After alot of driving and numerous checkpoints, we arrived in Chernobyl where we received a quick briefing and were given forms to sign which said we accepted that we would receive internal and external radiation and that we waived any right to claim if our photography equipment was damaged. We were also told to touch nothing and place nothing on the ground. Zak and I had rented Geiger counters for the day as had one other person on the tour. The driver and our guide also had them.
We got back on our minibus and headed to the Chernobyl power plant. Its was stange to see reactor number four in its concrete and lead sarcophagus. I'd seen a number of photos of it, but nonetheless to be there was weird. There was a guard behind us as we stopped to view it and whilst we could photograph the destroyed reactor, we were absolutely forbidden from photographing anything else on the site, which seemed slightly strange.
Pretty soon we were back on the bus and heading around the north side of the reactor towards Pripyat. All of a sudden loads of alarms went off. It was all The Geiger counters on the bus signalling a quick rise in radiation. We were passing through a hotspot which was reading around 6 micro rongens. After a couple of minutes of bleeping, the dosimeters showed the radiation falling quickly back down to around 0.23 micro rongens which was background radiation.
We continuted driving for around 10 minutes before being informed we were now on the main boulevard for Pripyat. This wasn't obvious as trees had grown high on the central reservation as well as to the side of the road, obscuring the view. I had thought we were travelling down a road through a forest, which of course we were.
No comments:
Post a Comment