On April 26, 1986, there was a meltdown at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl in the Soviet Union, which is now in the Ukraine. A Ukranian named Elena often rides her motorcycle through the Chernobyl “dead zone,” because “one can take long rides there on empty roads.” She has assembled a haunting and vivid photoessay, mainly of her own photos, at her website, Ghost Town. Note the photos in which her Gieger counter is visible; in her introduction she has also written a good account of radiation levels in the various parts of the area.
4 thoughts on “Chernobyl 18 Years Later: A Photo Essay”
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I’ve been following Elena’s photo tour for some weeks now and have noticed some hardening of the attitudes she expresses in her captions. For instance, page 23 used to have a caption on its first picture explaining that the units the dose rate meter is reporting 81.6 of are microroentgens, aka micrograys, aka microsieverts if it’s external gamma irradiation, per hour.
Now that explanation is no longer given, perhaps because it made comparisons to natural hotspots too easy, cf. http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller12.html, which mentions a dose rate at Fountainhead Rock Place, Santa Fe — New Mexico, right? — that would make that sign read 86.8.
The third photo shows the exploded (not melted-down) plant through kilometres of air, too much air to allow gawkers in April 1986 to be line-of-sight irradiated, as the caption claims. Her photos just give the news, but she gives the petro-tax-dollar spin.
— Graham Cowan
Boron — fireproof fuel, real-car range, no emissions
Thanks, Graham! Sorry about “meltdown,” folks – symptom of inadequate topic research :-) In retrospect, I should have suspected the term was wrong, cuz when I typed “Chernobyl meltdown” into Google, five of the top ten results were a badly written student paper being offered on free term paper sites.
Micrograys, even of external gamma dose, aren’t microsieverts. 81.6 microroentgen = 81.6 microgray = 0.816 microsievert.
Fantastic website, incredible photos. Thanks, Sweetwind…and thanks Elena, whereever you are. May your bike always be swift and your pavement clean.