As someone who has always had a fascination with exploring abandoned areas, Conor Dwyer had long been interested in visiting Chernobyl and the surrounding city of Pripyat. Having booked online with a tour group based in Kiev, and sent copious documentation to the Ukrainian government to enable them to do the regulation background check, he was ready to go.
Accompanied by his trusty camera, Conor met up with the other five members of this tour group at a Metro station in Kiev and from there journeyed 150km journey to the exclusion zone.
“The first place we visited was a small Montessori school,” he recalls. “It was totally deserted and there were toys and dolls lying around rotting. The dormitories were completely empty and it was eerily silent. We then travelled on a bit further, and stopped at a farm, which was used to test radiation doses on animals after the accident. Originally they said you can't go anywhere or walk into any buildings for health and safety reasons, but the tour guide told us 'go ahead'that it was our own risk.
“Pripyat is huge – all the streets were originally tree-lined boulevards and now there’s shrubbery growing everywhere, and the roads are cracked, with trees coming through the concrete. It’s completely deserted and silent. All the apartments, hotels, supermarkets and buildings are untouched. They were frozen in time 30 years ago.”
For Conor, the creepiest part of the itinerary was visiting the city’s massive school.
“There’s still artwork and maps of the world on the walls,” he explains. “The teachers’ desks are laid out for the next day’s lesson. You had to carry your Geiger counter around the whole time. The hospital was a no-go, because that was where the first respondents were sent. The next day we went to the countryside, where some elderly people have returned to live. Originally, the residents settled in Kiev and other nearby towns. But there were a couple of hundred people who refused to leave or who came back.
“Obviously they have no facilities – no running water or electricity. We met some of them, they’re in their eighties, but their homes are like going back in time. They have open fires and candles.”
The authorities in the Ukraine are currently in the process of building a new dome over the nuclear plant, but as Conor notes, the project is five years behind schedule.
“It’s costing billions,” he says. “It should last 100 years. The guys working on it can only work an hour a day in a full radiation suit. In the summer it’s 40 degrees, so you can imagine how uncomfortable it is, not to mention dangerous. They’re saying it’ll be 50,000 years at least before Chernobyl is habitable again.”