the past and present life of the city and will reliably tell you everything about Pripyat.
The history of Pripyat dates back to 1967. It was then that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant began to be planned, and with it a mini-city for builders and workers of the station. Seven sites were considered for the construction of the satellite city. The area of the future Pripyat was chosen due to its convenient location - a railway station already existed nearby and there was a place for road construction. In 1969, they released a project for a workers' settlement - Pripyat did not immediately become a city - with drawings of the first future buildings. The city began to be built on the banks of the Pripyat River, which is a tributary of the even larger Dnieper River. It belongs to the Kyiv region. Pripyat is only 94 km from the capital of Ukraine. Not far from the city is the territory of Belarus. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is located two kilometers from Pripyat.
The first buildings of Pripyat
Based on the main needs of the then population, the first in Pripyat began to build hostel No. 1, canteen No. 1 and the construction management building. The first street on which the buildings were located was Druzhby Narodov Street. In August 1971, the city had already acquired the features of a settlement. Problems with drinking water and sewerage were solved, the first house with 90 apartments is completely ready for operation. A year later, in 1972, the first school was completed in Pripyat. April 14, 1972 can be considered the real birthday of the city. On this day, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR assigned the then name of the builders' settlement - Pripyat, in honor of the river near which it was located. The status of the city of the settlement will be given only in 1979.
It's interesting that:
- Pripyat became the ninth city of the USSR, which was founded as a satellite town of a nuclear power plant. Prior to this, Obninsk (Obninsk NPP), Sosnovy Bor (Leningrad NPP), Kurchatov (Kursk NPP), Udomlya (Kalinin NPP), Novovoronezh (Novovoronezh NPP) were rebuilt. In fact, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has two satellite cities, since after the closure of Pripyat and the emergency power unit, the station worked for another 4 years. The city of Slavutych was built for workers and their families, which is still alive and well. The population of the city is about 25 thousand people.
Pripyat of 1986 is a comfortable city with a developed infrastructure and almost 50 thousand inhabitants. Lived there, as we understand, mainly nuclear scientists. In order to provide jobs for family members of power engineers, the Jupiter plant was opened, which produces electronic equipment.
Pripyat and Chernobyl
The history of Pripyat is often confused with the history of Chernobyl. It is important to understand that Chernobyl and Pripyat are two completely different cities. Pripyat is located two kilometers from the nuclear power plant, Chernobyl is about 13 km.
The Pripyat nuclear power plant was called Chernobyl because the station is located in the Chernobyl region. The station has nothing to do with the city itself. The history of the city of Pripyat began as a satellite of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1970, while the city of Chernobyl has a long history.
What is Pripyat? This is a satellite of the first nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which gave impetus to the construction of the city.
The building of the nuclear power plant, approved by the project of 1967, could accommodate three different types of reactors: pressurized water VVER, graphite-gas RK-1000 and graphite-water RBMK-1000. It was decided to supply the station with RBMK-1000, which at that time had already been tested at several nuclear power plants of the Union. By 1986, 4 reactors were operating at the station. The capacity of each of them is 1000 MW. Two more nuclear power units, reactors No. 5 and No. 6, were under construction at that time. They were stopped in construction after the Chernobyl disaster. The construction of new power units, which were never launched, was carried out from 1981 to 1983, respectively.
Few people know, but in addition to the well-known disaster of 1986, there was another relatively major accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Pripyat. In 1982, on September 9, the reactor was launched at the Chernobyl power unit No. 1 after a scheduled repair. Reactors consist of several channels where atomic fuel is laid. Outwardly, they look like large holes where fuel assemblies are placed - bundles of tubes with uranium inside.
In channel No. 62-64, the fuel assembly collapsed and, as a result, the channel broke. The emergency protection did not work. For another 20 minutes, the reactor power was very high - 700 MW. This led to sad consequences. As a result of the accident, not only the first, but also the second power units were damaged. A radioactive mixture of steam and gas was released into the atmosphere. The territories adjacent to the station were contaminated. But since the Soviet media very reluctantly advertised the incident, they did not learn about the accident at the Pripyat nuclear power plant, just like the entire Soviet Union.
As you can see, there have already been problems with the RBMK-1000 reactors. By the way, not only at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Several accidents also happened at the Leningrad nuclear power plant, which operates at the same power units.
Insufficiently well designed and constructed reactors are one of the main reasons that is called the culprit of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Along with it, there is an opinion that the station workers are to blame for the accident.
Pripyat. The day that changed everything
What did Pripyat suffer from, how was it? Today, many people know about what happened to the city of Pripyat from documentaries and films. The history of Pripyat is known to many from the personal stories of people who fled the city, but they learned about the disaster more than a day after the accident. What was happening at that time at the scene, in the heart of the station, at power unit No. 4 of the NPP? Let's try to figure it out.
The largest nuclear accident in Pripyat occurred on the night of April 25-26, 1986. On April 25, the station workers stopped power unit No. 4 for scheduled repairs. During the shutdown, it was planned to test a new emergency power supply system proposed by the Hydroproject Institute. For testing, the reactor power was reduced by half in advance. The emergency cooling system was turned off, this was required by the conditions of the experiment.
The power of the reactor continued to be reduced, at one point they even lost control over it. Several times the power jumped from low to high levels. Management was returned to the hands of the station workers. All this was just preparation for the experiment. At 1:23:04 the test began. Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl NPP began to involuntarily increase its power. After 30 seconds, the operators gave an emergency signal. In this case, absorbing rods should enter the reactor core and stop the fission of uranium atoms.
As it turned out later, the emergency rods were incorrectly designed and they failed to stop the reactor. The power of the reactor grew rapidly and in a couple of seconds the system went out of control. There were several strong blows.
At 1:23:47, that is, 43 seconds after the start of the test, reactor No. 4 completely collapsed.
Everything was just beginning...
As a result of the explosion of the reactor at the station, about 30 fires arose, including the roof of the turbine hall. All special response units were alerted. At 5 am on April 26, the fire was completely extinguished. After the fire, the operation of all equipment of the fourth reactor was stopped, and the neighboring power unit No. 3 was also disabled. But the catastrophe in Pripyat expanded more and more. At 8 pm on the same day, due to the accumulation of flammable substances in the premises of the station, a new fire broke out in the central hall of power unit No. 4. They did not extinguish it with the usual means, instead they sent helicopter equipment.
Later, experts will say that by spraying chemicals and dumping sand, helicopter pilots only aggravated the situation and heated the reactor even more. It was possible to extinguish all the foci only in a week! According to some reports, a month after the incident, on May 23, a third fire broke out in Pripyat, which was extinguished by about 300 people for 8 hours. However, the fact of the fire remained classified by order of Gorbachev himself.
Pripyat in 1986 has become a fire-wracked city, curtained with smoke and radioactive emissions.
Radioactive emissions into the atmosphere
Today, the abandoned city of Pripyat is a radioactive zone, which is not safe for health to stay in for a long time. The catastrophe in Pripyat "brought" a lot of dangerous radioactive compounds to the settlement. The total release of radioactive substances after the destruction of the reactor was approximately 14 × 1018 Becquerels (a unit of measurement of radiation activity), which is approximately 380 million curies of radioactive substances. For comparison, this is 100 times more than radioactive compounds were released into the atmosphere in 1945 after the Americans dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From the territory of the station, the wind carried isotopes of uranium and plutonium, cesium, strontium and iodine. Ukrainian lands were infected by 50 thousand square meters. km. Emissions hit 12 regions of the country. But there are also neighboring Belarus, Russia, European countries… Radioactive rains after the disaster were registered even in Germany and Ireland. About 95% of radioactive substances are still in the reactor building. Yes, yes, they have not been destroyed in 30 years. The reactor is covered by the Sarcophagus and should not let dangerous compounds through, but world experts have long argued that the shell of the Sarcophagus is falling apart, and the station is in dire need of additional protection. The leadership of Ukraine has been “solving this issue” for several years now.
Evacuation of the population of Pripyat
What happened in Pripyat, no one knew for a long time, except for some station workers. Either the directors underestimated the scale of the accident, or they tried to hide the incident to the last, or they were playing for time. What happened in Pripyat was not really understood by the country's leadership either. How else to explain the fact that the evacuation of Pripyat took place more than a day after the accident?
The Chernobyl Directorate of Pripyat appealed to the city authorities with requests for the removal of residents on the morning of April 26. But the authorities refused, as the representatives of the nuclear power plant were silent about the details of the accident and did not explain their request. The whole of Pripyat remained in the dark - the evacuation seemed to be some kind of extreme, to which there was simply no need to resort.
The decision to urgently evacuate people from the city was made only at 12 noon on April 27, a day and a half after the accident! The evacuation from Pripyat was announced for the population only at one in the afternoon. It was announced to the whole country that “an accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. One of the reactors was damaged."
In general, the Soviet people listened to the stories of the authorities about small and insignificant events in the city of Pripyat, that it was not the reactor that exploded, but its design was damaged, that only harmless substances fly around from the emissions. About almost instantaneous death from radiation sickness, of course, was also silent.
Stories about Pripyat passed from mouth to mouth with a variety of details. The population was sure that they were leaving the city for a maximum of a couple of days. Everyone was instructed to take only documents and some food with them. Most people were taken to Chernihiv and Kyiv. Several hundred people were evacuated to Russia and Moldova. 47 thousand people fled from the city. Pripyat in 1986 became an abandoned settlement.
The population of the cities nearby with Pripyat was resettled over the next four years!
At first, people were entertained with promises to return everything to its place, but experts knew that the city of Pripyat was lost forever. However, there were those who did not agree with this.
Suicide self-settlers
A year after the accident, part of the population began to return to the city. In 1987, there were 900 "self-settlers of Chernobyl" in the city of Pripyat who wanted to live in the abandoned territory. According to social studies of the 1990s, 80% of self-settlers in the city of Pripyat are people over 60 years old.
Most of them called homesickness the reason for returning, the other part claimed that there was no radiation exposure and they didn’t want to hear about what happened to Pripyat.
In the 1990s, self-settlers lived mainly on “what God sends”, they hunted, for example. However, some even tried to plant vegetable gardens and earned money by telling fascinating stories about Pripyat to journalists.
Although Ukraine called the empty ghost town abandoned, it did not deprive the status of the city, however, like Chernobyl. The city of Pripyat remains a city of regional significance.
But in fact, the history of the city of Pripyat ended in 1986, when the main population left from there. Now Pripyat is a city of rumors, legends and self-settlers, who, by the way, almost all have departed to another world, from old age or radiation is unknown. And modern people, whom the Pripyat Zone attracts as a place of permanent residence, are much less than extreme pensioners in the late 1980s. In the 1990s, the history of the city of Pripyat remembers the chase of prisoners who escaped from prisons and hid in an abandoned forest area. Unlike radioactive zombies, these are not the horrors of Pripyat, but quite real facts. Many, by the way, were detained and returned to places of deprivation of liberty. Many, but not all!
The abandoned city of Pripyat is an ideal place for such fugitives, since law enforcement agencies rarely appear on the territory of the Zone. Today, the gray, ruined and abandoned city of Pripyat is visited only by travelers - extreme people who want to see with their own eyes whether all the horrors about Pripyat are true. And there are a lot of horrors. During the years of inactivity, the city was overgrown with polynya and turned into a barely passable jungle with destroyed buildings. Some visitors see three-headed dogs and wolves there, which may still be true. Others observe radioactive zombies, which they enthusiastically talk about on social networking pages. You can look at dogs, zombies and abandoned buildings by visiting excursions to Pripyat. The programs even include a visit to the reactor closed by a sarcophagus and communication with self-settlers, who claim that they will tell everything about Pripyat as truthfully and interestingly as possible. Well, or not very truthful, the main thing is to be very interesting.
By the way, not only guides and self-settlers talk about Pripyat, but also computer games, for example. In two missions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, players are surrounded by the Pripyat Zone.
Today, Ukraine allows entry to the city of Pripyat without hindrance. There is even an electric train going to the city of Slavutych.
Everyone knows about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986. This terrible explosion crippled thousands of destinies. Someone died immediately, and someone only after a while, suffering from radiation.
More than 30 years have passed, and people are still interested in the nuclear power plant tragedy.
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The following victims are known:
- 2 people died during the disaster;
- 31 people died in the next few months;
- 134 suffered from radiation sickness;
- more than 60,000 people received high doses of radioactive exposure.
Virtual walk through the exclusion zone
Despite the fact that the Chernobyl accident occurred more than 30 years ago, people are still interested in this city. Travel offers to Pripyat are becoming more and more popular: excursions around Chernobyl are being organized, agencies are being created that offer not quite ordinary tourist services. People are rushing to the exclusion zone with all their might, not paying attention to the consequences of this event.
Thankfully, technology doesn't stand still. If you can’t come to the site of the Chernobyl accident, then you can travel virtually. You can see the panoramas of Pripyat without exposing yourself to dangerous radioactive radiation. Perhaps this idea will seem boring to you, because a virtual walk cannot be compared with a real one. But there is no doubt that with access to online maps, you can see everything you want. Panoramas of Chernobyl, the 4th power unit, old buildings, eerie decorations left over from ancient times - all this will be revealed to the gaze of a virtual traveler through the screen of his computer.
You can get acquainted with the surroundings of Pripyat without leaving your home using:
- Google maps.
- panoramic videos.
- Photos posted on social networks and on historical portals.
Causes of the Chernobyl disaster
Since we are talking about panoramic views of the devastated city, it is worth saying why Chernobyl hastily left its entire population. Everyone knows that an accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant associated with the fourth power unit. The course of events of that fateful night is known down to every second. However, it is still impossible to say exactly what exactly led to the explosion of the reactor. At the moment, there are several versions: some of them are both truthful and absolutely delusional. Over the many years that have passed since the accident, Pripyat has become overgrown with legends and speculations of the people that have nothing to do with reality.
Initially, it was believed that employees of the nuclear power plant were to blame for the explosion. But later, all charges were dropped from the workers - they acted according to the rules of exploitation. In connection with this fact, low safety requirements are considered one of the reasons for the terrible catastrophe at the fourth power unit of the nuclear power plant.
Chronicle of events at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
The explosion happened at once, which is why all the events of that night can be retold down to every second. The power unit remained fully operational until the accident itself. Firefighters arrived on the scene at the same time and quickly extinguished the fire. However, people received large doses of radiation, which led to inevitable death. Within an hour after fighting the fire, the first symptoms appeared. 28 firefighters died from radiation sickness at nuclear power plants. Both the reactor and the power unit itself were destroyed.
Nuclear explosion
Disputes about the explosion do not stop to this day: scientists say that it was similar to a nuclear one. In simple terms, a chain reaction occurred in the device of an atomic reactor, which is similar to the explosion of nuclear bombs. The reaction itself occurred in less than a second, before it could turn into a full-fledged nuclear explosion. The substance contained in the nuclear reactor was thrown out, and the fuel dissipated.
But the Chernobyl accident contributed to the steam explosion. It is generally accepted that the pressure inside the device increased by about 70 times, due to which the multi-ton plate that covered the reactor fell off.
Consequences of the accident in Chernobyl and our days
The disaster in Pripyat is considered one of the most serious man-made explosions in the world. Its consequences are so detrimental to the environment and people that even now, after three decades, the problem is still relevant.
About 180 tons of nuclear fuel was in the reactor at the time of the accident. A third of it was thrown out, polluting the territory of Chernobyl.
At the moment, a restricted area has been created around Pripyat, also called "exclusion zone". And even now, after so many years, there is an excess amount of radioactive isotopes in the contaminated soil, in connection with which any agricultural activity is prohibited in the region.
Chernobyl will be abandoned for at least another few decades: the decay of some substances varies from ninety years. Generally speaking, the situation is improving slightly, but radiation manifests itself in different ways. For example, it is known that some of the decaying radioactive elements acquire a new form - sometimes even more active. There is an opinion that by 2086 americium will reach even more than after the explosion thirty years ago. We can only reassure ourselves that this threatens us with increased alpha radiation, which is relatively easy to protect against.
Online walks at the Pripyat nuclear power plant
The fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant The place is very interesting, albeit unsafe. Panoramas of Chernobyl attract people of all ages, including the younger generation. You can understand the craving of people who dream of visiting the territory of the famous nuclear power plant, because they want to know the history that is relevant in modern times. But it should be understood that the panoramas of Chernobyl 4 power units are a dangerous pleasure.
However, at the moment there are tours, the organizers of which promise travelers complete safety. They are not cheap, but there are daredevils who are ready to shell out considerable sums just to get into the mysterious ghost town and see the place where the inhabitants of Chernobyl lived peacefully before the accident at the nuclear power plant.
On April 26, 1986, one of the largest disasters in the history of nuclear energy occurred - the destruction of the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. After the accident, more than 115 thousand people were evacuated from the 30-kilometer zone. New panoramas of this territory, called the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, appeared on Yandex.Maps.
The first panoramas of the exclusion zone were taken by Yandex in late autumn 2010. Then officially it was possible to inspect only Pripyat and the site next to the nuclear power plant. Now the list of objects where you can get has become much wider, and tourists are regularly taken to the exclusion zone.
New panoramas were filmed on March 27 and 28. In most cases, the shooting was carried out from a car, but Yandex employees visited some places on foot, setting the camera on a tripod.
It is noted that it is impossible to roam freely around the zone - each group has an accompanying person. Overalls are not required, but always take a dosimeter with you. In most places, the radiation background is close to natural.
As you can see in the new panoramas, nature is gradually absorbing the once inhabited area. In the villages, many houses have already been almost completely destroyed; everything around was overgrown with trees and shrubs.
We add that the shooting took place in several places: near the station itself, in the cities of Pripyat and Chernobyl, as well as their environs - in evacuated villages, the military town of Chernobyl-2, at the cemetery of freight and passenger trains near the Yanov railway station.
And recently, the guys from Chernobyl found out about my adventures and asked - "Maxim, why don't you make a virtual tour of the entire Chernobyl zone for those who cannot get there themselves?" I started to explore the archive on Depositphotos and saw that the guys have collected really excellent photographic materials on the topic - to be honest, many of the shots are much better than my own.
So, in this post, together we will walk around the main attractions of the Chernobyl zone, look at cool photographs, see what is interesting there - and most importantly, all this will happen without the slightest increased radiation :) Although, just in case, move away from monitors (just kidding).
02. So let's go. Or rather, they have already arrived (we will omit 150 kilometers of the road from Kyiv). Excursion to the Chernobyl exclusion zone begins with the entrance to the so-called Thirty-kilometer zone, or "Thirty" for short. There is a checkpoint "Dityatki" on the border of the ChEZ, here they check the documents of everyone who enters the Zone - you must have an officially issued excursion and escort, otherwise they will simply not let you in - Chernobyl is not a place for walking.
03. Immediately after the checkpoint, the Zone begins. Yes, yes, the same one) I remember that the strongest first impression after entering the territory of the Zone for the very first time was trees and nature in general - it looks a little different here than in "normal" places, no one takes care of the forest, and right along roads you can see thick thickets and impenetrable windbreak.
The first village located on the left along the road towards the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is Zalesye. 30 years after the evacuation, it is already difficult to understand what was located here and how - in the place of the once wide roads, one can now find dense thickets of young aspens and shrubs, and the once-domestic apple and cherry trees in the fertile Polissya climate have grown to gigantic sizes. Now Zalesye is a real wild forest jungle. It seems that you have come to a place where no human has ever set foot, and only in some places preserved houses say that people once lived right here...
04. The next village is Kopachi. It is located just a few kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and in 1986 the so-called Northern radioactive trace passed right through the village. The pollution of the village was so high that all its houses were destroyed - they literally "shone" from radiation. Now only a small MTS station remains from the village of Kopachi:
05. And also the building of the old kindergarten. By some miracle, radioactive air currents bypassed him, and the building remained practically clean. Kindergarten in Kopachi is an old, very "Polesye" building in style. There are high four-meter ceilings and beautiful paneled doors - those on the right lead to a spacious games room combined with a library, and the doors on the left lead to the bedroom.
06. The bedroom now looks like this. There were bunk beds with touching nets on the second tier - the net was made so that it was safe to sleep on the beds.
07. We go further. Our next stop is the famous ZGRLS "Duga", which is also called "Chernobyl-2". Duga was once a top-secret facility - a giant radar designed for over-the-horizon monitoring of enemy missile launches. The following five-pointed gates lead to the territory of the "Duga":
08. And here's what you can see when you get inside the perimeter. The construction is truly gigantic - the height of the antennas is from 130 to 150 meters, and the length of the entire antenna complex is more than half a kilometer. You won't see anything like it anywhere else.
09. By the way, "Duga" remained a top-secret object until the early nineties. In those days, the Chernobyl zone was sometimes visited by foreign correspondents, who, of course, had a question - "what is it that rises above the forest?" To which the KGB officer in civilian clothes, who usually accompanied the group, calmly replied: "and this is an unfinished hotel there")
In windy weather, the antennas of the "unfinished hotel" are buzzing with a unique hum, and the general atmosphere around is reminiscent of some post-apocalyptic film of the early nineties.
10. In addition to the antennas themselves, Chernobyl-2 also has many utility rooms - barracks, residential buildings, hardware rooms, where calculation computers once stood. They are not always allowed there, but with a good guide and a personal tour you can get inside the premises.
11. I walked around the buildings and structures of the "Duga" for about two hours and managed to see far from everything - there was a feeling that these corridors and rooms hide many more secrets and mysteries.
12. Meanwhile, we are moving on. Our next stop is the city of Chernobyl. Despite such an eerie name (which many people decipher as "black story"), Chernobyl is a completely peaceful and quiet Polissya town, known since the end of the 12th century, and the name of the city was given not by some kind of "black story", but by the most ordinary wormwood , which is also called Chernobyl.
However, one cannot but agree that the associative array is very suitable - both the name of the city and the bitter smell of wormwood since 1986 have been strongly associated with a nuclear catastrophe. At the entrance to Chernobyl there is such a stele:
13. You will be surprised, but the city of Chernobyl is alive today - workers of the Chernobyl zone live there on a rotational basis, only a few thousand people. There are a couple of grocery stores and canteens in the city, and the workers themselves live in relatively new quarters built in the 60-70s - Chernobyl gray brick Khrushchevs have now been turned into dormitories for workers.
There are also older quarters in the city, in many of these houses large Jewish families lived in pre-war times. The old part of the city is now almost completely abandoned. It’s a pity, of course, there were very good houses:
14. There is an active fire station in the city, near which there is a very interesting exhibition of robots - robots took part in the work to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Such large-scale work in the highest radiation fields was something new, and therefore robots were made literally from improvised means - one of the European countries sent a police sapper robot to Chernobyl, and another device was assembled on the chassis of a lunar rover - this recognizable robot in the photo on the right .
15. There is also such a monument near the fire station in Chernobyl - it was created by the liquidators themselves at their own expense. On the monuments, the figures of firefighters, dosimetrists and workers are, as it were, wrapped in a canvas of a raging nuclear element, and one of them is sitting, struck by the symptoms of incipient radiation sickness. The inscription on the monument reads - "Tim, who vryatuvav svit" - or, in Russian, "Those who saved the world."
A very good memorial.
16. And we are already moving on, and our next stop is the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Despite the existing stereotypes, walking around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is quite safe, because during the tour they only take you to a fairly “clean” observation deck near the station. By the way, most of the photos of the Fourth power unit were taken from this very observation deck, it looks like the one in the photo below.
By the way, you can shoot the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exclusively from this angle - I don’t know what it is connected with. From memory I can tell you what is in the places not included in the frame - to the left of the shooting point are countless rows of wires on large glass insulators, behind a large parking area, and to the right - the unfinished fifth and sixth power units, as well as a cooling tower.
17. On the other hand, I also found such a rare picture, which shows how the work shift goes from the parking lot towards the nuclear power plant. Currently, the workers are mainly engaged in the construction of a new "Shelter Object", which will cover the old sarcophagus, built by the liquidators in 1986.
18. The new "Shelter Object", colloquially called simply "Arch", looks like this. It has already been completed - literally the other day the "Arch" was completed and moved along the rails towards the Fourth power unit, closing the old sarcophagus.
19. At the Chernobyl nuclear power plant there is also such an interesting bridge across the cooling pond, the water from which was once used as cooling for reactors. I am often asked - is it true that giant catfish live in the cooling pond? Yes its true. I personally took pictures of them and saw how they are fed with a loaf.
20. And now let's go to Pripyat) The city is only two kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and earlier, in good weather, many station workers went to work on foot. At the entrance to the city there is such a stele, indicating the year of birth of Pripyat - 1970. The city existed for only 16 years, and yet, managed to leave very warm memories in the hearts of its former residents.
21. This is what the central square of the city looks like from the window of the Polesye hotel - you can imagine how good it was once on a sunny spring day - when the sun was not yet covered by clouds of nuclear fires and the sky was cloudless.
22. And this is the famous Pripyat amusement park. The Ferris wheel was launched only a few times, in test mode, and it was supposed to fully work on May 1, 1986 ...
23. Cars "Autodrom" to the left of the wheel. If you are in the park - do not go to the cars, they are very "dirty" - helicopters landed on the site near the Autodrom, which in April 1986 tried to put out a nuclear fire in the collapse of the Fourth power unit, and all the radioactive dirt flew from the blades towards the Autodrom ".
24. Pripyat House of Culture called "Enegretik". It is also located on the central square of the city.
25. And this is the Azure pool. There was a good pool, with towers. "Azure", by the way, worked right up to 1998 - workers from the Chernobyl zone went to swim here. Only at the very end of the nineties the pool was closed and it began to gradually fall into disrepair.
26. A lot of purely Soviet artifacts remained in Pripyat - in the last days of the “double” life, the city was just getting ready for May Day, and many examples of visual propaganda have been preserved here - for example, these are portraits of party leaders in the propaganda center located in the Energetik Palace of Culture ". If you are interested in Soviet history, be sure to ask the conductor where this propaganda center is, they will show it to you)
27. In Pripyat schools, there were open notebooks on the tables with the date diligently displayed - "April 26", and a lot of old textbooks.
28. And in kindergartens you can meet dolls with children's gas masks on. It looks creepy, but these are all journalistic productions - during the evacuation from the city, gas masks did not even get out, they are useless from radiation. Already in the nineties, someone opened boxes with gas masks and began to make such staged still lifes:
29. Why is Chernobyl so attractive, why do tourists go to the Zone? Older people come to Pripyat to once again remember their youth, which fell on the 70-80s; younger people come to touch the history. And someone comes to the Zone in order to see what could become of all of us as a result of the arms race and nuclear war.
30. And personally, I just like Pripyat - even in an abandoned state, the city has retained the very atmosphere of the city of youth, spring and hope that was in Pripyat from the very beginning and will be here until the day the last building of the city collapses, surrendering to the forces of nature and time.
31. We got such a walk)
All photos in the material are provided by the photobank. By the way, the guys now have a very good plan that will give you unlimited access to over 50 million (!) cool stock photos, any photo can be bought for only $1.
So look for photos of some more interesting and unique places, on Depositphotos there is a very cool selection.
Or maybe you yourself decide to go to Chernobyl - you will tell later if everything is really there)
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Chernobyl in virtual reality Google
April 26, 1986 Chernobyl met a new day. However, this day was completely different from all the previous ones. The sun shone differently. Blue heavenly azure lay differently on the roofs of houses. And the soccer ball under the feet of perky schoolchildren, perhaps, rolled on wet asphalt for the last time ...
Virtual Chernobyl Yandex
Pulling back the dense home curtain, people greeted the new day, smiling at the warm sun and the light April wind. The fact that life has changed, and the recently built plans will never come true, the civilian population did not yet know. Also, people did not know that nearby, since late at night, there has been an unequal struggle with the bright flame of piercing radioactive rays.
The explosion of the reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant brought a lot of suffering to the recently happy families of the cities of Chernobyl, Pripyat and nearby settlements. The radiation that escaped from under the cover of biological protection instantly scattered over long distances. As a result, yesterday the picturesque green region turned into a forgotten, alienated territory. Evacuation, sudden illnesses, loss of loved ones and home - these are the initial consequences that awaited people after the Chernobyl accident.
In recent years, tourist trips to the exclusion zone have become quite frequent. But since not everyone can control their will and go to the contaminated area personally, virtual walks around Chernobyl are becoming very popular.
Virtual walk through the center of Pripyat
Journey through Chernobyl through Yandex and Google
A virtual walk around Chernobyl will not seem boring and uninteresting. After all, the Internet user will be presented with wide panoramas of all the surroundings of Pripyat, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and other significant places. The only difference between a virtual tour of Chernobyl and a real one is the ability to do it right from the couch. In the new century, advances in computer programming are turning the impossible into reality.
