Chapter 5

ARRIVAL

I’m dragged from sleep by the incessant chirping of my alarm after a mere 5 hours, but am immediately eager to get moving. After years of waiting and countless hours scrutinising every facet of the accident, today is finally the day I’ll see Chernobyl with my own two eyes. Bleary-eyed but alert, our foursome walks a few blocks to the restaurant where we’ve been told to regroup for breakfast. It’s apparent that Slavutych is a colourful and more modern town than the other Ukrainian settlements we saw yesterday. The distinctive Soviet-bloc look to the architecture is still present, but it looks less dated somehow, as if more self-aware. Perhaps it’s because the town went up as the Soviet Union itself fell down. The streets are wide and well maintained, with tall pine trees filling every available space between buildings and lining the roads. In a way it’s a little too idyllic, a little too clean; I sense that the town isn’t filled to capacity.

The restaurant lies on the northeast corner of Slavutych’s main town square. One nondescript, white concrete building among many, it has no windows to peer through, so the four of us are initially unsure we have the right place. We step through the unmarked door, but even here there’s just a short entranceway with a marble-tiled floor and staircase at the end - no people or furniture - so we ascend until we find a handful of recognisable faces. After depositing my equipment in a tall pile of bags by the stairs and grabbing a seat, I look around. This a rather surreal place to eat breakfast. The expansive hall - we occupy only a fraction - is draped in red and white, with chair covers and other décor more akin to a wedding than a light breakfast for a group of tired, foreign travellers visiting a nuclear disaster area. This must be where large town events are held. Behind the bar, four twenty-something girls in monochromatic blouses and skirts serve tea and coffee, under the watchful eye of a short, ample woman in her early 50s. Her thin smile and commanding presence remind me of a mafia boss.

I eat my fill of chicken, tomato and cucumber (summarising every single meal we’ll be given in Ukraine) and guzzle as much tea as time and bladder permit, before we gather our belongings and set off for the train station. It’s a dreary, wet morning, devoid of warmth, but we’re lucky enough to encounter a break in the clouds and cover the distance to Slavutych station in 10 minutes. I observe the city’s residents materialising from all around as they march in silence down the main road along with us; everyone heading in the same direction.

The train line gives life to Slavutych, like an artery from Chernobyl’s heart. Without it, few of the 3,000 workers who continue to maintain the plant and study the Zone could do their jobs. There are no direct roads for cars or buses between them, and they certainly can’t fly, so the train is their only realistic option. If Chernobyl was abandoned entirely, I think it’s safe to assume that most – if not all – people living in this remote town would leave. Knowing this makes me melancholy, made more so because the town has a high level of radiation-related illnesses among its population. Until I arrived here, I had no idea the number of people still employed at the plant was so high. That so many people’s livelihoods continue to rely on it after such a disaster, and in such conditions, gives you a renewed perspective and appreciation of your own circumstances.

Passing through a small but bustling market at the foot of the station building, we climb the cracked concrete steps to the nearest of the station’s four open-air platforms. Nobody waits on the other three. Beyond the farthest platform are several long, white, two-storey (office?) buildings that look a little like converted sheds with their corrugated metal roofs. I don’t see a soul through the unlit windows. With the train only minutes away, the platform is filling up. Unlike many of my fellow travellers, I pull out my camera and begin photographing the scene, eager to capture what I’m seeing, but quickly stop when I notice the eyes of the town’s residents through the lens. They are not happy about being photographed. In fact, they’re not happy that we’re here at all.

An enchanting, old, grey Soviet electric train engine with cyan and magenta trim rattles into the station, pulling half a dozen carriages behind it. Without thinking, my years of mad dashes for seats on the daily rail commute from a previous job kicks in, and I slip through to the nearest door to hunt for a place to sit. Men and women already aboard don’t exactly strain to hide their hostility towards me sitting near them, so I pick a pair of unoccupied inward-facing benches. It’s only once we’ve squeezed four of us onto each padded bench that I realise we as a group, spread throughout the train, must be taking up an entire coach-worth of seats, leaving many legitimate passengers to stand. Despite not speaking the language, I can tell by the tones of their voices that they’re justifiably angry. I suspect they see me as someone who has left his cushy life in his modern house to come and gawk at a reality they have to endure every single day, and I’m forced to admit that - relatively speaking - they’re right. Even though I have a genuine interest - passion, even - in what happened here, probably more so than everyone I have arrived with, and perhaps even more than some of those who work here, I cannot deny that I’m better off than these people and could leave whenever I want. I know the sorry tales of Pripyat evacuees shunned by society out of an uneducated fear of radiation, many of whom were forced to return to the Zone, and an intense mixture of guilt and shame at my lack of courtesy wells up inside me. I won’t sit in their seats again.

The train’s deafening approach to the Chernobyl plant is breath-taking. During the first half you pass several farms and individual houses interspersed between woodland, cross over the Dnieper and Pripyat Rivers, and even pause for a few minutes on the outskirts of a village. The second half is flat marshland all the way to the horizon, and is an incredible sight. Though it feels somewhat perverse to admit, this is exactly how I imagined the landscape surrounding a nuclear disaster to look, and catch myself wishing it was misty. Of course, this is how northern Ukraine and Belarus have been since long before coal power was dreamt of, let alone nuclear, but at the very least it’s fitting. It’s autumn, so you would expect everything to be drab and retreating for the winter, but still I’m surprised at the dearth of variety in the landscape’s colour and form. Beyond the occasional patch of pale green on a bush here and there, there’s little visible life. We hurtle across the border and rattle through 15km of neighbouring Belarus, though there are no fences or markers to indicate the transition.

Piercing the horizon like a monument to caution, I catch my first glimpse of Chernobyl’s 75-meter cooling stack as we turn a gentle corner a few miles out. It’s gone again within moments as the track straightens and we bear down on the plant. Tension among my fellow travellers is building. Our train pulls into the station, inches forwards until its carriage doors synchronise with those of the enclosed platform, then comes to a halt. Doors open and its regular passengers disembark before we have a chance to move. I follow them out, but can only watch as they filter in silence through the only exit in the platform’s far end. Where do we go? Nobody has told us anything. I can’t see outside, the enclosed space is made from cold grey sheets of corrugated metal, split in two by a row of thick cyan pillars supporting a slanted roof. Looks like it was intended to be temporary. Our guide appears from the flock of workers evaporating into the complex and calls us over. We’re ushered to an intersection between two corridors, where three stern, imposing, buzz-cut men in Army fatigues await. Two stand watch while a third guards a desk, armed with a clipboard. He takes his time calling names from a list and inspecting our passports, as each of us silently prays we haven’t come all this way for nothing. Ten anxious minutes later, we’re all approved without incident and are shepherded to the end of a low, wide corridor, where tube lights cast a golden glow onto more corrugated walls.

Our guide is Dr. Marek Rabiński. Sporting an untamed silver moustache, bald head and wide-rimmed glasses, he has the stereotypical look of an absent-minded genius scientist, and I like him immediately. He’s the head of the Department of Plasma Physics and Technology at the Andrzej Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies in Poland, a founding member of the Polish Nuclear Society, and an expert on the accident. Marek gives us a prolonged health and safety monologue before reciting our itinerary for the day, as if we hadn’t already memorised it. Nobody is going to climb to the roof of a building and hurl themselves off, if we wanted to do that we could have done it back at home, but of course he’s still required to warn us not to. Everyone, including me, is growing visibly impatient - muttering, tapping their feet, changing stance every few seconds and looking around. Now we’re so close, it’s almost painful to do nothing, like having your favourite food dangled just out of reach. We have precious little time here as it is. The preamble is slowed further by having to go through an interpreter - Marek doesn’t speak English - until finally, after what feels like half an hour of itching to go, we step outside.

No longer a distant silhouette, I can pick out details and colours on the Sarcophagus, a few hundred meters away. It’s partially obscured by a huge, decayed rolling crane from where I’m standing, but I ignore the obstruction and take a picture anyway, struggling for a better angle in the entranceway. True to expectations, rain begins to fall from the colourless sky, so I stash my camera and join the others climbing aboard a wonderful old red and white 1970s bus. It’s the exact same type that ferried out evacuees after the accident. A soldier of indeterminate rank will be joining us. A low ranking officer, maybe? I can’t tell, he has no visible insignia under his coat. With a regulation shaved head, wearing aviators and perpetually chewing gum, he’s about 5’ 8” - a little shorter than me - and speaks with an accent as thick as tar. I love it, he almost sounds like he’s speaking English phonetically, it’s that thick. Sadly, he rarely says anything, much like the gruff, crinkled bus driver, and both look like they could think of a million better things to do than babysit us.

I’m too excited to care. With everyone safely aboard, we’re driven for 5 minutes around to Unit 4. Standing in front of it, I can see the Sarcophagus in all its terrible glory. It is immense! I knew it was big, of course, but I’d failed to comprehend just how truly prodigious it really is. The chimney reaches a height of 150-meters, which is difficult to visualise for someone raised in a hundred-year-old, two-storey stone mill house in the countryside. Incidentally, two years later I built a full-scale model of Chernobyl in Minecraft using a few plans I found online, and confirmed again that it is, in fact, gigantic.

I’m flooded with emotions; I don’t know why it means so much to me to be here, but it does. After watching so many documentaries and dramatisations of the accident, and reading so much about the men and women involved, I feel overwhelmed to actually be standing where it all happened. Perhaps this is similar to how some people feel when they visit Auschwitz or the beaches of Normandy.

Still, the structure looks a little different from the way I’m used to seeing it. The focus of my research into the accident until now has only extended as far as 1987 - when the sarcophagus was first built. 25 years-later, its roof and western wall are now held up by a 63-meter-tall support framework known as the Designed Stabilisation Steel Structure (DSSS), which was completed in 2007 as part of the Shelter Implementation Plan (SIP) - a long term project for making the site safe for the future. The weight of the original shelter’s roof had been supported by two huge metal beams resting and imparting serious stress upon what was left of Unit 4’s western wall, which had been severely damaged by the 1986 explosion. By the early-2000s it had been in serious danger of collapse, so now the bright-yellow-and-grey DSSS uses cantilevers to take 80% of the roof’s 800 tons off the wall, thus preventing a collapse.149

On a patch of well-tended grass 150m from the Sarcophagus, there’s a stone memorial depicting a pair of cupped hands, supporting the building and its chimney. Its plaque reads: “To heroes, professionals to those who protected the world from nuclear disaster. In honour of the 20th anniversary of shelter object construction.” The rain is getting heavier, but I keep on taking pictures of the crumbling Sarcophagus until we're ushered into the nearby information centre, just this side of a concrete and razor wire-topped wall. Inside the single cramped room is a wonderful cross-section model of Unit 4, giving you an accurate scale recreation of the destruction within. The pump room where Khodemchuk died is completely buried. To the right of the model is a wall of glass, affording me the closest and most detailed view of Chernobyl of the entire trip, but we’re inexplicably forbidden from taking photographs from this perfect vantage point. I don’t understand why; it’s frustrating beyond belief. A suited official gives us a short talk on what’s happening with the New Safe Confinement project (NSC), and the progress made so far. She mentions that the famous ventilation chimney will have to be dismantled before the NSC can be rolled into place in a few years’ time. This has since happened, in February 2014.

Back outside, we assemble in front of the plant for a photo taken by our trip’s organiser. I have a funny picture of him from this moment, where everyone gave him their cameras and he has about 20 DSLRs hanging from his neck. A booming sound emanates from nearby and reverberates across the landscape, like that of a cathedral bell, half submerged and struck by a sledgehammer in a steady rhythm. Beyond the razor topped-wall, a construction crew use pile-drivers to dig foundations for the New Safe Confinement’s rolling track. I’ll hear this sound everywhere throughout the next two days. To me, it’s the sound of the Zone.

Our bus trundles towards Pripyat. As we approach, a lone, bored soldier manning his checkpoint raises a simple barrier by hand, granting us passage through the perimeter fence. We’re deposited on a road near the city centre and told to be back in 90 minutes. Danny, Katie, Dawid and I are joined by a couple of others, and together we split off from the main group and head towards Pripyat’s tallest tower, which conveniently stands watch over the north-west corner. My first impression is exactly how I expected. Everything is here - street lights, road signs, a child’s bicycle lying by the roadside - but it all speaks of a forgotten life. The lights lack bulbs; road signs are rusty, their markings faded; the bike’s wheels and handlebars are missing. In all my years of exploring abandoned places, there’s only one other site that approached such a complete feeling of lost community life. The Bangour Village Hospital, which opened near Edinburgh in 1906 on a 960-acre estate, was one of the first village-plan psychiatric hospitals in Scotland. It’s been abandoned for over a decade, but its landscaped grounds are maintained to this day and you can still see the church, shop, streetlights, bus stops, road markings and all the other little details that you’d never normally think about. Pripyat has details like that on a massive scale.

We arrive at the 16-storey residential tower - named Fujiyama after Mount Fuji in Japan (no idea why) - after a brisk 10-minute walk. One exhausting climb later, during which I lament carrying far too much heavy equipment and begin to reevaluate my packing philosophy, I emerge onto the desolate roof. The view is astounding - an abandoned, overgrown city laid out before me, like in a dream. White and grey brutalist concrete structures, most devoid of any perceptible flourishes, protrude above what is essentially an untamed forest, while the distant, hazy silhouette of Chernobyl is just visible on the horizon through the mist. Dark clouds linger in the air, soaking everything, but it somehow seems appropriate. There really is no other feeling on Earth like being in this empty, crumbling, almost ineffable city. Standing here in silence, but for the wind in my ears, it’s as if everyone on Earth perished long ago and somehow I survived - I can feel it in my bones. I suddenly feel an intense loneliness, despite the presence of my new friends. Do they feel the same? I don’t ask.

We’re conscious of our strict 90-minute time limit, so don’t linger for longer than necessary. On the highest floor of the building, above the residential levels and among bare concrete, water tanks and pipes, we find the mummified corpse of a dog. Did it come up here seeking shelter or its missing owners? Holes cover its body. Bullet wounds? It may not have escaped the patrolling extermination squads after the evacuation, but holes could mean anything after 25 years. Radiation sickness is bad enough in a human being, but at least a person would be informed about symptoms and remedies. For an animal, which has no clue what’s happening to it or why, nor why the humans who cared for it have vanished, those final weeks of life must have been unbearable. I hope the poor creature escaped the worst effects of radiation and merely starved.

On the trek back to our bus, we make a short stop in one of Pripyat’s many nurseries. Empty cots and children’s toys fill room after silent room - each colourful, painted wall displaying smiling animals, cartoon landscapes, numbers and the alphabet. Once everyone has returned to the rendezvous point (briefly thinking we’ve lost one straggler), we head back out of Pripyat and towards the research buildings scientists use to monitor radiation levels throughout the Zone. On the way, we pass the infamous Red Forest, which turned from green to red because of the extreme amount of radiation passing through it, and drive through the ancient town of Chernobyl, from which the plant inherited its name. I wish I could recall what the scientist we met told us about the work they’re doing, but I can’t remember any of it because we were back to our everlasting translation process; in my frustration I quickly lost interest. Moving on, we make a couple of brief stops at other places of note. First, the vibrant white, gold and neon-blue St Elijah Church, the only remaining active church in the Zone. Run today by an Orthodox priest who is one of the town’s few permanent residents, it is famous for somehow remaining relatively clean from radiation, even right after the accident, or so the legend goes. Next, an old harbour off the Pripyat River, where rusted, listing, radioactive ships struggle to stay afloat.

We stop for a few minutes at a memorial to the fallen firefighters on our way back to the plant, with its life-size sculptures of 6 brave men attacking the blaze. A lone doctor stands at the rear. I’m not sure which is more tragic, that those poor souls on the roof either didn’t recognise the magnitude of what they were facing, or they did, and knowingly sacrificed themselves. I wonder how many knew that the rubble they stood on was radioactive fuel and graphite, that the air they breathed was poisoned with lethal radionuclides, rendering them dead men walking within minutes. Regardless, they stayed at their posts and fought almost 40 distinct fires, despite everything, and their sacrifice prevented untold devastation. The plaque on the memorial reads, with all seriousness, “To those who saved the world.”

Our last stop before lunch is on an open stretch of road, about one mile southeast of the plant. We’re afforded a magnificent view of the crippled Unit 4 and its sarcophagus in the distance. Across the river to my right is a half built cooling tower, along with the partially complete Unit 5, which had been due to open a few months after the accident. It was never finished; the men and women put down their tools and abandoned the cranes where they stood.

We arrive for a late lunch at the dining hall used by Chernobyl’s staff. After stepping in a red liquid at the door, used to neutralise radioactive dirt that may have stuck to our boots, we wash our hands and climb the stairs into the hall. Other than kitchen staff, the place is more or less deserted, so we queue up and enjoy our most substantial meal for the duration of our trip. After lunch, the bus takes us for a closer look at Unit 5, surrounded by the rusting tower cranes that were in use even at the moment of the explosion. What I would give to go inside... My photos of the building are terrible. I’m too focused on staring at Unit 5 to find a decent vantage point, squandering my brief time here. As I make my way back to the bus through a small wooded area, dotted with unidentifiable scraps of machinery, I come across a handful of cute and playful stray puppies, apparently adopted by the soldiers stationed nearby. Were they descendants of the dogs that had lived here before the accident? They must be, I can’t imagine military personnel being allowed to keep pets on duty. As we depart, I catch a glimpse of an enormous, black rolling crane - the same kind I’ve seen used in many photos of Chernobyl’s construction. I curse myself for not spotting it earlier as it disappears from view.

Our limited time is nearing its end as we stop beside the plant’s main memorial to those who died. I always think of Unit 4 as being the ‘front’ of Chernobyl, with Unit 1 being at the ‘back’, purely because most photos you see of the site are taken from the east looking west, and it’s at this rear – past Unit 1, on the other side of the turbine hall, near the admin buildings – where I now find myself. From here, I’m granted a sweeping, panoramic view of the entire Chernobyl complex. It’s particularly interesting to me because I have somehow never - not even once - seen a photograph taken from this perspective. I take out my camera and pan across the scene, snapping photos to stitch together later. Someone shouts at me to not take a photo of the unremarkable administration buildings nearby (too late), so I turn back towards the memorial. Built into a red stone wall about 5 feet high are 31 black marble plaques, collectively inscribed with the names of the men and woman who died from acute exposure to radiation. In the centre is a red brick arch, from which hangs a black bell. A black slab of marble with the words, “Life For Life,” and a symbol of an atom are engraved in the stone. It’s understated, but obviously well-tended. I wonder how the families of those countless victims whose names aren’t here feel about it; there’s no memorial for them.

The next and final stop is Yanov Station, due-west of the plant. On the way, feeling exhausted, I flick through the photos I’ve taken so far today. The poor weather has spoiled many of them; pity. The bus comes to a halt. Here already? I step out to the sight of two ageing but majestic diesel locomotives, their flanks perpendicular to me as they bask in the fading, late afternoon light. The two engines aren’t alone, I realise, as I walk through the nose-to-nose gap between them and emerge onto a line with four sets of rails. All but one are occupied. I peer down the track in both directions; each side’s rails stretch in an unbroken line, converging as they touch the sky. Most striking among the smattering of machinery, and standing out amongst its rusted compatriots, is a brand new, bright yellow mobile railway crane. What could that be for? One potential answer sits nearby: a flatbed rail car carrying blackened chunks of chopped wood. Between them sits a stumpy, burgundy liquid container car, which Katie makes a beeline for and scales without a moment’s hesitation, soon to be joined by several others.

Her antics inspire me too, so I prop my tripod up against the huge blue diesel I’ve been photographing and climb aboard. Without bothering to check the cab door’s lock – to my eternal regret – I’m up on the roof within seconds. Someone else has had the same idea and stands atop another engine a few hundred feet further down the line. It’s at this exact moment, as I gaze down from my vantage point, that the sun punches through the thick clouds above, illuminating the surrounding landscape with warm, saturated colours. The view is perfect. This moment is perfect. Dark clouds; autumn yellows, reds and greens of every shade; heavy, decaying machinery all around me; the glow of the low-hanging sun giving texture to everything in sight.

I hear someone shouting in Ukrainian from the buildings to my left. Someone closer yells at me in English to get down. The engine isn’t so abandoned after all! I catch sight of a handful of angry looking men, presumably the drivers, emerge from behind the bus as I scramble back down. Whoops! I grab my tripod and speed-walk to the front of the procession of trains, eager to put some distance between myself and the blue engine on the off chance the owners/drivers come over to give me a kicking. It was disrespectful of me, in hindsight.

I don’t want to leave. Now the sun has come out, making me feel warm for the first time today, I’m sad that this wonderful day will be over soon. You know when you’re coming to the end of a special novel? That melancholy feeling you get, knowing it’ll all soon be over and you almost don’t want to continue reading to preserve the moment - I feel like that. I want to spend the evening walking down the tracks alone, listening to the sounds of the Zone, unsure of my destination. I want to return to the plant and go speak to the men and women working on the decommissioning and New Safe Confinement projects. I want to hear their thoughts on the accident, its legacy, what their lives are like in this inhospitable, isolated part of the world, but most of all about their future. I want to spend the night under the stars on the roof of Pripyat’s long-abandoned hotel, and contemplate the city by the cold, distant glow of the Moon. Most of all I long to venture inside Chernobyl’s damaged Unit 4, to explore its battered corridors and see the reactor for myself, even for a moment. It’s not to be. For the final time today Marek summons us back to the bus – the Slavutych train departs soon - but for the first time today I linger. I want to experience this remarkable place for just a few seconds longer.

Back at the station, our route to the platform is blocked by a crowd of workers funnelling themselves through a line of grey full-body radiation scanners. There’s no other way around, so I shrug my shoulders, slide my gear underneath the barrier, and step into the human-sized slot. The hand sensor feels cold under my skin as I place my hands and feet on each of the machine’s four detectors, hoping this all goes according to plan. The light goes green - I guess that means I’m not dangerously radioactive. One by one, we filter through the scanners and then walk back down the blue-grey platform to the waiting train. I make sure to stay in the vestibule area beside the doors with two others, leaving the seats to Chernobyl’s weary workers.

The return journey across the marsh somehow seems even louder and faster than it did this morning, as if every component of the antiquated train is shaking itself loose in a concerted effort to distance itself from Chernobyl. We race past rivers, swamps, deserted track roads and forests without saying a word, all three of us lost in thought. I video some of the journey on my phone to ensure I won’t forget exactly what you see when you approach - and leave - the site of one of history’s worst man-made disasters.

Back in Slavutych, Dawid, Katie, Danny and I regroup and visit the local store to buy dinner. I approach the manager, a friendly man in his early 30s who speaks a little English, and ask him to teach me to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in both Russian and Ukrainian so I can thank the cashiers. He smiles and coaches me. Everything in here looks alien - I can’t read any packaging, and don’t recognise most of the products. So, in my shy ignorance - and too tired to cook - I buy the only items I do recognise that require no preparation: ice cream and sponge cake.