Pripyat is a small town of power engineers in the Kyiv region, near which there was a large nuclear power plant, which got its name from the district center of the same name located not far from it. So many people remember Chernobyl before the accident. And after the accident, this name is already associated with only one of the worst man-made disasters of its time. The word itself seems to bear the imprint of human tragedy and mystery at the same time. It scares and attracts. For years to come, Chernobyl will remain the focus of worldwide attention.
A bit of history
The small town of Chernobyl has been known since 1193. The mention of it is found in the annalistic list of large and small Russian cities of the XIV century. From the middle of the next century, it was already under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Not far from it, a hard-to-reach fortress was built, surrounded by a deep moat, which can still be seen today. In the 16th century, this town became a district center, which made itself felt in Europe, engulfed in wars after the start of the revolution of 1789.year in France thanks to "Rosalia from Chernobyl", that's how Rozalia Khodkevich (later Lubomirskaya) was called. She was one of the active participants in those distant historical events, sharing the sad fate of supporters of the Bourbon royal family and Marie Antoinette.
In 1793 the city became part of the Russian Empire. It was populated by Ukrainians, Poles and Jews. For quite a long period, Chernobyl was the center of Hasidism, a religious movement in Judaism.
Chernobyl was such a little-known town in general before the accident. And after the accident, the attention of the whole world suddenly draws to it, and its very name is increasingly used in a common ominous meaning, generally associated with the words "trouble" and "catastrophe".
Before the crash
In the 70s of the last century, there was a kind of boom in the development of nuclear energy around the world. In those years, many nuclear power plants were laid down in many countries, one of which was built near the confluence of the Pripyat River with the Dnieper. The launch of the first power unit at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant took place in 1975. By the spring of 1986, four power units were already operating at the station.
In the immediate vicinity of the nuclear power plant there were small towns with shift workers and service personnel - Chernobyl and Pripyat. The latter was designed on the principle of satellite cities of nuclear power plants. To ensure the employment of family members of power engineers, it provided for the construction of a number of industrial enterprises. The infrastructure of the city is alsoa lot of attention was paid, since the average age of the population of the Polissya atomograd was 26 years old.
Pripyat in those days was one of the most prestigious Ukrainian cities. Its convenient transport interchanges, spacious wide streets, distribution of residential areas and amusement parks attracted residents from the surrounding villages and cities, including Chernobyl.
Until now, many people do not quite understand that the modest regional center of Chernobyl in the years preceding the accident had little to do with the nuclear power plant. The rapidly developing young city of Pripyat, located three kilometers from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, was a peculiar capital of power engineers. The accident in Chernobyl is associated with it, but it got its name from the name of the district center of the same name, located southeast of the station at a distance of 18 kilometers. Pripyat was founded in 1970 only thanks to the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Chernobyl itself was a small town with a population of no more than 13,000 people. Today, approximately 5,000 people live in the entire exclusion zone, of which about 4,000 live in the Chernobyl regional center.
Accident
The man-made disaster that occurred on April 26, 1986 divided the history of the city into two periods: Chernobyl before the accident and after the accident.
At power unit No. 4, during the design test of one of the turbogenerators, an explosion occurred that completely destroyed the reactor. There were more than 30 fires, the elimination of which at first proceeded only with the help ofhelicopter technology due to severe radiation conditions. In the first post-accident hours, it was possible to stop the neighboring third power unit, turn off the equipment of the fourth power unit, and check the condition of the emergency reactor.
As a result of the disaster, about 400 million curies of radioactive substances were released into the environment. It was a new type of disaster that went down in history under a word that acquired an ominous meaning - "Chernobyl". The accident in 1986 at the most powerful nuclear power plant in the USSR put humanity in the face of an intangible, invisible enemy - radioactive contamination.
Causes of the accident
The accident at Chernobyl was one of the biggest disasters in the history of nuclear energy. Many people died and were injured in the first three months. The following years after the disaster also made themselves felt by the long-term effects of exposure. The cloud formed from the burning reactor carried a considerable amount of radioactive materials to nearby territories in the Soviet Union and large parts of Europe.
The social and political significance of the Chernobyl accident for the USSR could not but affect the course of the investigation of its causes. The interpretation of the facts and circumstances of the accident has been repeatedly modified. Until now, they have not come to a consensus.
Among the causes of the accident are errors in the design of the nuclear power plant, a number of design flaws in the RBMK-1000 reactor, unprofessional actions of the shift personnel, due to which an uncontrolled chain reaction ending in a thermal explosion occurred in the reactor.
Among the reasonsalso called the lack of a training center for effective training, failures in the operation of equipment that remained without investigation, in the period from 1980 to 1986. Among the various hypotheses, there was also a narrowly directed earthquake with a magnitude of up to 4 points.
On the part of officials and medicine there was only a big lie, the responsibility for the accident was shifted only to the operators and their mistakes, they refused to see the causes of radiation exposure in the diseases of the victims. Efforts to minimize the scale of the disaster were constantly observed.
Land of Alienation
The zone in Chernobyl is the land of exclusion. Such a state of emergency was due to significant radioactive contamination of the territories that are in close proximity to the nuclear power plant. This area was divided into three zones under control: the nuclear plant itself, the so-called special zone, ten-kilometer and thirty-kilometer zones.
Strict dosimetric control of vehicles is being carried out at their borders, decontamination points have been deployed.
Law enforcement agencies work in Chernobyl to protect the territory of the zones and control illegal entry of unauthorized persons into their territory. The main enterprises, public utilities and other structures that carry out work to maintain the expropriated land in an environmentally safe state are based here.
Second life
A little-known town with unremarkable gray two-story buildings and clean green streets - this was Chernobyl beforeaccident, and after the accident, in an instant it becomes known to the whole world, a town forever frozen in the time of the Soviet Union.
It attracts post-apocalyptic lovers from all over the world. Chernobyl and Pripyat, once confidently walking into a bright future, are now in the exclusion zone and are included in the visiting program as part of official excursions. This land gained particular popularity in 2007 after the release of the computer game S. T. A. L. K. E. R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.
According to Forbes magazine in 2009, the Chernobyl zone was included in the list of 12 tourist destinations recognized as the most exotic.
In some places, the level of radiation in the zone exceeds the permissible minimum by 30 times, but this does not stop those who want to see with their own eyes the most grandiose monument to a man-made disaster. Chernobyl has been visited by 40,000 tourists over the past ten years. Every year, a considerable number of stalkers are detained, illegally entering the place of the local "apocalypse", a place where a person will never be able to live. However, the tourist flow creates its own supply and demand, which seems to allow the city to gain a second life.
