Embracing Dark Tourism: a day at Chernobyl

It would be easy to criticise the niche industry of dark tourism that has sprung up around trips to Chernobyl, but the day I spent there was so fascinating I would recommend it to anyone.

Click here to see more pictures of my day in Chernobyl and Pripyat.

Chernobyl is somewhere I’d been interested in since I was about 12 when I first heard about the intact abandoned city (which is actually Pripyat), so I lept at the chance to go during my year abroad, when I was studying in Russia.

Road to ruin

On the journey to the exclusion zone, we watched an English language documentary on the events of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the days immediately following, including the Soviet attempts to solve and disguise the catastrophe.

The documentary was brilliant, and I really wish I knew what it was called. I’d done a lot of research on Chernobyl, but there was still so much I didn’t know, including the very real threat of a second explosion which could’ve left much of Europe uninhabitable.

We saw actual film footage taken the day after the explosion as technicians took Geiger readings around the site with no clue of the actual extent of the damage. People can be seen calmly walking around the site with no idea of the very real danger they were in – the footage was patchy and blurry due to the affect of radiation on the camera as they filmed unawares.

The exclusion zone was very quiet and perfectly eery. On passing through the border, we began to see abandoned houses which had been taken over by forests.

The sights of Chernobyl

In Chernobyl itself, we met our guide. The town is odd. A handful of residents still live there with special permission, so while half the town is decaying, another half is partly functional. The daily radiation reading is shown on a screen outside the post office.

There were also a lot of really cute kittens, though this was probably unrelated to the radiation.

Our guide pointed out a statue of Lenin and informed us he was ‘quite famous’ in the former Soviet Union.

We then drove past the plant itself. The reactor which exploded is covered with a steel ‘sarcophagus’, which is in the process of being replaced. Another reactor was being built at the time of the explosion in 1986, and is still in exactly the same state – the cranes and machinery around the site are too badly contaminated to be moved.

Almost every machine or car which was used in the clear up operation had to be abandoned and left in a ‘machine graveyard’ for twenty years. These were removed a few years ago.

Debris that was left on the roof of other buildings had to be removed by hand after the machines kept breaking down to the high levels of radiation. Our documentary showed footage of the workers do this – they wore full-body protection suits and lead aprons and were only permitted to be on the roof for a few seconds at a time. After more than a minute or so of exposure, many were temporarily unable to move their hands.

The abandoned city of Pripyat

We then headed to Pripyat – the abandoned city. There we explored three buildings: the palace of culture, a sports centre and a school. Pripyat was a very new city when it was abandoned – gaining city status only eight years prior to the explosion of the power plant. This means that the buildings are structurally very sound and will probably be around for decades.

The interiors were all completely ruined, with all windows smashed. A lot of things had clearly been ‘conveniently’ placed for our benefit as a lot of visitors tour the same buildings, but exploring the abandoned buildings was amazing nonetheless.

After a few hours in Pripyat, we were then given a talk by one of the project managers working on the new sarcophagus and the conservation operation that is constantly monitoring the power plant.

The most depressing thing to come out of the day was the realisation that Chernobyl will always be there: the site will still require constant monitoring in the years, decades and even centuries to come and will probably never become inhabitable again. Our guide described it as ‘a monster that will always be there’, which seemed pretty fitting.

Getting there

We organised the trip through New Icon, who were great. For around £70 per person, we got our transport to and from our hotel, our documentation to enter the zone, a guided tour and a meal. Prices tend to work out cheaper if you go in a bigger group. Tours are only allowed on certain days so check beforehand – we began our tour two hours after getting off the overnight train to Kiev as it was the only day during our stay we could do it.

(Update: as of 2015, I can find no evidence that New Icon still exists as a tour company, but both Chernobyl-Tour and ChernobylPripyat appear to offer similar excursions.)

Going is safe – experts estimate a day spent around Chernobyl and Pripyat equates to about the same background radiation as a flight from London to New York, and your radiation levels are checked when you leave the exclusion zone. You’re not allowed to touch any plants or soil during the day as this carries more radiation – the Geiger counters go berserk when you point them at moss.

Dark tourism

For me, Chernobyl was incredible. I find it absolutely mind-blowing that this event happened shortly before I was born and yet is discussed so little today. While Dark Tourism might be described as distasteful, I think it brings an awareness to people that is impossible to get any other way – the sheer gravity of seeing an entire city completely deserted and a huge industrial power plant frozen in time is something I won’t forget in a hurry.

There’s so much to learn about and from Chernobyl – I’ve barely skimmed the surface here – and there’s something so tragically poignant about just how clueless the authorities were. Yes, the Soviets wanted to hush everything up, but they also had very little idea about the scope of what had happened.

Almost every hostel in Ukraine now offers trips to Chernobyl through tour agencies, and if anyone is interested I would urge them to go. It really is a completely unforgettable experience that you can’t have anywhere else.

Would you visit a site like Chernobyl?
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