I don’t think I have I been to a quieter place, and the silence was eerie. No birds, nor traffic, nor all the industrial hums and screeches that we are accustomed to. A second impression was how intangible radiation is – one cannot smell it, eat it, see it, or touch it, but it is everywhere. It is also very spotty. One can be standing at a place in the center of the exclusion zone where there is virtually no radiation, but two feet away from the road the radiation level can be 1,000 times greater.
Chernobyl was the site of an enormous explosion in l986, which spread radiation over many countries of Europe. I went with my friends Roger and Joanne Pugh, also living and working in Kyiv, and a television journalist from Russia. We had to request permission from the government to go. We had to supply passport information and hire an official guide. The power plant is in the exclusion zone, an enormous area including 91 former villages. It is divided into the central section, an uninhabited area where the power plant is and an outer rim. It is in this outer rim, which is still in the zone as it is called, where some of the former inhabitants made their way back and are living illegally, but with tacit acquiescence from the government.
Why did we go? The last remaining power plant still working at Chernobyl has been much in the news, due to the closure on Dec. 15. Ukraine is so scarred and affected by Chernobyl that it takes on a larger and larger importance the longer one lives here. We knew that people including Vice President Al Gore had visited the plant. Most important, we had been told on good authority that there was almost no danger of radiation in a short supervised visit for healthy adults. And our Russian friend, having made a film on nuclear testing in Russia, wanted to film there because of its historic importance.
Chernobyl is about a two-hour drive from Kyiv, only about 70 miles. The road there differs from other roads – it is strangely empty. The usually busy traffic police were not in action. No friendly babushkas were peddling their potatoes, apples and dried fish by the highway. Traffic was light on the straight road, which cut through thick woods of pines and leafless trees.
At the perimeter of the exclusion zone is a checkpoint where we all had to get out of the car and be accounted for. We then proceeded to the administrative center where we found our guide, equipped with a Geiger counter. He showed us maps of the region and gave us a short briefing about the tragedy. The biggest problem that remains almost 15 years after the explosion, according to Serhy, is the water. The radioactivity remains in the water surrounding the area and the river that empties into the Kiev Sea, a reservoir extending to the Dnipro River in Kyiv. As the sun shone on the water, it was deceptively blue and sparkling, and it was hard to imagine it being so poisonous to humans. Spring floods are a particular danger because if the rivers or lakes overflow, they can spread radioactivity to surrounding areas. As a result, dirt bulwarks have been built to contain the water in case of flooding.
The asphalt roads on which we drove are not the roads that existed at the time of the blast. After the blast, the old roads were destroyed and new roads built. Thus on the roads, the radioactivity level is low. On the other hand you can walk two feet off the road and the vegetation may have very high radiation levels. Particularly lethal is a bright green almost iridescent moss, which is growing everywhere and has an alarmingly high concentration of radioactivity.
Our guide took us to the town of Pripyat about 2 kilometers from the blast where there were 48,000 people living at the time of the accident. The inhabitants remained for three days and then had four hours in which to pack their belongings and leave the next day. Each building was encircled with buses; police ensured that all the residents left their apartments. Each person was allowed to bring only one suitcase but instructed to bring their documents. They were told that they would only be away from home for three days. In fact, they left forever. At some point those who wanted were taken in buses back to Pripyat and allowed to remove those belongings that had some value and were not too heavily contaminated. No children’s things could be taken, however, as children are in much greater danger of radiation than adults because they are not fully grown.
The town of Pripyat, a typical Soviet cityscape of high rise concrete apartments, remains frozen in time, except the doors yaw open and trash is strewn everywhere, interspersed with the predatory bright green moss. We were taken to a kindergarten. With “Hymn to Lenin our father” still on the wall, little chairs, cribs, shoes, stuffed animals, children’s drawings all remained, but strewn around as if in a very surrealistic film. We left speechless. Nearby, in the former amusement center the little cabins on the Ferris wheel swung idly in the breeze while rusted go-carts served as mute witnesses to past joyfulness. I thought of the beautiful Greek and Roman ruins that we have seen and wondered what are future generations going to think of Pripyat? Are these going to be our ruins?
One of the most bizarre happenings at Chernobyl is that former residents, most of them over 70, have started returning to the zone and are living there with some acquiescence from the government, which sends a mobile grocery truck twice a week. Some even have electricity. They don’t necessarily live in the houses they left behind. Evidently they pick out the best houses in the empty villages and towns that have been evacuated.
We found a 77-year-old woman named Maria living in the zone. Her mother and husband had died and she did not like the place where she had been resettled, so she returned and lives in her cottage with chickens, a pig and three healthy looking cats. Although totally toothless, she had a strong face and amazing character. We commented on how cheerful she was.
“What am I supposed to do she asked. Cry?” She lives alone. And while there are some foresters living nearby, she doesn’t like them. We asked her what she did in World War II and she told us that she and many villagers took their animals and moved into the woods where they remained, undetected by the German Army for two years.
On the way back to Kyiv, Roger Pugh said, “I never had any strong opinions about nuclear power plants before, but now I know I am against them.” A friend from Washington met us in Kyiv a few days later. He was puzzled about why we had gone to Chernobyl.
“What is there to see, after all?” he asked.
“There was lots to see,” I answered and that is an understatement. I think the memory will always be green, like the moss.
Grace Kennan Warnecke is the chief of party of Winrock International, NIS-U.S. Women’s Consortium.
