Photos

Photo Dump 2: Chornobyl and Slavutych

Last week, I took a tour of Chornobyl with some friends. It was the first time I had been there, and I took a bunch of pictures. I was really self-conscious of not wanting to take the same photos of the same things that everyone else does (especially since most of the tours do mostly the same stuff all the time). So hopefully these will at the very least be fresh.

It was weird though being in Pripyat, a place I’ve read about and seen a bunch of pictures of. The lived experience added new layers of understanding.

A couple days after returning from Chornobyl, I went to Slavutych to check out the city archives and make some contacts there. Slavutych was built as a replacement city for Pripyat, a place to house the workers that were liquidating and still running the power plant (the last reactor wasn’t disabled until 2002). Slavutych is an almost surreal city—the last planned city the USSR built, the youngest city in Ukraine, and almost completely unchanged since the late 80s. The city is dying as work wraps up on building the new sarcophagus, the New Safe Confinement structure, because when that’s done, the last big employer moves out. Already it’s a city of children and the elderly, since everyone in the middle moves away for school, work, or really any other excuse they can find. There’s a palpable feeling that the end is nigh for Slavutych, though earlier this month, a new mayor was elected on a platform of finding a way to keep the city alive. Fun fact: he’s only the 2nd mayor Slavutych has ever had—the first one served for 25 years and retired in April of this year.

There are a few videos embedded like gifs below, I hope they work.

Chornobyl, Pripyat, and the Zone

The obligatory entrance selfie in front of the border station to get into the 30km zone

It's hard to see, but in the center there's a sign marking the town of Chornobyl that has been crossed out, as many of the towns and villages were when they were evacuated

The Wormwood Institute in Chornobyl

Monument to the firefighteres and first responders the night of the explosion. The plaque says "To those who saved the world."

The monument right in front of the power plant, visible in the background. To the right, off camera, is the new sarcofagus

Driving around Pripyat

This is the exterior to the sports complex by the school

A hallway in the school

Leaving Pripyat through some backcountry roads

This is the Russian Woodpecker, a giant antenna array that was a Soviet secret--on maps this area was designated a summer camp

It's hard to see the scale of the Woodpecker, but this one gives some idea of it

Slavutych

The 3rd original plan of the city of Slavutych. The 4th was the one that was actually built, though the differences between these two versions are only the placement of some buildings. That said, the tall central building was never built, and the lake in the central park is a skate park

Cool stained glass panels in the Slavutych city museum

Radiation detector

Old Tallinn, one of only 3 restaurants in the city

The Angel of Slavutych