Call of Pripyat: Ghost City 38 Years After Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

In 1986, as a result of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear station and the subsequent fire, which exposed the surrounding area to enormous radiation, some 115,000 people were evacuated from nearby areas, including the young city of Pripyat, and a 30-kilometer area near the plant became an exclusion zone.

The tragedy began with a routine check of the electrical equipment of the fourth reactor at 1:23 am. A scheduled shutdown of the RBMK-1000 reactor lasted only 20 seconds. However, a few seconds later, following a sharp power surge, a chemical explosion occurred, releasing about 520 dangerous radionuclides into the atmosphere. The clocks of the bloc stopped forever at 1:23:45.

The intense fire lasted for 10 days, during which radioactive materials were continuously released into the environment. It is estimated that the total power of the explosion was more than 100 times greater than the power of the nuclear weapons used during World War II. The explosion was so powerful that contamination spread over large swathes of the Soviet Union, which are now part of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. If the remaining three RBMK units had exploded, high levels of radioactive contamination would have spread across the English Channel.

According to official reports, 31 people died in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, and 600,000 firefighters and cleanup workers were exposed to high doses of radiation. Approximately 155,000 square kilometers were contaminated, which is almost half of the total area of ​​Italy.