“We get people who come on the tour dressed in biohazard suits,” says Andrii Kryshtal. “They remember. And they’re afraid. But they still want to see.”
I’m standing outside of a preschool, its weedy yard strewn with broken children’s toys. In my pockets is a dosimeter, a device measuring radiation levels, and it rattles with shrill warning beeps as Kryshtal, one of the leaders with Chernobyl Tour, points to a nondescript patch of grass beneath a tree, off to the side of the walkway. “There is a high concentration of the element Americium here. We don’t know why it’s in this spot; perhaps a worker at the plant stomped his boots here before going inside to see his children.”
A shudder spreads through the group. Goosebumps and tears are frequent during a visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, reactions that come as guides relate the grim history of the area. On April 26, 1986, a safety test at the nuclear power plant went very wrong—a partial meltdown and explosion sent radioactive debris into the air, leading to the immediate, painful deaths of more than 40 first-responders and the prolonged suffering of thousands. The accident forced entire towns to abruptly empty out, and the area within a 19-mile radius of the plant was deemed uninhabitable for at least another 180 years.
I remember the moment I learned about Chernobyl. I was in junior high school: Wikipedia didn’t exist, so I was drawn to a haunting photo in my world history textbook, one that showed the Soviet nuclear facility and infamous reactor number four covered by a hulking cement sarcophagus. I had learned about sarcophagi before, in chapters on ancient Egypt, but the concept of an entire building entombed was too much. Years later and half a world away from home, I was finally indulging that curiosity with an all-too-easy $90 bus tour.
Tourism is a newer industry for this region, only two hours away from Kiev in Ukraine. Chernobyl was absent from guidebooks until 2011, when the Ukrainian government decided to begin official tours, and cash in on a combination of the “#urbex” urban exploration trend and a return to “normal levels” of radiation in much of the area. As the tour websites note, an average single-day visit to the Exclusion Zone—even including a stop at the gates of reactor four—equals a radiation dose equivalent to one hour on an airplane, which is 160 times less than the dose from one chest X-ray. Don’t believe it? You can rent a personal dosimeter to keep track of of how much radiation you're exposed to during the visit.
Tours range from private visits to multi-day itineraries that include basic radiation survival training and visits with “self-settlers,” or the local residents, numbering only a couple hundred, who either refused to evacuate or secretly returned to live out the rest of their lives effectively off the grid, without access to utilities and public services. While it's technically illegal to live inside the borders of the Exclusion Zone, since 2012 Ukraine has permitted only elderly "self-settlers" to stay.
Pripyat, a town of nearly 50,000 residents hastily evacuated following the accident, is the most surreal stop of the tours, and the most Instagrammed. It's all eerily empty structures—everything from a sports stadium and hotel to apartment blocks and supermarkets. The city is a dusty time capsule—a necropolis of broken glass, rotting furniture, and peeling paint. Unsanctioned groups had long been sneaking visits prior to 2011, and so-called “stalkers” would steal away souvenirs—prying tilework from the walls and ripping down signage. “Every year more buildings collapse,” says another guide. We stand in what was once the city theater. I tap on my smartphone’s flashlight and wave it around, catching glimpses of disintegrating ceiling and floorboards, pausing on a stack of jarringly vivid portraits of local government leaders, decorations to be paraded through the town during the May Day celebrations that never happened. Nearby are the remains of an amusement park, bumper cars included, which was brand new and due to have its grand opening coincide with the holiday. The Chernobyl accident came first. The fun park never opened.
There are no safety barriers or marked routes for the tours, which is part of the appeal. We are at liberty to explore, cautiously peering around corners and venturing down dark hallways. Every step reveals decline, destruction, and overgrowth. Nature is reclaiming Pripyat; elk and fox now prowl the neighborhoods.
The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone isn’t completely quiet, though. Periodic forest fires have released radioactive fallout into the air and, in June, the power plant’s automated radiation monitoring systems and website were hit by the “Petya” cyber attack, a ransomware assault that encrypted hard drives and prevented computers from booting until a ransom was paid in Bitcoin.
And then there are the tourists. We step among the debris, taking photos and feeling, in turns, humbled, angered, and alarmed. The site stands as a monument to the havoc wreaked by hubris, obfuscation, and paranoia, all three elements magnifying the literal and figurative fallout from the accident. Earlier this year, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called Chernobyl "an unhealing wound that we live with as a people."
No TV documentary or textbook can deliver the profound reality check that comes from seeing it all for yourself, and I'm glad I did. I admit to cringing while stepping over torn book pages scattered on floors, and wondering how much longer the ephemeral personal belongings around Pripyat can withstand the parade of footsteps. But in addition to providing desperately needed investment and employment for the larger region, the tours are culturally important, preserving and sharing the factual epic of the accident and its consequences.
It's not a moment frozen in time, though. The eroding sarcophagus of reactor four has been replaced. Chernobyl doesn't even look like the image in my history textbook anymore.
