CHERNOBYL
IMPRESSIONS FROM THE CHERNOBYL EXCLUSION ZONE, 30 YEARS AFTER THE NUCLEAR DISASTER.
On April 26th 1986, during a safety test in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine, an accident caused by human error led to what is considered the worst nuclear disaster in human history. Part of the nuclear reactor four exploded and released considerable airborne radiocative contamination, which in the following nine days, settled onto parts of the USSR and western Europe. It’s estimated that the amount of radioactive material was 400 times more than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
I was born in September 1986, in Nuremberg Germany, 1,400km from Chernobyl. Even though it seems to be geographically far away, fear circulated amongst the people of my town. They didn’t know if it was safe to leave their houses. Kids weren’t allowed to play in sandboxes for a long time, and also picking mushrooms and berries in the forest, or eating any sort of vegetables was not recommended. My mother was four months pregnant with me at the time, and she remembers coming back from grocery shopping having just eaten a cucumber and lettuce when she heard about the scary news.
Chernobyl was a term I was familiar with whilst I was growing up. Yet it still aquired a whole new dimension, when 30 years after the disaster, I decided to travel to the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
Most of my time there, I spent exploring the ghost city of Pripyat which is located 2 km from the power plant, and at the time of the nuclear melt-down, had around 49.000 inhabitants. These people lost their homes from one day to the other. Many of them suffered lifelong health issues and some of them even lost their lives. Even though I knew what had happened, I didn’t really have the feeling of comprehending it while I was there.
The weather was great, nature seemed so peaceful. To my surprise, there were more people in the area than I had expected. One resident was 81 year old Ivan Ivanovic. He returned to his house only months after the disaster, and since then still lives there. I also saw workers from the power plant, people working at the military checkpoints or in the cantina. Also there were many surprisingly beautiful dogs. But mostly, overall there was this silence - that especially in the abandoned buildings - amplified the absence of life that once used to be there.
When I think back on my travel to Chernobyl, then with a big smile on my face. I had a wonderful time there, meeting locals and driving an old little red Lada through the zone. I laughed so much and apparently made Chernobyl shine even more – at least according to what the locals said.
But Chernobyl keeps me thinking. What have we learned from this unnecessary, man-made disaster? Have we learned anything? Isn’t it that global pollution, or weapon policies in certain countries follow the same principles? Whilst we are aware of the disastrous consequences for us and our planet, we obliviously keep on living as we always did. From time to time we share our concerns, but collectively we do little else to actually change our habits and combat the issues at hand.
