Flew into Kyiv this past Fri/Sat and spent 3 days on the ground with the primary purpose of seeing Chernobyl. On Sunday, I walked around Kyiv from my hotel for the morning but then it started raining and didn't do much more after that.

Not much to say about Kyiv itself, I didn't really do anything there. It's a nice Eastern European city and I found the food to be fantastic and the people were very nice. I would definitely go back just for the city itself at some point, but the purpose of this trip was Chernobyl.

For Monday and Tuesday it was Chernobyl and the area around Chernobyl, including a stay in the city of Chernobyl Monday night. The food at that hotel was fantastic again. I've never had better fried eggs in my life!

Monday was primarily in plant. I got to see the grid control room which is still in operation, Chernobyl 3 control room, Chernobyl 4 control room, and part of Chernobyl 3 plant including main circ pumps and reactor hall. We got to have lunch at the plant canteen and again, it was fantastic! Better than any power plant food I've ever had! I posted this mini rant in another thread;

"It astonishes me still that they have nuclear tourism. You would never see anything like this in the USA or other 1st world western countries. Hell, we lose our shit if one of our operators picks up a millirem they're not supposed to. On my trip, I picked up more dose than I would an entire year at my PWR facility. It's incredible to me.

And that's just the plant.


The entire region is still contaminated and people just go walking around through it like it's nothing serious. Yes the levels are mostly low, but there are hotspots all around, and what's left behind is the long lived nasty shit. I see relatively recent videos of people going into the Pripyat basement to see the fireman's clothes. They're nuts. I wouldn't go down there without full anti-contamination clothing and an SCBA. And now things have started going missing from down there. Those people do not understand that they're taking fuel fragments to their homes and families and kicking up the dust down there that will embed itself in their lungs.


Ukrainian authorities know this because they've since filled the stairwells with sand and such, but there's still ways in, yet they let it continue. The people at the plant are convinced they're providing a safe tourist activity, and I'm not trying to be alarmist about it, I'm just emphasizing the point that you are going to get dosed there, and it would never happen in the US. The openness of the region and contaminated areas like Pripyat is the dangerous part. Yes they have the illusion of security with "check points" and "tickets" and "passport control," but YouTube is full of people that got around them, and just walk through highly contaminated areas and handle highly contaminated objects without knowing anything about the isotopes they're ingesting. One of their mottos is "no dosimeter, no radiation."  


I am glad I got to do it though, because like standing in Auschwitz, pictures and videos just don't do it justice what happened here. It was very moving, to me, to stand in the very spot that Akimov pushed the AZ-5 button and again to stand just a few feet from the exploded reactor.



Tuesday was visiting the Duga radar site which, outside of the plant, was the next biggest highlight for me. I knew of the radar and always saw pictures of the radar itself. What I didn't know is that they built a city for 2000 people there to run the radar! That's mostly what my pictures focus on. A kindergarten, a primary school, apartment buildings, social club, movie theater, grocery store, etc. You name it, they had it. This city was so secret that it wasn't discovered until the Chernobyl disaster and it also had to be evacuated (according to the guide, who knows what American intelligence knew). I didn't know about the city until I visited. It was incredible. You could easily spend an entire day there, but I had to spend some time in Pripyat.

After another fantastic lunch at the hotel we stayed at in Chernobyl, we headed to Pripyat for a few hours. Because Pripyat has pretty much been photographed from every angle, I focused on finding color in the nuclear wasteland. Of course, there's some iconic site photos as well.


To start with, some photo from around Kyiv. Nothing much, mostly just some murals and cool buildings and such.


JEC01160 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr

JEC01166 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr

JEC01169 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr

JEC01184 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr

JEC01187 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr

JEC01190 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr

JEC01193 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr

JEC01202 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr

JEC01208 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr


St. Andrew's Church

JEC01217 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr

JEC01223 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr


Monument Za Dvoma Zaytsyamy: Pronya Prokopivna and Holokhvastov

JEC01229 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr


1980s replica of 11th-century Golden Gate, the main fortified entrance to the medieval city.

JEC01253 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr


St. Sophia's Cathedral and Christmas Tree

JEC01279 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr


Ferris wheel and Christmas festival right outside my hotel.

JEC01282 by JustinC's Photos, on Flickr

You suck OP. That's my Wife's and I bucket list.

You rock OP, thank you.

Did you wear a Sunrise suit? see any bloodsuckers? How's the 100 Rads Bar?

In on 1

Edit: swing and a miss.

Fascinating! Thanks OP!

Dibs on guns that don't glow in the dark now.

Actually very cool OP - thank you for sharing! :)

Sweet pics!

Thanks Op, that's really awesome. Chernobyl is very fascinating to me.

OP is legend

Super fucking cool thread

Hold up. That graphite just hanging out on the robot is from the reactor core? How hot is it?

Great photos, I want to go there some day.

LOL at the graphite just chilling there. Great pics.

Awesome pics and thread.  Always been fascinated by Chernobyl.  I was very young but still remember when it happened.  

Final batch up! Now to read and respond to comments.

Awesome, OP! Thanks.

Have any nuclear generating plants been built anywhere in the world since the Chernobyl disaster?

Yes. Wore the exact same clothes they wore in 1986, and still wear today.


No, all handheld. The IS of my A7C is very good, but I have minimum shutter speed set to 1/30 to make sure I can hand hold most.


Thanks! I thought my now archived and ruined (thanks Facebook) WW2 Euro thread from August was good too.

I know, right? That's why I literally laughed in her face. I apologized, said it wasn't her fault, but she and they don't understand the absurdity of their show. Hey, they're the poorest country in Europe so I understand doing what it takes to get money in, but letting a piece of the splody core just hang out like this? LMFAO. Where I was standing we were getting 25mrem/hr from that fuckin thing. That's why she's like "get your picture and let's go."

Oh yes quite a few, we have Vogtle going up here in the USA and China has been building them hand over fist. Then there's the ones in UAE.

Remember you can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor.

Rated Epic - something I rarely do. Thanks for sharing, OP.

I have a bunch more pics I may work on and upload at some point, but they're not that interesting I don't think. I took a lot of "snapshots."

Thank you!

Thanks so much for sharing.

Just out of curiosity, how much for your trip?

Hell yeah, tagging this!

One day I would like to see Ukraine. My grandfather was born in Ukraine in 1913 and my grandmother in Poland about the same time.

So, when do you suit up and visit the elephants foot?

Very cool!!! Thank you for posting

I just got shivers looking at these pics - to be fair I did just eat ice cream, but pretty amazing you were able to visit and share.

Very cool op.

That last pic, the tag say "can repeat 1986", not cant...can't...

Eta my dad worked on the cleanup. He wasn't one of the first giys in, but he was there 5 days after the accident and worked 1 month there, 3 months off for a year and a half.

@JustinHEMI04 thank you for sharing these.

do it fgt


No seriously, this thread really is epic. Thanks for posting all these pics!

Very cool OP. Thank you for sharing these!

So freaking cool, thanks for sharing!

What else can you tell us about traveling to Ukraine?

Thanks fucking cool. How much did it cost to do the tour?

The tour was about a grand. There are cheaper group tours. I signed up for a 2 day private tour including the power plant, and it was worth it. The price included transportation, a stay in Chernobyl, meals for both days.




My ancestors came from Poland in 1902 and 1904. Maybe that's why I like Eastern European food much better than western Europe food.


HA. I tried. When myself and the plant guy were alone, I said who do I have to pay, and how much do I have to pay them to see the elephants foot? He just laughed. I said, "no, I'm serious. You let me get dose already, what's another minute with the foot? Name the price."

Very, very cool OP.
Thanks for posting.

…

For anyone who has interest, Midnight In Chernobyl is a fascinating read.

Ah thanks! How is your dad these days?



What do you want to know? It was a bit of a pain because US carriers aren't currently allowed to fly to Ukraine, so had to go Swiss air. I suppose they were good enough, but not one of my 4 flights went off without a hitch, and I almost missed my connection on both ends. On the front end, they already had the ramp door closed and everything, but let me go with a minute to spare. Then we sat on the tarmac while the crew fought with Ukranians over masking. Then when we landed in Ukraine, they wouldn't let us off until the police arrested a guy lol. On the back end, the departure snuck up on them. The pilot was like "whoopsie, we'll get going any minute now." An hour later, after getting more deicing, we were finally in the air. However, again, they were closing the door as I was getting to my flight back to the USA. That's because Zurich sucks fucking ass as an airport. I got off at an E concourse gate, but couldn't also get on my flight on E concourse. Had to circle around and go BACK through security. I hope it burns down.

Ukraine required special covid insurance to enter, which wasn't very expensive, like 30 bucks.

Getting back to the US required a negative test within 24 hours.


See above.

Oh, this is awesome. Thanks for sharing.


Did you run across Soap and Price on your way to the ferris wheel?

Very nice. Thanks for posting the pictures.

I once heard that it's not recommended to lick the 'elephants foot' at the site. Hopefully you did not go in that room.

How many seiverts did you detect near the graphite?

About 250 micro Sieverts.

So that's ballpark annual average radiation exposure in a hair over 24 hours if you stood there all day.

Amazing…thx for sharing. Control room and control panels look remarkably similar to my plant.

Absolutely phenomenal. You are a very talented photographer.

You're confused.  RBMK reactor cores don't explode.

I liked the control room pictures.

During college getting my Mech Eng degree I did the co-op program and worked 3 semesters at a power plant.

Just so happened they were doing a controls upgrade of the plant and they had control room like the ones in your picture. They were able to condense it all into 2 computer screens.

I now do HVAC controls, but it's not really much different.

Very cool

Awesome pics and story, OP! I just watched the Chernobyl HBO miniseries (again) last week. It still fascinates me.

One of my coworkers at my previous job went to Kyiv in 2017 or so.. I asked if he was going to go to Pripyat.. he said "HELL NO!".

Fuck, you couldn't keep me away if I ever got to Ukraine. I'd love to go visit Pripyat and Chernobyl. That shit is so fascinating to me.

Your pictures are great, very good color rendition and vibrance. Thank you for sharing!

Folks thinking of going should go while you can still get into the plant. The plant people claim the goal is to begin dismantling the old sarcophagus next year..., and who knows if you'll be able to get plant access again when that happens. However, they also believed that the government don't have the wherewithal to actual start that yet considering there's no plan or funding in place.

Awesome thread and even better pictures, thanks OP