Pripyat is what?

Surely many heard about the places in which there were explosions and accidents that turned them into ghosts. One of them is the city of Pripyat, the center of the exclusion zone in Chernobyl. About this village, its history, read the article.

The meanings of the word "Pripyat"

This combination of letters is familiar to every person living in the territory of the CIS, and many foreigners, because the accident in Ukraine shocked the whole world. This word has several meanings:

• City. Of course, the locality, which was inhabited by about fifty thousand people, first comes to mind, it is worthwhile for a person to hear this word.
• The village, whose population did not exceed one thousand people.
• Pripyat is a river. This natural object with fresh water is the largest on the contaminated territory. In addition, the river is full of radioactive substances, which are gradually transferred beyond the boundaries of the alienated zone.

City

This is one of the nine cities of nuclear power engineers built in the USSR. By the time of the accident, he was sixteen years old, since he appeared in 1970. He was not populated to the limit: in the city could accommodate another twenty-nine thousand people.

The city of Pripyat in Ukraine was created for the normal life of the population. It had wells, a communication center, medical facilities, various enterprises, twenty-five shops and roughly the same number of dining rooms. There were ten kindergartens and several schools, one school, a palace of culture and a cinema, as well as an art school. Its residents could play sports, because there were sports stadiums, one of the buildings was reserved for a swimming pool. All this suggests that Pripyat before the accident was a settlement with a well-developed infrastructure.

Location

Speaking about where Pripyat is, it is necessary to mention that this city is located in Ukraine, to be precise - in the Kiev region. It is part of the so-called exclusion zone.

The dead city called Pripyat is in dangerous proximity to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. He and the reactor are only three kilometers apart. Before the accident, nuclear power plant workers lived here, for which Pripyat was nicknamed the satellite of a power plant.

Answering the question, where is Pripyat, one must also say that it is built on the shore of the river of the same name, which is located on the territory of two countries: Ukraine and Byelorussia.

River

As it was said earlier, the Pripyat River is in the infected zone. It is the largest water body in this area. Its length is 775 kilometers, but only 1/3 is in Ukraine. On the banks of the river are cities such as Mozyr, Pinsk, Chernobyl and, of course, Pripyat. The source of the river is in Ukraine - in a bog massif in the Volyn region.

This water body, spreading every year, takes strontium and cesium from the exclusion zone. In addition, fish living in the river are also contaminated with radioactive substances.

Accident

Pripyat is the city that suffered most from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. On April 26, 1986 , an explosion exploded, which the whole world recognized. The fourth reactor failed during the planned procedure.

In the book of one of the workers of the power station it is written how it happened. On the night of April 26, it was ordered to drown out the reactor. First everything went as it should be: its power decreased. Suddenly she began to grow, and nothing could stop her. An alarm has been activated. It was decided to de-energize the system, but this did not work: two explosions of enormous power destroyed the reactor, throwing into the environment an incredible amount of radioactive substances - everything that by that time was in the reactor. The authorities of the USSR hastened to classify what had happened, but this did not work: the radiation leak was so great that it was noticed in other countries.

This amount was enough to create a zone of alienation. Pripyat and a number of other settlements became a part of it. They have not yet returned to the normal level of radioactivity. They are closed from outsiders for safety and will be in this state for more than a dozen years.

Victims

Immediately during the accident, only one person was killed who is in the workplace. The next morning, his colleague died. During the next month, twenty-eight people lost their lives, which helped to stop the fire on the nuclear reactor.

In order to eliminate the fire, 69 firefighters arrived in the territory of the fourth reactor. They carried out their work without knowing what the pollution level was, after all one of the radiation background meters was broken, and the second one was under the rubble.

A few minutes later (at two o'clock in the morning - a little less than forty minutes after the explosion) the firemen showed signs of radiation sickness. They were taken to Pripyat, and twenty-eight people were transported to the Moscow Radiological Hospital. They failed to help, and they died within one month.

Speaking about the consequences of the accident, we must also say that not only people were killed. Plants and animals within Chernobyl and Pripyat have not withstood the level of pollution. Formed a "red forest". Now he is buried under a layer of soil in a special burial ground.

The zone of alienation - what is it?

Pripyat in the exclusion zone is only a small part of the huge territory affected by the explosion at the nuclear reactor. Since this kind of explosion was the first in the territory of the USSR, two circles were outlined, in the center of which there is a nuclear power plant. The radius of one of them is ten kilometers, and the second - thirty. It is believed that the territory of the outer circle can become safe for housing, but the inner circle will never accept a new population. Pripyat and the ChNPP building constitute the third exclusion zone, the smallest in area and the most dangerous.

Chernobyl and Pripyat are the most famous cities within the exclusion zone. In addition to these, a number of other settlements are located here, which also suffered from an explosion in the fourth reactor block. Among them - the village of Vilch, the village of Tolsty Les. This already uninhabited point had a centuries-old history - from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century people lived in it, and after the accident it turned into one of the places hit by radiation.

Evacuation

On the day of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, an attempt was made to keep the incident a secret. However, already on April 27 the entire population of Pripyat and nearby settlements was evacuated. Subsequently, in other areas, towns and villages were built, where residents of the exclusion zone were placed.

It was planned to evacuate the population for three days. Unfortunately, this did not happen, and people left their homes forever. All that they had was documents and penny savings. The most intelligent inhabitants took the jewels, everything else went to the marauders.

Many people think that life in Pripyat stopped after the accident. In fact, this is not so. Three units of the reactor worked until 2000, and the people serving them lived in this city. Until the beginning of the third millennium, one shop operated here, sewerage functioned, water and electricity were supplied here. People even swam in the pool. True, it was processed with plastic. Cleaning in the busy places of the city was conducted up to ten times a day in order to carry away the settling particles.

Tourist routes

Currently, the dead city is one of the most popular tourist routes around the world. Not only CIS residents, but also foreigners want to visit this place, the atmosphere of which is imbued with sadness and silent silence. As those people who managed to visit this city say, now even birds are not singing in Pripyat. The only source of sound is the wind and rustle of the leaves. The most courageous travelers manage to get to this city. You can do this in many ways.

Official excursions

Indeed, there are a number of agencies that give clients the opportunity to visit this place with a group of other tourists. This legal way of penetrating into Pripyat allows you to choose a suitable route, consisting of a journey of one, two or three days. There is an opportunity to become a member of an individual excursion and enjoy the view of the city in solitude. However, all the same next to the tourist there will be an experienced guide.

What else to consider when choosing an excursion to Pripyat, is that many buildings can not be visited. Some of them are in a deplorable state, there is a threat of their collapse. However, when traveling to this city with a group, you should not be afraid to get lost, because the tourist will always be under the supervision of an experienced guide and he will not be allowed to leave the rest of the travelers. Such excursions are made in the most safe way for health, and the risk of radiation exposure is equated to zero.

Independent tourism

This illegal way of penetrating into Pripyat is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there are no restrictions - you can visit any building and not depend on other tourists. On the other hand, there is a risk to get lost, run into wild animals that are slowly occupying the city, or to go to a place with a high level of radiation, dangerous to health.

Most popular places

Any tourist who visited this city knows that Pripyat is a very quiet and mysterious settlement. There are a number of places that are not left unattended by travelers and often become locations for taking photos:

• Residential houses. Pripyat before the accident was a populated city, so its housing stock was quite rich. Houses of different heights were built here. Among them there are five-, ten- and sixteen-storey buildings, on the roofs of which the arms of the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian SSR are still preserved. There were two such houses. Five-story buildings almost completely disappeared under the canopy of overgrown trees. Behind dense branches it is possible to disassemble only black holes of window apertures without glasses. The fact is that during the evacuation, things were dropped from homes, often without even opening the windows. But high-rise buildings are available for visiting. The roofs of many of them are sites for a panoramic view of the city. Unfortunately, time takes its toll, and buildings are destroyed. Maybe soon they will not be left a trace.

• Swimming pool "Azure", a stadium and a sports hall. Now Pripyat is compared with a seedy village, in which once lived a few people. However, this is a real city in which sports developed actively. Conditions were created for the popularization of physical culture. There was a number of large sports facilities.
• Secondary school No. 3. The building of an educational institution often becomes the object of photography. Not only slogans on the walls, but also inscriptions on school boards are noteworthy. Here people who once lived in Pripyat, leave contacts to contact fellow countrymen.

• Ferris wheel and amusement park. The authorities of the city called Pripyat planned to launch a new Ferris wheel in May, in honor of the Day of Spring and Labor. However, in order to divert public attention from the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, it was launched on April 26, 1986. A huge attraction worked only one day, and on April 27 stopped forever.
• House of Culture "Energetik". Here was the fight ring, where training and competitions were held. The scene of this building was advanced in equipping and was considered the largest in Pripyat and nearby settlements. In addition, in the house of culture there were warehouses of various posters and portraits of politicians of the USSR. Some of them have survived until now.
• In 1986, the military lived in the Polesie Hotel. By the way, it was just so difficult to get here - it was necessary to show a document that the person was actually sent to Pripyat for a while and he has nowhere to live.

• Graffiti. Dutch artists who illegally made their way into the city in 2006 painted the walls of the city's buildings with graffiti in the form of shadows. Their drawings were called "The Shadows of Hiroshima." It is believed that they represent the shadows of people who died from the accident.