Chernobyl at 23

Where the large body of water ends in the middle is the Chernobyl factory. Hazy day, so best view via the camera.
















The cleared area, lower left, is the graveyard of equipment used to battle the radiation fire. This is one of three areas, now off limits to "tourists."


Adventures in this world are many with various degrees of risk, all personally in the eye of the bravest. A trek to the top of Mount Everest simply requires a life insurance policy and a trek to Wal-Mart on the Friday after Thanksgiving, requires a death warrant. Every one of my trips to Kiev, Ukraine, has the underlying adventure of Chernobyl.

No, I didn't go there this time but we did fly over it on approach to Kiev. That's enough. I've never been to Everest, or the Himalayas for that matter, but I imagine the conquest isn't the top of the mountain. At 30,000 feet or so, you aren't going to take a fresh breath of air (there isn't much to take a breath of) and you're likely to take an photo of a cloud, or a cloud below you. The journey there is what makes the adventure challenging. Getting to Chernobyl via anything but expensive hired car is challenging and the real challenge is the reactor itself. For $200US, I could make it all happen, get radiation poison and not pay rent, so there has to be a cheaper way to get radiation poison and not make rent next month.

In my random trips to Kiev over the last three years, Chernobyl remains the elusive adventure. It will remain so. Breakfast service ended sooner than I planned and the Captain notified me Chernobyl was port side. I gathered the crew by the open aisle windows and we peered through the morning haze on what I later learned was the 23rd anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. My mind raced over the past researched options in getting to Ukraine's ground zero, but my unreasoned thought was interrupted by one of my Ukrainian crew member when she asked, "Why is Chernobyl so important to Americans?"

She might as well have been my future child asking about the birds and the bee's, but I'm never lost for words and I lost all my pride about ten Madrid layovers ago, so I simply answered, "Because it's all we grew up knowing about the Ukraine." Heartless, ignorant and purely American, there was no other response. Now, I know about their tasty, unfiltered and unpronounceable beer (I carry a label in my passport for the bars here), I know of the atrocities carried out by the Russians and how the Germans ran faster than a BMW M3 out of Ukraine during WWII. I know of the beaches along the Black Sea, the proud peoples of the mountain areas and Mercedes must appreciate Kiev as the number one purchaser of Maybaches. It has to be. I know of a president surviving through poison (historically deja vu for Russian politics) and some of the most beautiful (as in sexy) humans on earth trying their hardest not to be their parents or grandparents (not so sexy...at any age).

That's all irrelevant because in America, when you say Ukraine or Kiev, you are talking about Chernobyl. Think about it. When Russia attacked Georgia, the news fell off front page once everyone called Grandma in Atlanta, Georgia, and asked if she was being occupied. She wasn't of course and then we could care less. As John Stewart put it, "Oh war, the globes way of teaching Americans geography."

I could tell my Ukrainian crew member was a bit put off on all this and I understand. The effects and affects of the Chernobyl disaster are far reaching and continue on to this day. On a past trip, another Ukrainian crew member spoke of her trialsbeing from the very city and although she hasn't any notable health issues, her unborn child at the time was diagnosed with cervical cancer at age eleven. You can Google all day (because I did) and come away with numerous reports of this and that but what you come away with is far from roses.

Speaking of which, plant and animal life is absurdly doing well. The millions or acres off limits to humans around the reactor have turned into a bizarre national park. Hunting for radioactive game is off limits and the natural wildlife is doing quite well without four heads and ten toes. Deer didn't turn into dragons and wolves aren't breathing under water. you'll find two headed rabbits in England, but not by Chernobyl. BBC did a great documentary, as always, on how research is showing higher than normal doses of radiation, natural or unnatural, causes the body to change DNA to adopt and therefore become immune to high doeses of radiation. I spend 115 hours or more a month in cosmic radiation eight miles in the air. Still, you won't find me applying for isotope removal jobs at the new Iranian nuclear power station.

There are some towns in the area still occupied by "peasants" as they are called. They live on the land, the animals and remain in their quiet life perhaps not trusting anything any government official tells them. They don't live long, but no shorter than the average lifespan of a Russian in Siberia (55 if you must wonder). In another image, you see the graveyard of equipment used to cover the reactor gone bad and for evacuation. This equipment is still toxic and will likely remain cat and mouse homes for as long as I live.

Don't you just want to see it? Dont' you want to figure out how to get there on your own? That's what adventure is all about. Well, get over it. Like a Civil War marker next to a J.C. Penny's in Virginia, that's about all it amounts to. I've seen it from a safe distance in the air and I don't need to see more. I'll admit the "I've been there and made it back alive" still attracts, but my Ukrainian speaker put it all in perspective; Chernobyl isn't for viewing. Not yet. In 80 years, the half-life of nasty ions will die off and whatever is left of the earth will learn the nasty side of communism, the nasty side of controlled press and the nasty side of why Iran, North Korea and others should never have had nuclear technology in the first place.

This evening, I took my crew down to Hydropark, Kiev, to enjoy a spectacular evening along the Denieper river with $0.75 beers. The sun worked hard to provide a picture perfect sunset. Mother Russia shined along the western bank, and the young and beautiful of Kiev gave it their all for the warm evening. I imagine, 23 years ago, the same evening occurred. It was nearly a week later before anyone inside Ukraine, and the U.S.S.R. for that matter, knew of the nuclear disaster.

In 1986, I was 13 years old and living in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, worried far more about pimples and rattle snakes. 23 years later, I'm downing beers 30km from a nuclear disaster I choose to put on the back burner for adventures, understanding it was an event, not a spectacle and no rubber neckers need apply. Should the chap at the bar I met earlier come up with the requested LADA 1500, rental and call me in the morning, I'll simply refuse. Or drive the opposite direction.