Strange and unsettling: my day trip to Chernobyl

It was the scene of one of the world's worst modem disasters, now visitors can experience this radioactive wasteland on a guided tour.

Sarah Johnstone

The Observer, Sunday 23 October 2005

I wonder if Nikolay has seen Mad Max too many times, as lie floors the accelerator and our Lada rattles along the crumbling asphalt road. Rusty fencing and unkempt grass whizzes by as we barrel towards swaying birch trees. Yuriy and I yell above Shake Your Booty on the radio. Across this broad expanse of plain, not another soul is to be seen.

For a second, it feels like taking a spin through gloriously uninhabited countryside. Then we turn and the world's deadliest nuclear reactor looms up on the horizon. Nikolay and Yuriy are my driver and guide on one of the world's strangest day trips - to the 'exclusion zone' around Chernobyl.

While it sometimes looks like benign wilderness, actually the area lias been abandoned, homes lie bulldozed into the poisoned soil and radioactive moss sprouts in crevices.

After Chernobyl reactor No 4 in northern Ukraine (then still part of the Soviet Union) exploded on 26 April 1986, the surrounding 30 kilometres were declared too contaminated for human habitation. Only the scientists slowly shutting down the other three reactors and decommissioning the plant were allowed within its perimeters.

Now this empty landscape, with its occasional eerie ghost town and frozen-in-time buildings, has become Ukraine's most talked-about tourist attraction. With radiation levels having decreased, limited guided tours were begun in 2002. Last year, one leather-clad Ukrainian female motorcyclist's sensationalised online accounts of her experiences here (see kiddofspeed.com) made the tours famous and the zone has since lured more visitors.

Some 130km north of Kiev, Chernobyl slowly emerges from the surrounding countryside like a horror movie. Traffic drops off, the road worsens and a deathly quiet descends, before we reach the first of two military checkpoints.

Beyond these lies the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, but it's no memorial like Auschwitz. Its closest equivalent to Hiroshima's contemplative peace park is a small, ugly monument to the firemen (or robots' as they were chillingly nicknamed; Chernobyl has its own jargon) who died during the accident's clean-up.

Instead, it has the 'sarcophagus', or hastily concrete-covered remains of reactor No 4. And after a quick briefing at Yuriy's office in the tumbledown former village of Chernobyl, south of the reactor, that's where we head first.

Strange to say, but the sarcophagus is something of a modern icon, like the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben; I've seen it so often in photos, I feel I've already been here. Only Yuriy's Geiger counter insists I really am standing just a few hundred metres from the remains of the ruined reactor. Normal background radiation is around 14 micro-roentgens, but when the counter hits nearly 800 and is still enthusiastically clicking, I insist we move inside the adjacent viewing centre.

Protected by the thick walls, we find the serious-minded information officer Julia, frowning through the window at 'the monster which is always near*. While a new cover is planned to safeguard it, the reactor's current condition is alarming. Its columns are shifting, while the huge 'elephant's foot' of melted radioactive fuel inside is cracking, peeling and producing tonnes of toxic dust. 'The chance of a spontaneous chain reaction inside is very low,’ says Mia. 'But it is not zero.'

Even the phlegmatic Yuriy seems skittish spending much time here and we proceed to the town of Pripyat.

Once home to 47,000 nuclear workers and their families, this is now an atomic-era Pompeii. Tree branches hang heavily over the verges of the town's long, straight streets and burst through the empty shells of restaurants and hotels. Vines have attacked apartment complexes, the football stadium is overgrown and a huge, rusty Ferris wheel creaks ominously.

Classrooms lie with open books and you can still see the detritus of lives interrupted by the order to evacuate, which, thanks to Soviet denial and bureaucracy, came a criminal 36 hours after the explosion. Toys, washing and decorations remain where they were left. People were told they would only be away three days, but most knew otherwise.

Perhaps the most surreal thing about this post-apocalyptic no-man's land is that it has become the dominion of deer, wolves and other animals. Zooming along one of Pripyat’s roads, we suddenly realise there's a herd of radioactive boar crashing through the undergrowth. 'Safari!’ jokes Yuriy, as we set off in pursuit.

I don't think my companions are being disrespectful. This is their everyday workplace, after all, and Ukrainians do have a fine sense of gallows humour. But does this give casual visitors like me licence to carouse in this devil's playground? I'm not so sure. I laugh but squirm in my seat.

By the time we return to base for lunch, I think Yuriy is running out of things to say about nuclear power. 'Why did you take a job here?' I ask him.

'What should I tell you?' counters Yuriy, unimpressed. 'That I love nuclear power?' Of course, he earns more as a guide than he ever did as an English teacher, and with thorough medical monitoring, it seems worth the probably small risk.

There are currently 360 people living in the exclusion zone, most of them elderly. We visit Maria, 75, after lunch. After the accident, Maria was moved near Kiev, but was unhappy and returned to her bungalow. At her age, she says, she's unperturbed by radiation and even grows some vegetables in her garden I ask her what it's like being here 011 her own without former friends and neighbours. 'Well, it's a bit boring sometimes,' she shrugs, 'but what can you do?

On the way back from Maria's, we get demob happy, driving fast, playing loud music and laughing. It's a strange end to a strange and uncomfortable day.

My trip remains a painful memory long after I return home. Images like the graveyard of 2,000 helicopters, fire trucks and ambulances used by emergency crews at the disaster keep coming back to haunt me. I feel guilty that I wasn't more moved at the time. I had the excuse of researching a guidebook on Ukraine but did I really expect that to stop me from feeling voyeuristic?

I witter on like this to anyone who'll listen, until at a function I meet someone who's also LAUGHED WHILE AT CHERNOBYL. He feels a bit weird about it too, and it gets me thinking we can’t be the only ones.

Several weeks later the true horror of the place finally floods, as I'm reading extracts from Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl in the newspaper. I hang on every heart-wrenching word of lives long removed from the exclusion zone by death or resettlement. The newlywed fireman roasted inside out by radiation. The six-year-old dying girl who wants to live because she's 'still little'.

And that's when I start crying. For some things, I guess, you don't have to be there.

П. While-You-Read Tasks

1. White reading you were to do some interesting tasks. The first one was to find the words which are similar to corresponding Russian equivalents in their phonetic and/or graphic form and could be understood without translation. So give four words each.

   Lada	radiation	micro-roentgen	complex (n)
   accelerator	tour	enthusiastically	football stadium
   horizon	online	monster	evacuate
   reactor	equivalent	ton	bureaucracy
   bulldoze	bio-robot	phlegmatic	surreal
   radioactive	sarcophagus	atomic	post-apocalyptic
   Soviet	jargon	era	safari
   kilometer	briefing	restaurant	licence
   perimeter	meter	hotel	monitoring

2. Give the words and expressions which denote the following:

1. an act of cleaning a place

2. strange and frightening

3. showing a lack of respect or courtesy; impolite

4. be persistently and disturbingly present in (the mind)

5. a chemical reaction or other process in which the products themselves promote or spread the reaction; the self-sustaining fission reaction spread by neutrons which occurs in nuclear reactors and bombs

6. a report or description of an event or experience

7. to come into sight in enlarged or distorted and indistinct form often as a result of atmospheric conditions; to appear in an impressively great or exaggerated form

8. an area into which entry is forbidden, especially by ships or aircraft of particular nationalities

9. a book of information about a place, designed for the use of visitors or tourists

10. leave (a place or vehicle) empty or uninhabited, without intending to return

11. a deserted town with few or no remaining inhabitants

12. an indeterminate or undefined place or state; a piece of unowned land or wasteland

13. grim and ironical humour in a desperate or hopeless situation

14. a barrier or manned entrance, typically at a border, where security checks are carried out on travelers

15. make (something) impure by exposure to or addition of a poisonous or polluting substance

3. Which epithets were used to describe the atmosphere of the ghost town of Chernobyl? the author’s feelings?

4. How many logical parts have you separated the text into? What titles would you give to them?

Ш. After-Reading Tasks

1. Answer the questions to the text.

1. What was the purpose of the trip?

2. Who escorted Sarah during her drive to Chernobyl?

3. How did Chernobyl become a tourist attraction?

4. What are the author’s impressions of the trip before the moment the reactor comes into sight?

5. What is the nature like in the exclusion zone?

6. What lead to the evacuation in the exclusion zone?

7. What measures were taken to prevent further dispersion of radiation?

8. Is it safe to stay on the territory near the reactor? Why (not)?

9. What did Sarah see in the town of Pripyat?

10. Is the exclusion zone completely uninhabited?

11. How did the trip end?

12. What were the author’s impressions after the trip was over?

13. How did it happen that she understood the true horror of the disaster?

2. Comment on the following statements.

1. The order to evacuate came a criminal 36 hours after the explosion.

2. I laugh but squirm in my seat, (squim because of the guide’s jokes)

3. It's a strange end to a strange and uncomfortable day. (they were laughing when going back)

4. I feel guilty that I wasn't more moved at the time.

5. For some things, I guess, you don't have to be there.

3. Explain why the author said that...

1. ... Chernobyl is no memorial like Auschwitz (a Nazi concentration camp in World War II, near the town of Auschwitz in Poland)

2. ... its closest equivalent is Hiroshima's contemplative peace park.

3. ... the sarcophagus is something of a modem icon.

4. ... the Ukrainians have a fine sense of gallows humor

5. ... the reactor is like a ‘monster which is always near’.

6. ... the town of Pripyat is an atomic-era Pompeii

7. ... the exclusion zone is an apocalyptic no-man’s land

4. Give the main idea of the text.

5. Now describe Sarah’s day trip to Chernobyl, the pictures on the screen may help you.