The Arch [part 1]
Hello, my dear friends! I want to talk in more detail about one of the points about which I wrote in the previous post.
I have visited this place many times and I want to tell about it more.
One of the greatest industrial catastrophes in human history happened on 26 April 1986. On that day, the #4 reactor of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded.
The reactor was destroyed completely, polluting the environment with a large amount of radioactive material. As the result of the accident, a radioactive cloud was formed; it spread dangerous elements over most of Europe. However, the territory that was harmed the worst, was the area around the plant.
The populations of two cities and dozens of towns and villages nearby were evacuated in the first days after the explosion. Soon after, the Exclusion Zone, an area extending 30 km in all directions from the plant was created. To this day, the zone remains inaccessible to tourists.
Pripyat has located 2 km from the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Its populace was evacuated on 27 April 1986. Forever. Around fifty thousand people lost their homes in one instant.
For the last thirty years, Pripyat has been a ghost town. Once broad and open, now avenues house bushes and buildings can barely be seen through the trees. Prypyat is ruled by wild nature.
Another city left uninhabited is Chornobyl, 18 km from the Nuclear Plant. Now, only those who work in the Exclusion Zone live there.
More than a hundred thousand people have been displaced because of the disaster, a few dozen villages were destroyed, over two hundred settlements abandoned and two hundred thousand square kilometers of territory polluted with poisonous materials, making the region unfit for living.
The Chornobyl Power Plant was launched in 1977. It was responsible for roughly a tenth of all electricity used in Ukraine. In 1986, all four reactors were working, and another two were due to be launched, though it will never happen. There were four thousand people in place to service the plant.