18 October 2014

Inside Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station

A few weeks before I was due to take my second Photo Experience Days group to Kiev / Chernobyl the tour company messaged me to ask if perhaps we'd like to do something in addition to what we currently had planned, namely to go inside of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station.

We jumped at the opportunity.  An opportunity apparently still quite rare outside of the world of scientists & diplomats.

Security was as you'd expect and hope quite tight, with airport style body scanners at the main entrance, and several card / code activated entry gates along the way.

We had to wear protective hats and plastic slippers over our shoes.  I'm not really sure what they would protect us from.  A token gesture at most?

While we didn't see as much as I'd have liked, being able to go inside of control room number 2 (a duplicate of reactor number 4 control room) , and touching the wall now separating reactor number 3 from the destruction of reactor 4 really was a rather special experience.

Most of the pictures below are from the control room.  A couple are of the "golden corridor", the very long corridor that connected all 4 reactors back in the day.  Now obviously it stops at reactor 3.

The final three pictures are in order; a memorial to engineer Valery Khodemchuk whose body was never found after the disaster; the water pumping area for reactor number 3, and finally the new sarcophagus currently under construction.

A rather special experience indeed.













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