On April 26, 1986, reactor #4 at Chernobyl’s nuclear plant in northern Ukraine detonated, releasing 400 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. This catastrophic event occurred at 1:23 AM during a poorly executed test. Residents of nearby Pripyat were unaware, continuing their lives as the local fire department struggled to contain the flames. Tragically, many firefighters died from radiation exposure as their hoses sent water that became radioactive steam before even hitting the reactor.
For three days, Pripyat remained in the dark about the disaster. Children played in parks, and life went on. When the truth emerged, residents were given just two hours to evacuate, with 1,200 buses transporting 55,000 people away. They were told it would be for only a few days—and no one returned.
Pripyat became the world’s only ghost city of its kind, still highly radioactive and just three kilometers from the reactor. Nearby Belarus suffered greatly, with 60% of the fallout landing there, leading to widespread birth defects and massive exclusion zones. Over 336,000 people were evacuated between the two countries.
The discovery of the accident was surprising. The Soviets remained silent as radiation spread. Workers at a nuclear plant in Sweden detected increased radiation levels and traced it back to Chornobyl after realizing it was in the puddles they walked through. It wasn’t until a U.S. spy satellite spotted the smoldering core that the Soviets admitted there was a problem.
In 2009, I crossed Ukraine by rail, feeling a personal connection to Chernobyl. The world’s largest peacetime nuclear disaster site intrigued me, and I longed to see Pripyat. However, the cost of a guided tour was exorbitant—$700 USD—so I considered sneaking in instead, throwing $50USD bills at men who earned that in a month. I wanted to stand alone at the threshold of an apocalypse, not just follow a guide's narrative.
The disaster cost an estimated $18 billion (about $40 billion today) in cleanup and containment efforts, contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Union (Soviet Demise Trivia: Three cost factors crippled the Soviet Union in 1991, leading to its specacular collapse. First, Chernobyl. Second, the lost decade losing against Afghanistan. Third, the propping up of Eastern Germany, particularily East Berlin since the Wall fell two years earlier.)
Half a million workers tried to stabilize the reactor, which had melted down and turned 192,000 tons of nuclear material into lava, threatening the water table of the Dnepr River. Thankfully, they succeeded in stopping the lava flow.
The initial sarcophagus built to contain the reactor was deteriorating. With the Soviet Union's collapse, the structure became increasingly unstable, creating fears of a catastrophic dust storm if it failed. Alarmingly, the reactor lid, blown off in the explosion, was wedged inside the core, posing further risks.
Recognizing the potential disaster, EU countries rallied to fund a second sarcophagus—the New Safe Confinement (NSC). This massive engineering feat, completed in 2016, was designed to fully encase reactor #4 and protect against further leaks.
Today, Chornobyl is back in the news due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with reports of increased radiation levels and fires in the Exclusion Zone.
Did I make it to Chornobyl? I ultimately decided against the expensive tour and walked all around Kiev.
(I implore every single media personality to pronounce the capital correctly as KY'IV, not KEEV. You have all gotten this wrong since the invasion began. PROOF - In the Ukrainian, it is phonetically "Київ"; technically in the IPA, it is Kiev (/ˈkiːɛv/ KEE-ev/k'yiv)
My driver, Nicolai, informed me that while it was possible to visit Chernobyl, the bureaucratic hurdles were daunting. I would have needed a waiver and possibly a medical exam, making my dream of visiting Chernobyl feel distant once more. It remains on my shelf of dreams, under C and P, respectively.
- If you want to know the physics of what happened, this is the breakdown: The core had a complete meltdown as the graphite cooling rods did not make it into the water fast enough. The water burnt off, exposing the core. It turned 192,000 tons of uranium, plutonium, cesium-137, iodine-131, strontium-90, krypton, xenon, and much, much more into lava which burned through many feet of concrete and threatened the water table of the Dnepr River. Which then would contaminate the Black Sea, which could mess up the Mediterranean. And no one wanted to think about that so miners, hundreds of them from all over the country, dug fervishly beneath the melting lava, in order to place a warehouse of bags of ice. In a famous moment, the heat was too hot and the miners all completely stripped naked and continued working. But their efforts successfully stopped the lava flow of radioactive sludge at a point known on the internet as the "Elephant's Toe."
- Some of the workers in the clean-up worked 45 seconds a day; the graphite rods landed on the roof of the adjoining reactors. The radiation from the rods themselves was such that the workers could only run outside, grab a bunch, throw it off the side and then return inside until the next day. We might assume this was abused, but those are the stories... the roof was the most dangerous place for workers to be as the meltdown and radiation were all around them. Remote control tractors were brought in from West Germany, but they committed suicide by driving themselves off the roof as, get this salient description, their wiring fried in the contamination—just like if they were short-circuiting underwater! That's the sheer power of the physics behind Chernobyl.
OF RUSSIA: A Year Inside
Brent (Brant is the Russian version) Antonson has seen a Russia few foreigners have. Indeed, few Russians. This young Canadian ventured to Voronezh, eleven hours south of Moscow by train, to spend a year inside a country torn by strife, fresh into a new century, and struggling with the clash between history and future. Tasked with teaching English to students at one university, and then a second, his story is riddled with romance and deception, and punctuated with near disaster and disappointment. Antonson's candour and insights set Russia on the edge of failure and achievement – much like the students he educated, filled with a dash of hope and a lump of fear. His wit did as much to get him in trouble as it did to keep him out of it.
