Never Left Home

Early in the morning of April 25, 1986, nuclear engineer Alexander Akinhov was busy preparing his night-shift team for a special test they were about to conduct at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant #4 in northern Ukraine. The team was trying to see how an emergency water cooling system would work in the event of a complete loss of power at the plant. The plant’s backup diesel generators had never been able to get up to full speed quickly enough to power the coolant pumps needed to cool the reactor in the event of a power failure. So, the idea was that maybe the plant’s steam turbine could be used to generate enough electric power to run the plant’s coolant pumps for the 45 seconds needed until the diesel generators could fully kick in. Three earlier tests had been carried out at the plant since 1982 but none had been successful. Each time, the system was modified in some way. This time, Akinhov and his team were hoping for success.

At 1:23:04 am, the experiment began. Steam to the plant’s turbines was shut off and the emergency diesel generator started per plan. But 36 seconds into the test something began to go horribly wrong. The system’s steam turbine generator was slowing as was planned but the system began allowing more water to be converted to steam to increase power. The plant’s automated control system then began to insert control rods into the reactor core to limit the power rise. But it was too late. For Akinhov it was one of those “Oh crap” moments. Even before steam levels grew to explosive levels within the plant, it’s now believed that a series of nuclear explosions occurred 53 seconds after the experiment began. These sent a plume of debris almost two miles into the air. Three seconds later, the steam buildup ruptured the reactor, blew the top off the building and sent even more radioactive material airborne. And so began the greatest nuclear power plant catastrophe in history. Akinhov immediately reports, “The reactor is OK, we have no problems.” He later dies from radiation sickness.

The hot debris from the explosions set part of the complex on fire and the fire department arrived 20 minutes later. The firefighters, unaware of the escaping radiation, headed straight into the area, unprotected, to fight the fires. The next day, the nearby town of Prypiat was ordered to be evacuated. Busses took the 40,000 residents away to Kiev on short notice with only what they could carry. Meanwhile the radioactive cloud spread north to Belarus and west, covering most of Ukraine, Poland and over Germany and France. Three days later, Moscow was aware of the extent of the catastrophe but agreed that the annual May Day parade in Kiev go on as scheduled to avoid panic and to assure people that there is no danger. Thousands of people were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. The full extent of the tragedy and the cost of its containment eventually lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union, three years later.

Today, after 32 years, the effects of the released radiation are still being seen. 31 people died within a few days of the accident but no one really knows how many were affected. Estimates range from 10,000 on the low end to over 100,000 on the high end. Belarus, absorbed an estimated 70% of the nuclear fallout and has experienced a sharp rise in birth defects since 1986. For anyone, the long-term effects of radiation exposure are a sobering reminder of how terrible nuclear radiation can be.

In the years immediately after the disaster, the Soviets built a somewhat primitive concrete tomb, called a sarcophagus, to cover the reactor. This sarcophagus will eventually deteriorate and a larger new containment structure is now finally nearing completion over the remains of the reactor. Radiation from the reactor will continue for the next 100,000 years and the area around the plant probably won’t be safe for people to live for at least 20,000 years. Here is a photo of the actual nuclear material taken 10 years after the accident. It’s actually a mixture of molten nuclear material combined with concrete and debris.

So this place sounded like just the right kind of destination for our intrepid twosome. Guided tours make the full-day trip from Kiev regularly and Tanya and Jay wanted to see this place first-hand. Eight other travelers joined them, along with a guide and driver, in a van whose shock absorbers had seen better days. The Chernobyl power complex is actually made up of four reactors, including the damaged reactor #4. The other three have all been shut down and are undergoing the long-term process of de-commissioning. The complex is surrounded by a closely guarded 30-kilometer “exclusion zone” where visitors are carefully checked in and out and are required to pass through two different radiation detector stations as they exit. Everyone in T and J’s group was issued hand held detectors which all started beeping wildly whenever especially contaminated areas were approached.

The tour consisted of four primary sites: the town of Chernobyl, the reactor complex, a nearby village and the abandoned town of Prypiat which was closest to the accident. Chernobyl town is about 7 km from the reactor complex and now serves principally as a housing and support services area for workers de-commissioning the power plant. Employees work 15 days at a time, then leave the area for another 15 days before returning.

Visitors are allowed no closer than 300 meters from the nearly-completed containment structure and for some reason photos are not allowed to be taken, but we got some anyway.

The eeriest part of the day was walking around the abandoned town of Prypiat. This town, built in 1970 served as a model Soviet community for the 40,000 people associated with the nuclear plant. Schools, cafeteria, apartment blocks, movie theatre and hotel were all part of what the Soviets wanted to portray to the outside world as life in the progressive USSR. It’s pretty much been left as it was when it was abandoned right after the accident. The amusement park area was scheduled to open just a few weeks after the disaster.

Since 1986, some of the buildings have simply collapsed due to the elements and poor initial construction. 

Some people, who were not fortunate enough (or not) to live in Prypiat lived in a few nearby villages. These folks were evacuated later and left behind the remains of their homes, school, grocery store and kindergarten/nursery.

After several hours exploring areas within the exclusion zone, our van driver and guide took the group 5 kilometers down a lonely single lane road to one of the weirdest places our gruesome twosome had ever visited, the abandoned Cold War relic, Radar Duga-1. This was a huge super-secret antennae system build by the Soviets in 1976 as an early warning to track potential incoming US missiles. This thing was like something straight out of the X-Files. The cover story was that the road leading to the antennae was the entrance to a boy scout camp, but it’s hard to believe anyone nearby would ever buy that idea. Duga-1 sent out extremely powerful radio signals, which unfortunately disrupted commercial broadcasts, aviation communications and amateur radios resulting in complaints from several countries. Some speculated that Duga-1 was designed for Soviet weather control or mind control experiments but NATO intelligence figured out pretty quickly what Duga’s real purpose was, as well as determining pretty accurately where the antennae was located. It was shut down in 1989 when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The day ended with not only a reminder of the colossal waste of preparing for nuclear conflict but also a somber reminder of the people who suffered so terribly as a result of the worst nuclear power plant accident in history.

The intrepid twosome rode quietly in the back of a Kiev taxi as it made its way through the gathering dusk and cold wintry haze for the 40-minute ride to Kiev’s Boryspil International Airport. After entering the airport departure area they sat down for a bowl of borscht at the sparsely furnished airport cafe. They had learned that borscht, that ubiquitous beet and vegetable soup served in virtually every eating place in Ukraine, was a native concoction. For the last week they had been told that borscht was not Russian. It was not Polish. It was Ukrainian. OK, Ukrainian borscht for two, please.

Finishing their soup, the two carefully checked out their surroundings. Here were ticket counters for airlines little known outside the US; Dniproavia Airlines, Air Astana, Estonian Air, Azerbaijan Airlines, Belavia Airlines, Uzbekistan Airways proudly or humbly took their place among Lufthansa and Air France. But these noble air carriers would have to wait for another time, as the two traveling maniacs headed downstairs to wait for the one-hour nightly Ukraine International Airlines flight to Chernivtsi.

A nighttime arrival at the small airport serving Chernivtsi was reminiscent of a previous trip to the municipal airport in Cortez, Colorado, minus the mountains. It was a fairly simple process. Get off the plane, walk across the tarmac to the small fluorescent-lit waiting room with plastic chairs and one airport employee on duty, wait for the truck to offload the luggage, go back outside to retrieve your bag from the truck and off you go. A short taxi ride later through the pot-holed and often-unpaved streets, J and T checked in to the “Allure Inn”, the “best place in town” according to the friendly cab driver. While checking in, Jay asked the hotel clerk if she was from Chernvitsi. “Yes”, she replied, “But I am Romanian—part of the diaspora.” This short exchange gave enough material for the couple to occupy the next hour before bed, discussing what exactly a “diaspora” was and what did the young woman at the desk actually mean?

Apparently, about 4% of the city’s population is ethnic Romanian, which makes sense since Chernivtsi was once part of the Kingdom of Romania after the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved in 1918 and until the Soviet Union made it part of Ukraine in 1940. The current Romanian border is only about 40 km away.

Over the next few days, our pair roamed the streets and suburbs of this often gritty southwest Ukrainian town, which has a surprisingly urbane past and is home to Chernivtsi State University, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The University was once the residence of the Bukovinian and Dalmation Metropolitans (Church Bishops) and still includes the impressive Seminarska Church. Away from the university, one is never far from a church, like the St. Nicholas Cathedral, nicknamed the “drunken church” because of its twisted turrets.

In a nutshell, Chernivtsi was once the primary city of Bukovina, which was part of Moldavia which was from 1774-1918 part of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became the Austrian Empire, which became the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Consequently, much of the architecture of the period 1867-1918 is still evident and somewhat restored. The beauty of these buildings often stands in stark contrast to the much of the rest of the city, which is more of a reminder of its not so distant Soviet past.

But one thing our wandering pair have usually found—the simple joys of people experiencing everyday life, the things that matter, love and friendship.

Next Posting: Night train to Lviv

Two weeks in Ukraine in November left lasting impressions on our traveling duo. This is a country with an incredibly complex and sad past, an uneasy present and an uncertain future (as if the future is ever certain). To say these people have been through a lot in the last 100 years is an understatement. Think mass starvation under Stalin in 1932-33 to the tune of 10 million people, invasion by Nazi Germany in 1941 followed by some of the fiercest fighting of World War II and the subsequent slaughter of thousands of Poles and Jews by Ukrainian partisans. Add to this mix, the joys of living as part of the post-war Soviet Union and, oh yes, having part of your country contaminated by the world’s largest nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl in 1986. Then, of course, you have the political turmoil of the last 13 years where corruption is the rule and Russia unilaterally annexes part of your country, Crimea, and you lose several thousand people fighting the Russians on your eastern border and have to deal with about half a million displaced people as a result. Depressed yet?

Now, after all of this, I suppose Ukrainians have a right to be a little reluctant to smile. Some people think Germans are a bit dour and unfriendly. Well, compared to Ukrainians, Germans can seem downright jolly. I’m not being completely fair however. While there were some grocery checkers who appeared to have just graduated from the Soviet School of Customer Service and Advanced Boredom, we met some very kind and warm Ukrainians on our trip. As is often the case, perceptions of friendliness are more a matter of cultural differences than anything else.

We started and ended our trip in the capital, Kiev, and spent time wandering neighborhoods, riding the subway and bus, going through churches and strolling through parks. On one evening, we went to the ballet at the Kiev National Opera House. At $14 per seat in the fifth row we were able to enjoy a beautiful performance of Strauss’s Vienna Waltz. Not a bad deal.

Prior to our visit, some of the material we had read online commented on the lack of English spoken in Kiev and in Ukraine generally. Being part of Russia and the Soviet Union for so long, it’s only natural that Russian would be the dominant second language. But we found English to be growing in popularity and it seemed we could often find someone who spoke English to help us, be it in a restaurant, train station or store. Of course, pictures in menus always help. The other thing we noticed is that since there are relatively so few Americans who visit Ukraine, anyone who spoke any English at all seemed happy to show off their language skills.

Aside from the little bit of English spoken, the use of Russian or Ukrainian often depends on geography, just as Flemish or French in Belgium. Ukrainian and Russian are used interchangeably in Kiev, Russian almost exclusively in eastern Ukraine and Ukrainian in western Ukraine, especially Lviv near the Polish border. Tanya’s ears always perked up when she heard and understood Russian being spoken, as it reminded her of what she heard growing up. Jay was able to read Cyrillic after a few days so we got along fine. Note: Cyrillic, like Hangul, is not all that hard to learn. What it means is something else entirely.

From Kiev, we flew on a small Ukrainian Airlines plane to the southern city of Chernivitsi. More on that visit in our next posting.