Pripyat is a small town of power engineers in the Kiev region, near which there was a large nuclear power plant, which got its name from the district center of the same name located near it. So many remember Chernobyl before the accident. And after the accident, this name is already associated with only one of the worst technological disasters of its time. The word itself seems to bear the imprint of human tragedy and at the same time mystery. It scares and attracts. For many more years Chernobyl will remain the object of increased attention of the whole world.
A bit of history
The small town of Chernobyl has been known since 1193. Mention of him is found in the annals of large and small cities of the Russian XIV century. From the middle of the next century, it was already under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. An inaccessible fortress was built near it, surrounded by a deep moat, which can be seen even now. In the sixteenth century, this town became a county center, which made itself felt in Europe, swept by wars after the start of the 1789 revolution in France thanks to “Rosalia from Chernobyl”, so they called Rosalia Khodkevich (married Lyubomirskaya). This was one of the active participants in those distant historical events, who shared the sad fate of the supporters of the royal family of Bourbons and Marie Antoinette.
In 1793, the city became part of the Russian Empire. It was inhabited by Ukrainians, Poles and Jews. For a sufficiently long period, Chernobyl was the center of Hasidism, the religious movement in Judaism.
Such a little-known town as a whole was Chernobyl before the accident. And after the accident, the attention of the whole world suddenly turns to him, and his name itself is increasingly used in a common sinister meaning, generally associated with the words "trouble" and "catastrophe".
Before the accident
In the 70s of the last century around the world there was a kind of boom in the development of nuclear energy. In those years, many nuclear power plants were laid in many countries, one of which was built near the confluence of the Pripyat River in the Dnieper. The launch of the first power unit at the ChAES took place in 1975. By the spring of 1986, four power units were already operating at the station.
In the immediate vicinity of the nuclear power plant were small towns with shift workers and maintenance personnel - Chernobyl and Pripyat. The latter was designed on the principle of satellite towns of nuclear power plants. To ensure the employment of family members of power engineers, it provided for the construction of a number of industrial enterprises. The city’s infrastructure was also given a lot of attention, since the average age of the population of Polesie atomic city was 26 years.
Pripyat in those days was one of the most prestigious Ukrainian cities. Its convenient transport interchanges, spacious wide streets, the distribution of residential areas and amusement parks attracted residents from surrounding villages and cities, including Chernobyl.
Until now, many people do not quite understand that the modest district center of Chernobyl in the years preceding the accident had little to do with a nuclear power plant. The peculiar capital of power engineers was precisely the rapidly developing young city of Pripyat, located three kilometers from the Chaes. The accident in Chernobyl is connected with him, but got its name from the district center of the same name, located southeast of the station at a distance of 18 kilometers. Pripyat was founded in 1970 only thanks to the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Chernobyl itself was a small town with a population not exceeding 13 thousand people. Today, about 5 thousand people live in the entire exclusion zone, of which about 4 thousand live in the Chernobyl district center.
Crash
The man-made disaster that occurred on April 26, 1986 , divided the history of the city into two periods: Chernobyl before the accident and after the accident.
At power unit No. 4 during the design test of one of the turbogenerators, an explosion occurred that completely destroyed the reactor. Over 30 fires occurred, the elimination of which at first was started only with the help of helicopter equipment due to the difficult radiation situation. In the first post-accident hours, it was possible to stop the neighboring third power unit, turn off the equipment of the fourth power unit, and check the status of the emergency reactor.
As a result of the disaster, about 400 million curies of radioactive substances were released into the environment. This was a new type of disaster that went down in history under the word that acquired an ominous meaning - Chernobyl. The accident of 1986 at the most powerful nuclear power plant in the USSR put humanity in the face of an intangible, invisible enemy - a radioactive infection.
Causes of the accident
The Chernobyl accident has become one of the largest disasters in the history of nuclear energy. A lot of people died and suffered in the first three months. The subsequent years after the disaster also made themselves felt by the long-term effects of exposure. The cloud formed by the burning reactor spread a considerable amount of radioactive materials into the nearby territories in the Soviet Union and a significant part of Europe.
The socio-political significance of the Chernobyl accident for the USSR could not but affect the course of the investigation of its causes. The interpretation of the facts and circumstances of the accident has repeatedly changed. They still have not come to a consensus.
Among the causes of the accident are errors in the design of the nuclear power plant, a number of design flaws of the RBMK-1000 reactor, unprofessional actions by shift workers, which caused an uncontrolled chain reaction that ended in a thermal explosion.
Among the reasons were also called the lack of a training center for effective training, equipment failures that remained without investigation, from 1980 to 1986. Among the various hypotheses was a narrowly directed earthquake of up to 4 points.
There was only a big lie on the part of officials and medicine, the responsibility for the accident was transferred only to the operators and their mistakes, they refused to see the causes of radiation exposure in the diseases of the victims. Constantly observed attempts to minimize the scale of the disaster.
Land of alienation
The Chernobyl zone is a land of alienation. This state of emergency was due to significant radioactive contamination of territories that are in close proximity to the nuclear power plant. This area was divided into three zones under control: the nuclear power plant itself, the so-called special zone, ten-kilometer and thirty-kilometer zones.
At their borders, strict monitoring of vehicles is carried out, decontamination points are deployed.
Law enforcement agencies work in Chernobyl to protect the territory of the zones and control illegal entry of unauthorized persons into their territory. Here are based the main enterprises, utilities and other structures that carry out work to maintain the alienated land in an environmentally friendly condition.
Second Life
A little-known town with unremarkable gray two-story buildings and clean green streets - such was Chernobyl before the accident, and after the accident he instantly becomes known to the whole world, town, forever frozen in the time of the Soviet Union.
It attracts post-apocalyptic lovers from around the world. Chernobyl and Pripyat, once confidently stepping into a brighter future, are now in the exclusion zone and are included in the visit program as part of official excursions. This land gained particular popularity in 2007 after the release of the computer game STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl.
According to Forbes magazine, in 2009 the Chernobyl zone was included in the list of 12 tourist destinations recognized as the most exotic.
In some places, the level of radiation in the zone exceeds the permissible minimum by 30 times, but this does not stop those who want to see with their own eyes the most ambitious monument to the technogenic disaster. Over the past ten years, 40 thousand tourists have visited Chernobyl. Every year, a considerable number of stalkers are detained illegally entering the place of the local "apocalypse", a place where a person will never be able to live. However, the tourist flow creates its supply and demand, which seems to allow the city to gain a second life.