Chapter 3

FASCINATION

I can’t remember when I first became interested in Chernobyl. As a child, I remember occasionally hearing snippets of stories about the city abandoned after a nuclear meltdown. I had no idea what a nuclear meltdown was, but to a child the phrase sounded like something out of science fiction. As fictional as it may have sounded, it wasn’t the accident that piqued my interest, it was that an actual, real-life city was deserted somewhere. The idea blew my mind. I have often imagined what it would be like to walk through such a place, to be somewhere so familiar and yet so empty; to wonder what it was like before whatever tragedy befell it.

It wasn’t until I attended university in 2005 and saw a collection of photographs taken by a biker riding alone through the Exclusion Zone (although her story later turned out to be a fabrication), long before going there was popular, that I became fascinated by what happened. I sought out as many photographs of the accident as I could, and that was when the iconic silhouette of Chernobyl’s ventilation stack became ingrained into my memory. In 2007, the dark, sprawling PC video game ‘Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl’ was released, allowing me to visit and explore - in a manner of speaking - the places I had seen and read about. The game is set in an alternate timeline where strange, supernatural anomalies have appeared across the Exclusion Zone following the Chernobyl accident. While it has its shortcomings, the Ukrainian developers recreated many recognisable locations with photo-perfect accuracy and the setting was dripping with atmosphere. The more I played, the more I longed to go there and see the plant for real. Still, as a student, a lot was happening in my life and I soon moved on to other, equally fascinating things. Over the years, I returned to the story of what happened a few times, and each time I felt a greater desire to learn more.

Fukushima changed everything. On March 11th, 2011, at 14:46 JST, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake - the 5th strongest ever recorded - occurred 70 kilometers east of the Oshika Peninsula of Tōhoku, Japan. The undersea quake caused a tsunami as high as 40 meters to hit the coast, devastating everything in its path and travelling up to 10km inland. Over 16,000 men, women and children lost their lives94 in the ensuing chaos, and a further 400,000 lost their homes after over one million buildings were damaged or destroyed. The World Bank’s estimated economic cost was US$235 billion, making it the costliest natural disaster in world history.95 The tsunami overwhelmed the inadequate flood defenses of the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant with ease and submerged the entire site, including its backup diesel generators. The instant the earthquake had been registered offshore, Fukushima’s three active reactors shut down and commenced decay heat cooling via their emergency diesel generators. Now those generators were underwater, useless, and the country was in turmoil. Fire trucks fought their way along roads upturned by the earthquake and tried to connect their hoses to the reactor pumps, only to find that no adaptor for the connection was available on-site. Despite the valiant efforts of Fukushima’s staff, all three reactors melted down and their containment buildings were badly damaged by hydrogen explosions. It has become the world’s second worst nuclear disaster, and the only accident to be rated a 7 on the 7-point International Nuclear Event Scale other than Chernobyl itself. Fukushima’s other three reactors were offline for refuelling at the time of the accident, otherwise who knows what would have happened.96

After that fateful tsunami overran the Japanese plant, I sat glued to my computer, trawling the net for every piece of new information. Chilling phone-videos, uploaded to YouTube by survivors of the unstoppable, encroaching wall of water, were viewed with wide eyes, over and over again. It wiped out everything in its path. Vehicles, from simple bicycles to monolithic fishing vessels, were tossed inland like paper; whole towns were flattened and pushed inland. As the situation at Fukushima Daiichi worsened by the hour, residents of online forums and blogs speculated about what would happen. Would this be another Chernobyl? Armchair nuclear experts appeared from nowhere, offering opinions on nuclear safety systems and how Japan was well prepared for such an event.

As it turned out, the one person who appeared to me to be the most well-informed was wrong when he said the reactors were borderline indestructible and that even this tsunami wouldn’t cause a meltdown. Like many others, I wondered what the implications would be for the environment and the residents living nearby. I realised that - in spite of my interest - I didn’t really, fundamentally understand how nuclear reactors worked, nor how good their safety systems were. The likes of Greenpeace are loud and uncompromising in their view that nuclear power is unsafe and produces damaging, non-disposable waste. Advocates reply that it causes proportionally far less deaths than coal, which accounts for 3 times the amount of electricity generated worldwide as nuclear; that fly ash emitted by a coal power plant carries 100 times more radiation into the surrounding environment than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy; indeed, that nuclear generates more clean electricity than any other widely commercialised form of energy.97

So which is it? There’s so much fear and propaganda surrounding nuclear power that it’s almost impossible to know what to believe when you’re uninformed. I wanted to learn the truth for myself, and that’s when I became more serious about learning the secrets of nuclear power and its potential for harm. What better event to learn from than the worst man-made disaster in history? I wanted to know what had gone wrong at Chernobyl, how it had happened, who was responsible, how it was resolved, and what lessons were learned. First, I watched as many documentaries as I could find. Some appeared to be objective and informative, others were speculative - even brazen - with their invention of ‘facts’ about what happened. To confuse matters further, the original Soviet account of what happened was very misleading. This meant a lot of books written in the years after the accident were inaccurate. I came to realise that a lot of false information surrounds this legendary nuclear accident; everyone has heard of it, but few know what really happened. This blurring of information only made me more determined to learn the truth.

In late August 2011, I happened to be browsing a photography forum for the first time in months, when I saw a thread advertising a trip to visit the Exclusion Zone. It had been fully booked, but as crunch time neared there were a handful of drop-outs. Scheduled to depart on October 8th, it was mere weeks away. I knew that tour groups offered guides to show curious visitors around, though they were on hold because of vandalism, but that these tours followed an approved, supervised route. This wouldn’t be like that: the group was expecting to have unrestricted access to Pripyat. I didn’t know anyone going, but I decided then and there that – 26-years-old, penniless and unemployed – I had to join that expedition. At £425, plus transport to Ukraine and evening meals, the cost was less than I expected; an achievable target. Of course, the cost of first getting to London from where I lived in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and then flying to Kiev and back doubled the price to somewhere close to £1000. The money would cover buses, accommodation, guides, breakfasts, and – most crucial, I suspect – bribes.

How was I going to come up with £1000 in just a few weeks? I decided to sell my first proper electric guitar, a beautiful transparent red Ibanez Joe Satriani Signature JS-100, and an excellent Nikon 105mm macro lens I used nowhere near enough to justify its £650 value. I was sad to see the guitar go. It was the first instrument I had ever loved, but I’d replaced it a year earlier by a 30th Anniversary Schecter C-1, and the lens I used perhaps once every few months. I put them both on eBay. Two African scammers and several wasted weeks later and I had the money I needed, thanks to a generous loan from my parents making up the shortfall.

The group was to assemble and set off on October 8th from Luton Airport outside London, then fly to Borispol Airport near Kiev in Ukraine, where we’d meet up with more people from around Europe. First I had to reach London from the old stone mill house where I lived in the countryside north of Aberdeen, about as far away from London as you can get in Britain. Faced with the choice of a hellish, twelve-hour bus marathon or a two-and-a-half-hour railway jaunt down to Edinburgh, followed by an overnight sleeper express to London, I chose the train. I’d wanted to travel on a sleeper train ever since I was a boy. It sounded so adventurous (Murder On The Orient Express, anyone?) and had the added benefit of getting a proper rest, which just wouldn’t happen on the cramped, uncomfortable bus.

On Friday evening my father drives me to the nearest bus stop, five miles from home, and bids me farewell. One hour and 50 kilometers later I walk into Aberdeen’s elegant Victorian station, with its recently refurbished wrought iron and glass ceiling, and board the first of my two trains. The journey down Scotland’s east coast is uneventful, and I soon can’t see anything in the windows except my own reflection, so I recline in my seat, pull out my phone and load up Minecraft: Pocket Edition. It came out today, and for some strange reason I’m excited at the prospect of becoming the first person to ever play Minecraft at Chernobyl. Having crossed the majestic Forth Rail Bridge in total darkness, the first leg of my journey ends at Edinburgh Waverley. It’s 11pm. I disembark and find my next train idling in a quiet corner at the opposite end of the station, where I check with the uniformed conductor that it’s going to London.

I once boarded a 9-car Virgin Pendalino for the short 25 kilometer hop from Preston to Lancaster, only to realise after half an hour that we hadn’t stopped. Upon being asked, the unimpressed conductor struggled to maintain his poker face while informing me I was on a non-stop express to Glasgow - almost 300 kilometers away. Oh... They diverted the train to make a brief stop halfway at Carlisle, just for me.

Not today, she reassures me. “We’re full up tonight.” I find my cabin and open the door. The other chap isn’t here yet so, childishly, I claim the top bunk as my own, planting my bag down like a flag. Time passes but nobody else arrives, and as we’re about to leave, the same lady knocks on the door, pokes her head in and declares he must not be coming. I’ll have the cramped compartment to myself, although I soon discover that sleeping on a train isn’t so easy. It constantly rattles and rolls, stops and starts, as I speed south towards the capital.

It’s 4am before I know it, and the train is easing into London. I’m cold and tired, but after a frigid walk between stations I’m soon on the next two-hour train to Gatwick Airport. Having travelled the farthest to get here, I’m also the first of the group to arrive, but by 9am others are starting to appear. I approach the assembled men and women and introduce myself. It’s nice to finally put faces to the names of the people I've been talking to for the last couple of weeks. I meet a lot of great people today, but in particular I meet Danny, Katie and Dawid. The four of us will stick together for the rest of our journey.

A disinterested announcer informs us that our plane is ready for boarding, and we walk out across the tarmac to the waiting Ukraine International Airlines Airbus A320. I try to keep up a calm façade, but inside I'm panicking; I’ve only flown twice before - at night - and hated it. The possibility of being in a plane crash, powerless to prevent what’s about to happen, has always terrified me and is a routine nightmare of mine. A window seat behind the port-side wing affords me an excellent view, but my phone is a better distraction from my nerves until the flight attendant orders all gadgets to be switched off. I close my eyes to block out my surroundings as I’m forced back into my seat by the jet’s powerful engines. It’s as thrilling yet terrifying as I remember.

The view from a plane is better than I ever imagined; seeing the world from this height for the first time makes me realise how truly insignificant we all are, as cliché as that is. I spend half the flight trying hard to guess where we are from visible coastlines, and equally hard trying not to think about the 35,000 feet between me and the ground. The aircraft begins its bumpy descent through darkening clouds into Borispol Airport in late afternoon, after four and a half hours in the air. It’s overcast and raining, but I don’t care - I’m back on solid ground and can forget my fear of flying for the time being. How do aircrews do it?

It’s obvious our group stands out, because as soon as we enter the terminal people all around us are staring. We’ve been instructed ahead of time that under no circumstances are we to tell the airport staff at Borispol why we’ve come to Ukraine. Instead, we say we’re tourists on a photography trip. The skinny, blank-faced man in the booth stares at me, skeptical. Do all foreigners come to Ukraine for Chernobyl? I doubt it, but I flash him a brief, innocent smile, just in case. Apparently, if they knew our true intentions there’s a chance we wouldn’t be allowed into the country, though I’m not sure why.

We have a few hours to kill. A bus will pick us up at 8pm, but until then we’re free to pass the time. After exchanging some currency, I join Danny, Katie, Dawid and a friendly guy named Josh in a search for food. Like the gormless tourists we are, we settle on the first familiar site - a small, American-style restaurant in the main terminal building, decked out like a classic 50s diner. The walls are papered with old black and white photographs of New York, complemented by hanging prints advertising Coca-Cola. The menu is styled after a front page of The Times newspaper. We’re famished, but since none of us apart from Dawid speak or read the slightest bit of Ukrainian, and the waitress doesn’t speak or read English, we each settle for tea. I guess tea is universal.

Sipping our piping hot green tea, my new friends and I chat about Chernobyl, our camera gear, where we’re all from, and how excited we are to be here. The time flies by, and before long we’re boarding our coach to the thousand-year-old central city of Bila Tserkva 80km away, where we’ll spend the night before pushing on to an ICBM museum in the south. We arrive at Bila Tserkva without incident by 11pm, the only notable view on our darkened approach to the hotel is an intriguing floodlit industrial site. After standing around in a hotel lobby for 20 minutes while our guides have a lengthy discussion with hotel staff, we’re directed up a marble-and-stained-glass staircase. I get the impression they didn’t know we were coming. On the top floor we again find ourselves with no direction, until Dawid comes to the rescue and explains the situation through a mixture of hand gestures and Polish to a cleaning lady. Once everyone has, at last, dropped their belongings in their rooms and explored the building (the roof access, our natural first port of call, is locked), a collective decision is made to retire to the hotel pub.

Collective, that is, except for me. I’m as tired as everyone, but I didn’t travel all this way to stand around and get drunk - I want to explore. Dawid agrees to accompany me after some badgering, so we each grab a tripod and camera and head out into the night. Our hotel lies on the northern edge of a well-lit intersection along with a couple of shops and restaurants, but beyond it the streetlights thin out, leaving long stretches of overgrown sidewalk and potholed road in darkness. Dawid and I say little as we retrace my memorised route to the industrial site we passed earlier. Along the way, I encounter my first unexpected sight - stray dogs. We’ve only been walking for ten minutes but already two or three have walked past, ignoring us on their blithe night wander. This may not be so unusual to some, but stray dogs just aren’t something you see in the north of Scotland. To counter the dogs, it isn’t much longer before I encounter my first expected sight - a Lada Riva; one of the most iconic vehicles of the Soviet Union.

The white central building of the industrial site looks like a grain silo, comprised of two sets of twelve featureless silos separated by a tall building in the middle and two huge silos at the far end, all connected by a flimsy-looking horizontal section. Dawid and I photograph it from the shadow of a tree, trying to keep out of sight of the man in an ex-army truck sitting out front. We don’t hang around long, only moving a little further down the road to photograph the site’s boiler plant before heading back to the hotel to sleep.

The Strategic Missile Forces Museum was once a top secret Soviet missile base, used to house the cold-launched SS-24 “Scalpel” silo-based missile. On display, among 2000 other items of interest, is the 35-meter long, much feared SS-18 “Satan” intercontinental ballistic missile. It had the highest yield of any nuclear missile ever developed, at 20 Megatons, and was far more powerful than any ICBM in service today. For comparison, the Hiroshima bomb was ‘only’ 16 Kilotons to the SS-18’s 20,000 Kilotons, which has an area of destruction of 800 square miles. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, all missile bases in Ukraine were demolished as part of the ‘Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty’ (START) agreement with the USA. All except this one, which was turned into a museum. The base is fun - I explore a 12-storey missile command module buried 40 meters underground, photograph lots of exotic military vehicles and see some impressive missile technology up close, but it rains the entire time and isn’t what any of us travelled all this way to Ukraine to see. We’re itching to visit Chernobyl.98

We depart from the museum at around 2:30pm and begin the ten-hour slog towards the town of Slavutych, which will serve as our base of operations over the next few days. As the light outside grows dim, I fight the tedium by taking light-trails photographs of passing vehicles through the window. Soon, equally bored, almost everyone on the bus joins in. We pass through Kiev, not really seeing anything apart from distorted, rain-soaked shapes and the enormous, floodlit, 102-meter tall Motherland statue, standing guard atop the city’s tallest hill. Beyond Kiev’s city boundaries, the dead-straight, well-worn road is pitch black. There are no streetlights and other vehicles are few and far between; all I see beyond the bus’s own faint glow are ghostly silhouettes of a corridor of trees. Lacking anything better to do, I burn an hour or so explaining exactly what happened at Chernobyl to Danny, Katie and Dawid. At one point during our journey, the bus appears to spontaneously catch fire, alarming everyone except the driver. We smell burning and see smoke in the cabin, but he's unphased and keeps driving as if this is perfectly normal. I’m beginning to appreciate how nonchalant Ukrainians are.

After ten lifeless, interminable hours, we arrive in Slavutych. Erected 50 kilometers east of Chernobyl, Slavutych began construction in 1986 shortly after the accident, specifically to house Chernobyl’s workers and their families after Pripyat was rendered uninhabitable. Its name comes from the Old Slavic name for the nearby Dnieper River. The town is home to 25,000 inhabitants, and its economic and social situation is still heavily influenced by the power plant and other Chernobyl zone installations, because most of the residents either worked or still work there. Its construction involved architects from 8 different Soviet republics, and, as a result, the city is split into 8 distinct areas - each with their own different styles of architecture and colour schemes. Despite being very modern in comparison to other places in Ukraine, there has been a high rate of unemployment since the power station shut down its last reactor in December 2000, leaving only 3,000 residents employed there.

We’re told to split ourselves into groups, so my friends and I elect to get a 4-bedroom place together. The bus creeps around Slavutych in the dark, dropping groups off here and there until it’s our turn. We’re deposited outside a 5-storey building, where a short, plump, dark-haired woman in her early 40s awaits. She gestures for us to follow, then leads the way upstairs to a five-room apartment on the top floor. It’s her own home! Dawid, being Polish, understands bits and pieces of Ukrainian, and infers that she’s renting it out to us as a way of making a little extra money, and is living with her children in her mother’s flat across the hall for the duration of our stay. It’s a lovely little place, very homely and warm, with family photographs lining the walls and soft toys in the bedrooms; far more comfortable and welcoming than any hotel. I feel guilty about the arrangement, but try to reassure myself that it’s to the benefit of all involved. We settle ourselves in, make several cups of her delicious tea and chat for a while, but soon drift off to our beds in anticipation of the days ahead.