An apartment complex in Pripyat. If vegetation was lighter, one would think that there are people inside. Structures are not stable, and there’s always a risk of a brick falling on your head. Only 1 building was relatively safe, the Rossiya Hotel on main square. Now tours don’t allow anyone inside buildings, our guide was nice enough to let us roam around

Back in 86, this looked like a nice trimmed road, with apartment complexes on each side. Today, vegetation is slowly taking over the city. You can still see one of the first apartment complexes through a thick tree line

No photo in this post, but an explanation, maybe a question to people who may know better.

At this point of a tour, my camera developed a very “snowy” effect. While I know that traditional film cameras react to radiation, I just don’t know effect on digicams. I was using Canon SD900 camera, and A-Data SDHC 8gb card. Anyone had any experience with it?

The effect is more evident if you see the picture in it’s full resolution.

Feel free to post comment or e-mail me to admin@chernobyl2008.com

Another view from the bridge - the road to Pripyat. You can see buildings on the left side.

Power plant as seen from the bridge.

Human beings are naturally curious. Accidents always attract people. You see it as rubbernecking on highway, people watching fires.

The explosion on Unit 4 happened at night. 1:24am. So people from nearby Pripyat who did not have good view from lower floors ran to the bridge to see exactly what happened. As they were watching the fire, they did not realize that wind blows their way and nuclear material from the reactor is getting blown their way. Many people got very high doze of radiation

On the bridge, meter reads 0.250. Under the bridge, it’s over 4,000

Closup of Unit 4. You can see the support structure in greater detail, and how rusted Sarcophagus is.

This is what you’ve been waiting for. A monument, about 100 meters from the sarcophagus. There is also new support structure, and new railway tracks built nearby. Looks like there’s heavy security at the gate, cameras, heavy duty gates. We stuck around only for few shots. There was a fairly audible hum coming from powerplant.

Approaching Unit 4 on foot, this is the last reading that I took a photo. About 33 times the norm.

Good thing someone in the tour brought some chips with them. Catfish here are really massive. Not because of radiation (even though you certainly wouldn’t want to eat your catch), but because nobody’s fishing here. Catfish can reach 180lbs, and while I was skeptical in the beginning, but I lost all my doubts when I saw one. This photo is the best I have, water was really muddy, but a fight over the chip sounded like someone fell off the bridge.