Into the heart of Chenobyl

A visit to a primary school in Pripyat was also unsettling. Desks and toys lay strewn across the rooms - now covered in broken glass and overgrowth, and suffering from wear and corrosion as a result of extensive weather damage. However, some of the paraphernalia in the school- which included a textbook extolling the virtues of Lenin - along with a collection of teddy bears looked remarkably – and arguably too - pristine. I could not hide my cynicism that some of this stuff was blatantly planted by opportunistic - albeit slightly macabre - tour guides relatively recently in the hope of creating “photogenic” opportunities for visitors.

Convincing my wife about the merits of visiting Chernobyl, the scene of one of the world’s most appalling nuclear disasters caused in the cruellest of ironies by a badly executed safety test, was not an entirely straightforward process. Fortunately, she surprisingly acquiesced.

Tourism to the Ukraine has invariably suffered a dip following the 2014 revolution and subsequent war with Russia, but Kyiv as a city exceeded my expectations in terms of its wealth of attractions and night life. That it was not bristling with tourists, obnoxious stag (normally British) parties and furiously pouting instagrammers was a welcome relief too.

So why Chernobyl? Unsurprisingly, I was compelled to visit the site after becoming glued to the HBO miniseries of the same name, a show which has won plaudits for both its factual authenticity and superb acting. As someone who is also fascinated by the Cold War period, Chernobyl to me was one of the most defining events to shape the Soviet Union’s history. In fact, Gorbachev once attested the tragedy was a major factor behind the USSR’s demise.

Getting to Chernobyl is fairly easy from Kyiv by car taking just under two hours although it is compulsory to hire a local tour guide owing to the site’s sensitive nature. Upon entering the exclusion zone it is hard not to be mesmerised by the sheer beauty of the fauna and flora in abundance. Similar to the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) on the Korean Peninsula , the absence of human activity in the area has perversely allowed a vibrant ecosystem to flourish.

The entire experience is a very eerie one. Abandoned buildings in Pripyat , a town that was evacuated in the days following the meltdown , remain as they were in 1986 , with Soviet era insignia still hanging proud. The nearby town of Chernobyl itself is the only place in the whole of the Ukraine to have a statue of Vladimir Lenin, the rest having been removed following the Euromaien uprising. Lenin’s ongoing presence owes nothing to nostalgia but rather because the statue is considered too radioactive and thus dangerous to demolish radiation exposure would indicate that the reservists’ chances of survival were probably higher in Afghanistan than in Chernobyl. Even though official Soviet figures estimated the number of dead at 33, the unofficial total number – taking into account those who perished prematurely from cancers or other illnesses since – is unknown, but it is estimated to be anywhere between 4000 and several million.

So is Chernobyl safe? In short, the answer is yes . The levels of radiation are roughly double what you will experience on a long-haul flight. However, people’s well-being is also contingent on them not behaving moronically. Tempting as it may be to some to trouser or handle discarded objects, it is actively discouraged not least because many of the items are still contaminated by radiation. Equally, the radioactivity levels in the soil are quite high in certain areas as well hence why guides advise people not to sit down on the ground.

Excusing a small outdoor display showcasing some of the remote controlled heavy machinery used in the clean up operation, Chernobyl remains much as it was back In 1986. As more tourists come and visit, this will change. Right now, the experience of going to Chernobyl is raw mostly because the government spends a large chunk of its budget in the region on safeguarding the actual site as opposed to promoting tourism, and rightly so.

Officially people are prohibited from actually entering the buildings in Pripyat although the rules are widely flouted. Guides are given wearable GPS devices that must remain switched on at all times to keep the authorities informed of their movements but most of them simply deposit their trackers into nearby foliage before taking groups into the buildings.

Our esteemed guide assured us the ban on entering Pripyat’s abandoned properties had nothing to do with the radiation levels but rather the dangers posed by structural decay , an issue which means a lot of the buildings are quite close to collapsing. This attempt at comfort did not fill us with confidence especially as he revealed this bombshell once we had already navigated sixteen flights of stairs in one dilapidated and decaying apartment block.

Drunkenness among tourists- unbelievably – is a recurrent problem. A group of inebriated visitors , according to our guide, were recently reprimanded for playing tag and jostling about in the mud after consuming several bottles of home brew vodka. Even so, visitors are subject to mandatory radiation tests at the end of their tours to remove any threat of wider contamination.

A short drive away from Pripyat is nuclear reactor number four, now encased in a solid steel structure known as the Sarcophagus . The sacrifice and bravery shown by people during the clean-up operation cannot be understated. Many army reservists were given the unenviable choice of either helping with the Chernobyl recovery – which comprised of removing graphite rocks in 30 second shifts from the roof of the reactors once a day - or doing a tour of Afghanistan.

Unbeknownst of the risks many soldiers opted for the former. That roughly 15% of the 830,000 people involved in the recovery operation are believed to have succumbed to long-term health issues as a result of

Unfortunately I fear Chernobyl is at risk of becoming a very morbid and vulgar amusement park. There are already abundant signs that the tragedy is being somewhat trivialised. Outside the exclusion zone, hawkers peddle tasteless merchandise including T-shirt’s emblazoned with “I survived Chernobyl” catering to the burgeoning dark tourism market.

Charles Gubert Founder, GTL Associates