The final instructions before going through the last of several doors were direct. “All protective clothing must be in place before entering the reactor. If you drop something on the floor, don’t pick it up.” We were a small group of visitors to Chernobyl, once the site of Ukraine’s largest group of nuclear reactors—and the world’s worst nuclear accident. The final door opened into the building that housed reactor Number 4, which exploded with deadly consequences on 25th April 1986. Today, the entire building is encased in the world’s largest man-made mobile structure, a steel containment dome that was moved into place in 2016 and is big enough to house the Statue of Liberty.
When the building was constructed, the reactor’s Soviet designers had claimed that their design was so safe that it did not need a protective cover, but the force of the explosion blew radioactive material through the roof, releasing a radioactive plume that spread rapidly in the wind. Moscow said nothing about the disaster until a surge in radiation levels in Sweden forced the admission. Meanwhile, in Chernobyl, hundreds of firefighters and plant workers were fighting a desperate battle to contain the disaster and prevent a second, larger explosion. Few of the first responders survived.
Today the dead power station sits inside a high-radiation area that is 10km in radius, and a wider 30km exclusion zone. The access road through the forest boasts a series of roadblocks and military checkpoints—the latter a consequence of Russia’s invasion—a landscape of scattered abandoned villages and small farms, an area now the preserve of antelope, lynx and other animals.
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