On a suitably cool, gloomy and rainy day, we make the 85 mile (140 km) drive north from Kiev to the doomed city of Chernobyl. For those too young to remember (or who haven’t seen the recent chillingly disturbing TV mini series) Chernobyl was the site of the world’s worst ever nuclear disaster. On the night of April 26, 1986 the Chernobyl complex’s nuclear reactor number 4 did what was considered by Soviet nuclear scientists to be impossible - it blew up. The disaster is most often described as an explosion, but as our expert guide explains to us, the reactor didn’t actually explode, but instead erupted like a volcano. The reactor to which it was linked, number 3 survived the disaster undamaged. However you describe it, the core of the reactor disintegrated spewing a vast quantity of highly radioactive material - uranium and plutonium - onto the neighbouring area and into the atmosphere. The prevailing winds carried a cloud of radioactive dust northwest into northern and northwestern Europe.

The tragedy was almost certainly due to a combination of an unrecognized technical fault in the reactor’s design, management incompetence, Soviet bureaucracy and human error. Initially the extent of the disaster was unrecognized but once the enormity began to unfold, Soviet authorities and in particular the KGB, tried to deny that there was a major problem and to then attempted to cover it up. Mandatory evacuation of the city of Pripyat, just two km away and home to 50,000 Chernobyl workers and their families only began later in the day on April 27 and it was another week or more before evacuations from other nearby villages began. It was only when scientists in Sweden began to detect unusually high atmospheric levels of radioactivity which they worked out could only have come from a Soviet reactor that the authorities in Moscow had to admit to having an unprecedented disaster on their hands.

Officially only 31 people died as a result of the accident, all of them “first responders”, firefighters and maintenance workers who tried to contain the fire and any leaks from the reactor, unaware of the scale of the disaster and the rapidly fatal dose of radiation to which they would be exposed. Unofficially it is estimated that as many as 40,000 people will die (or likely by now have died) as a result of exposure to radiation spewed from the reactor, mostly due to cancer

But a visit to Chernobyl is not just a glimpse into this nuclear catastrophe and the resulting human suffering, but more starkly provides a glimpse of what life was like in a rather privileged Soviet community

Construction of the Chernobyl complex with its intended five Soviet-designed nuclear reactors began toward the end of the ‘60’s. The complex was intended to supply electricity to most if not all of Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union. The city of Pripyat, specifically constructed for Chernobyl workers and their families was opened in 1970. The entire region was “closed” and carefully monitored by the KGB, meaning that it was off-limits to anyone without a special permit even local villagers. By Soviet standards of the time, the citizens of Pripyat led a privileged, if secret life. The city supermarket sold such rarities as bananas, oranges and pineapples. The city even boasted a waterfront restaurant and cafe where coffee was available - mostly unheard of in the Soviet Union of the 1970’s.

There were nurseries and kindergartens (women also had to work in the complex), a swimming pool, theatre and even a fun fair complete with Ferris wheel. Unfortunately, the citizens of Pripyat never got to enjoy this “playground” - it was due to open on Mayday 1976, four days after the reactor erupted. 

In true Soviet style, most of the complex workers and their families were not informed of the magnitude of the disaster, only that they had to evacuate at a moment’s notice and take nothing with them. No worries though, they’d be back home in a few days and besides which they were being taken to Kiev so it would be like a vacation. Of course they were never allowed to return. Everything in the city was contaminated with radioactivity. To make sure that nobody returned to collect their belongings, the authorities sent in teams to go through every building and apartment to remove and bury just about everything. This being the Soviet Union of course, much was stolen - in 1976 a colour television, another privilege Pripyat citizens enjoyed, was too much to pass up! Over time, the authorities stripped out some of the infrastructure which could easily be cleaned of radioactive contamination to be repurposed including window frames, elevators and wiring. 

Eventually, the Soviet authorities built a new town for the displaced citizens - Slavutych, some 40 miles to the east - who continued to work in areas of the Chernobyl complex that either weren’t contaminated, or less so. The complex continued to generate electricity and at least one of the reactors was still in use as late as 1990

The almost unimaginable clean-up soon got underway with some international help. The highly dangerous and exposed core of reactor 4 was eventually encased in concrete and steel, a sarcophagus which has only very recently been further built out and reinforced. (The new sarcophagus was officially opened just three days before our visit). Beneath the concrete and steel there are several tons of uranium-235 and plutonium which will take hundreds if not thousands of years to decay. An American company is close to completing work on a storage facility close to reactor 4 and linked to it by a rail line. Once the facility is finished, work will begin on removing the contaminated core and the radionuclides. This will be done remotely and mechanically as the radioactivity destroys electronics within hours. The process is estimated to take 70 years and the facility is designed to last at least 1000 years

Since the disaster, the Chernobyl region has been closed off with access requiring a special permit. There is a 30km radius buffer zone and within, a 10km exclusion zone around the reactor protected by checkpoints manned by the Ukrainian police and military. Anybody entering the buffer zone is required to wear a radiation monitor which is checked on exiting the area. In addition, on leaving the buffer zone everyone is required to pass through a sort of whole body Geiger counter which is a further check on whether you’ve picked up any radioactivity on clothes or shoes

The city of Chernobyl is within the buffer zone. It still has around 140 permanent residents (mostly elderly) and a large number of scientists, firefighters and officials who spend 15 days working within the buffer zone followed by 15 days outside. Their job is not just monitoring, but also clean up. After the disaster, the work of removing every living things in the vicinity of the reactor got underway - not only every tree, bush, plant but the top half metre of soil. Attempts were made to drain the rivers and man-made lakes around the complex (water was used to cool the reactors) but this has proven to be an almost impossible task. Vegetation has grown back but is constantly monitored. During hot summers, wild fires break out which have to be rapidly brought under control to prevent contaminated ash from being carried away by the wind. The clean up will likely last for hundreds more years!

The city of Pripyat is within the exclusion zone and can only be described as the eeriest of ghost towns. The forest has reclaimed most of the city and its once broad boulevards and squares. Through the trees, the crumbling skeletons of massive apartment blocks and the city’s Soviet-style public buildings are visible.

We went inside several of them - apartments, the supermarket, theatre, restaurant and most poignant of all, a kindergarten.

The photos that accompany this entry speak for themselves. The one building we didn’t enter was the hospital. This is where the first firefighters who tried to tackle the eruption and fire were taken before being evacuated to Moscow. Their discarded clothes are still in the hospital’s basement and the building is still too dangerous to enter without appropriate precautions 

The immediate area around the reactors - three completed, one destroyed and one under construction at the time of the disaster is both ghostly and oddly normal. The cranes and building material around the unfinished reactor 5 are just as they were on April 26, 1986 - rusting but considered too contaminated to remove.

The administration building in the centre of the complex is still in use managing both the clean up and plans to turn part of the site into a giant solar panel farm. We see armies of workers coming and going and even visited the works canteen which for sure hasn’t changed much since Soviet times

We leave Chernobyl in the middle of a thunderstorm and massive downpour, pass through the checkpoints and our detectors confirm that we’ve been exposed to less radiation than on a regular trans-Atlantic flight. 

What we have been exposed to is a first-hand look at the consequences of the worst-ever nuclear disaster and a stark reminder of what life was like in the Soviet Union