Just to dispel some misconceptions - I did plenty of homework before coming here, so knew exactly what risks I was taking (ie. very little). It’s been almost 33 years since the accident and the background radiation levels in most of the exclusion zone (both.10km and 30km) are the same as most places around the world - about 0.12-0.18 microsieverts per hour. There are of course some hots spots (like the former red forest which was razed to the ground and buried) but our Geiger counters would automatically start beeping if we hit those areas. There are random hot spots all over the place, but mostly outside. When people evacuated they were told to close all windows and doors to limit contamination and it worked - in some areas we went to the outside readings were a little high, but inside the buildings they went back to normal. Of course, over the years there’s been a lot of looting and “visitors” move things around to get more atmospheric shots. One problem is of so-called “stalkers” - people inspired by the video game who sneak in at night, travel over heavily-irradiated ground, and move heavily-irradiated items from safe storage to normal areas. For example, the firemen who fought the fires the night of the blast were seriously irradiated and their uniforms were put in the hospital basement, where they’ve been left all this time - it remains one of the most irradiated areas in Pripyat, and nobody goes there. But “stalkers” go there for thrills, and someone brought a fireman’s helmet to the main floor. Of course, no one knew about this until their scanners started going crazy and/or they failed to pass the security check (which happened to my guide). That said, I had none of those problems while there, including after eating some delicious dishes made by the self-settlers from the food that they grow (including some strong homemade vodka made from apples). They’ve been there 30+ years and are doing fine. In fact, a study showed that people who returned (illegally of course) had longer life expectancies than those who permanently stayed away after evacuation. There aren’t many settlers left - out of 1000+ who came back, only a little over 100 remain, mostly because they’re all getting old (the babushkas I visited were all in their 80s).
I spent 4 days here - about 6-8 hours a day in the 10km exclusion zone where nobody lives but some people work, and stayed overnight in the Chernobyl Town, which is in the greater 30km zone, and where some workers stay during their work terms (4 or 14 days, depending on the work). Everyday we passed through a scanner to measure any contamination we may have had, we were clean the entire time (as are most people). We also had to wear another device that would measure our total radiation over the 4 days, and those were fine too. I also spent half a day at the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor, which was super interesting. I stood next to Reactor 4 which blew, but of course it was behind several metres of concrete. The readings there were between 6-8 microsieverts per hour, but the cooling towers next door were the worse, at about 18. We didn’t stay in those areas long. The rest of the plant, where 750 work daily, was fine.
Anyway, I shot a lot of film here, which I think should be okay, but I haven’t developed yet. I’ll try to post those images in the gallery once I’ve developed and printed a few.
