Pripyat (Pryp'yat)

Located in Ukraine 2.5 km from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP) and founded in 1970, Pripyat was the ninth Soviet atomograd (atom city). It was designed for workers at the CNPP and their families. In 1986 Pripyat was home to 47,500 people and was expected to hold 75-85 thousand someday. Known as the City of Roses, 30,000 Baltic rose bushes were planted there to enhance the already beautiful setting where nature and science lived together in peace. That peace was tenuous and following the explosion of reactor four at the CNPP, the city was evacuated and remains a ghost town. In recent years, tourism has taken hold and Pripyat has become a model for Japanese officials hoping to revive the area around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Around dawn on Saturday, April 26, 1986, firemen who had been working on the fire at the CNPP were taken to Medical-Sanitary Center Number 126 (Pripyat’s 400-bed hospital) for treatment. The staff were not sure what they were dealing with at first but by 6:00 am they realized it was radiation sickness and notified the Institute of Biophysics in Moscow. Ninety people were admitted by morning, their radiation-soaked clothes were put in the basement where they remain. To avoid panic, no one in the city was alerted to the radioactive fallout being blown by the fire at the CNPP.

Believing the fire at CNPP was under control and not dangerous to them, the citizens prepared for a normal Saturday by sending their children to school, enjoying the warm weather, and looking forward to the opening of the new amusement park during their May Day celebration. In these first few hours after the explosion, people should have been given stable iodine to protect their thyroid glands from the radioactive iodine filling the air. Although stable iodine is most protective 3-6 hours before exposure to radioactive iodine, within two hours protection is still 80% and after eight it is 40%, after 24 hours it is only about 7%. Because of the secrecy surrounding the event, dispensing tablets was delayed until nightfall on Saturday, 8-10 hours after radioactive iodine was first released. This delay led to people who were 0-18 years old at the time having more thyroid cancer than normal. Something preventable became a main health consequence.

It was not until 10:00 AM Sunday morning that the order to evacuate was given. A combination of disbelief, a desire to avoid panic in the population, and not wanting to look foolish in the world spotlight meant hours passed without the city’s people being properly informed. Even after the order to evacuate was given, people did not know the extent of the disaster or radiation. They were told to leave their pets at home, take their papers, and pack enough clothes and food for three days. About 2:00 PM evacuation began and three and a half hours later 1,225 buses, 250 trucks and other vehicles like ambulances, repair trucks, and fuel tankers took the inhabitants of Pripyat away.

While thick radioactive dust coated everything in Pripyat, workers tried to scrub buildings, sidewalks, and roads clean and trap radioactive particles under polyvinyl glue hoping to make the city ready for people to return. Most of the cats and dogs left behind were shot and buried because the radiation levels in their fur was so high. Finally, on June 3rd it was decided to stop trying to make the city habitable again. People trying to sneak in to retrieve papers, money, and belongings were turned away by the military, and soon, the city was fenced off in barbed wire.

From July 25^th to October 25^th, a few residents at a time were given four hours to collect some of their belongings and say goodbye to their homes. Children’s items and items with high radiation levels were not allowed to be taken. The government gave each single person 4,000 rubles and each family 7,000. New cars at that time cost 5,000.

The roses that were once placed in tended beds are wild, trees fill the soccer stadium, and the Olympic sized pool is empty. A sign proclaiming, “Hai bude atom robitnikom, a ne soldaton! (Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier!)” can still be seen. Levels of radioactivity in the area vary greatly. Walking through the city for a couple hours is generally the equivalent of flying in a plane for an hour, but the water on River Pripyat near the hospital is still highly radioactive. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is now the most popular tourist attraction in Ukraine, with about 300 people a day and up to 1,000, and Pripyat has both legal and illegal tourists. While many tourists are fans of books and video games based on the exclusion zone, others just want to be free to experience the area up close and learn about it. Photographers and filmmakers try to preserve it at least digitally even while tourists and Scrapers continue to rob it of materials and sometimes bring new items, like dolls, into the area to stage photographs. Illegal tourists, known as Stalkers, come for the experience and many are children of the 300,000 liquidators who helped clean up the area after the disaster. Frequent stalkers set up apartments and create areas to make food, giving little regard for radiation levels. Since Chernobyl and Fukushima have a nuclear accident in common, Japanese tourists and authorities visit Pripyat to study the economics of turning nuclear disaster into business as well as using it as a tool for psychological and social recovery.

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