Reactor 4, Chernobyl

“Extreme tourism” or “Chernobyl stalking”, as Ukrainians love to name visits to Exclusion zone, was opened in 2002.


Poligon with white cranes where they are building New Safe Confinement (photographing is prohibited at poligon and around)

Reactor 5 was under construction at time of explosion of reactor 4. All the heavy construction equipment remains.

Unfinished cooling tower for reactor 5. It was about 70% complete at the time of the accident and was scheduled to start operating on 7.11.1986.

Reactor 4 and its sarcophagus
Workers on NOVARKA project of New Safe Confinement are allowed to work inside reactor no more than 2 minutes a day in special protective uniform and they get 1000€ monthly salary for this 2 minute job a day, which is 5 times bigger than an average salary in region. Many people try to tune their dosage indicators so that they show less radiation than they got in reality to earn more money.

It is allowed to photograph only at Unit 4 direction and everybody strictly follow the rules

Radiation 4,25 μSv (micro Sievert) per hour 250 m from reactor
The average dose of natural radiation per hour is 0,25 – 0,55 μSv, depend of location. Flight crew on long distance high altitude flight get 2,7 μSv per hour. Radiation in Ramsar city in Iran is as high as 640 mSv per year. Lethal full-body dose of radiation is around 4–5 Sv.

20th anniversary memorial

Giant catfish in one of cooling channels (3-4 m long)

Contamination level check

Last radioactive lunch 😯

Chernobyl incident was the reason for terrible radiation emission. This caused serious social and economic problems for the population of the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. 70% of the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl disaster landed in Belarus, affecting approximately 3,500 towns and villages and about 2.5 million people.

Map of exclusion zone (photo: http://outsideonline.com)