Saturday, 11 July 2009

Chernobyl offers a holiday in hell

Chernobyl’s tragic secrets are open to anyone. Just watch out for the wild boar and wolves

From
July 11, 2009
A tree grows in a school room in Pripyat, abandoned nineteen years earlier after the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Maxim, our tour guide, is not having a good day. “Your bag, your bag!” he shouts across the car park. One of my fellow tourists has left a rucksack on the ground.

“You are by the biggest radioactive leak in the world,” he scolds, “and you leave your bag on the soil to pick up dust. If it is contaminated you will have to leave it in the exclusion zone.”

He tails off, momentarily distracted. A Polish couple are sitting on the grass, posing happily for a photo in front of the great rusting hulk of Chernobyl. “Your trousers! Your trousers!”

Click, click, goes the Geiger counter.

More here


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