It has been a long time since I wanted to dedicate space to the project on Chernobyl and Pripyat. The two weeks spent in Kiev will remain forever etched in my memory. I wanted to dedicate a few posts to tell the story of what I saw and what I captured in photos. One day, when this COVID emergency is over, I'd like to do an exhibition on Chernobyl and Pripyat, and then continue my project with Fukushima, Japan.
Throughout the exclusion zone there are many open-air depots, both for civilian vehicles and, sometimes, even abandoned military vehicles. You can find everything from tank to van, from cranes to buses and helicopters. The largest of all, controlled by military, it is also the most dangerous and highly radiative, still today. There are several others, however, in the open space and easily accessible with a guide. Some are hidden in the bush and can only be reached on foot, while others can be reached by official roads. In these deposits there are all the vehicles that have taken part in the various attempts to contain the nuclear crisis. Vehicles that transported civilians, evacuators, radiative material and so on. Many have been cleaned up, others were so radioactive that have been stored in guarded deposit, as it was impossible to clean them up. Entering an abandoned vehicle depot is a journey through time, but this is true also for all of Chernobyl and Pripyat. The dosimeter rises a lot, easily marking values from 20 to 70 Microsievert (far from 0.3 which is the established safety value. Near an abandoned factory, we tried, with the guide, to calculate the Beta reading. of a crane arm that has never been cleansed. The guide used a long stick and covered his hand with a glove, despite being a couple of meters away. The dosimeter read 700 Microsievert. To give you an idea, a spinal X-ray corresponds to 1.5 Microsievert, while a mammogram to 3.0 Microsievert.
As frightening as it may be, at least the deposits are marked, documented and easily visible. The big problem are the Hotspots: radioactive materials, vehicles or part of them, that have been illegally buried a bit everywhere in the exclusion zone, or the points in the ground where the radioactive dust has been absorbed during process of cleansing the vehicles or the pavements of the city of Pripyat. These are invisible. The guides knows some of them, but not all of them. This is why the dosimeter is an important means for walking around Chernobyl and Pripyat, especially if you do not follow the official roads.
One of the many deposit of abandoned vehicles in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone
Hasselblad X1D
21mm
F/11
1/8s