Chernobyl before the accident and after the accident. Land of alienation

Pripyat is a small town of power engineers in the Kiev region, near which there was a large nuclear power plant, which got its name from the district center of the same name. So many remember Chernobyl before the accident. And after the accident, this name is already associated only with one of the most terrible technogenic catastrophes of its time. The word itself seems to bear the imprint of human tragedy and at the same time secrets. It frightens and attracts. For many long years Chernobyl will remain the object of increased attention of the whole world.

A bit of history

The small town of Chernobyl has been known since 1193. Mention of it is found in the annals of cities and towns of Russian XIV century. From the middle of the next century, he was already under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Not far from it was built a hard-to-find fortress, surrounded by a deep moat, which can still be seen. In the 16th century, this town became a county center that made its mark in Europe, engulfed by wars after the outbreak of the 1789 revolution in France, thanks to "Rosalia from Chernobyl," as Rosalie Khodkevich (married to Lubomirskaya) was nicknamed. It was one of the active participants of those distant historical events, sharing the sad fate of the supporters of the royal family of the Bourbons and Marie Antoinette.

In 1793 the city became part of the Russian Empire. It was inhabited by Ukrainians, Poles and Jews. A long enough period of Chernobyl was the center of Hasidism, a religious trend in Judaism.

So little-known as a whole town was Chernobyl before the accident. And after the accident, the attention of the entire world is suddenly drawn to him, and the very name of it is increasingly used in the common, sinister meaning that is generally associated with the words "trouble" and "disaster."

Before the accident

In the 70 years of the last century throughout the world there was a kind of boom in the development of nuclear power. In those years many nuclear power plants were built in many countries, one of which was built near the confluence of the Dnipro River of the Pripyat River. The launch of the first power unit at the Chaes was held in 1975. By the spring of 1986, the station had already operated four power units.

In the immediate vicinity of the nuclear power plant were small towns with shift workers and service personnel - Chernobyl and Pripyat. The latter was designed on the principle of satellite cities of the nuclear power plant. 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 was also given a lot of attention, since the average age of the population of the Polissya Atomograd was 26 years.

Pripyat at that time was one of the most prestigious Ukrainian cities. Its convenient transport interchanges, spacious wide streets, the distribution of residential areas and parks with attractions attracted residents from surrounding villages and cities, including Chernobyl.

Until now, many people do not quite understand that the modest district center of Chernobyl in the years leading up to the accident was not closely associated with the nuclear power plant. The original capital of power engineers was exactly the rapidly developing young city of Pripyat, located three kilometers from the Chaes. The accident in Chernobyl is connected with it, but received its name on behalf of the district center of the same name, located to the southeast of the station at a distance of 18 kilometers. Pripyat was founded in 1970 only due to the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Chernobyl itself was a small town with a population of not more than 13 thousand people. Now about 5 thousand people live in the entire exclusion zone, out of them about 4 thousand live in the district center Chernobyl.

Accident

The technogenic catastrophe that occurred on April 26, 1986 , divided the history of the city into two periods: Chernobyl before the accident and after the accident.

At the power unit No. 4, during the design test of one of the turbogenerators, an explosion took place, completely destroying the reactor. There were more than 30 fires, the elimination of which was initially started only with the help of helicopter technology because of the severe radiation situation. In the first post-emergency hours it was possible to stop the neighboring third power unit, to disconnect the equipment of the fourth power unit, to check the state 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 kind of disaster that went down in history under a word that acquired an ominous meaning - "Chernobyl." The 1986 accident at the most powerful nuclear power plant in the USSR put humanity in the face of an intangible, invisible enemy - radioactive contamination.

Causes of an accident

The accident in Chernobyl has become one of the biggest disasters in the history of nuclear energy. Many people died and suffered in the first three months. The subsequent years after the disaster also made themselves felt by the long-term effects of irradiation. The cloud formed by the burning reactor spread a considerable amount of radioactive material in the neighboring territories in the Soviet Union and in a significant part of Europe.

The socio-political significance of the Chernobyl accident for the USSR could not fail to affect the course of investigation of its causes. Interpretation of the facts and circumstances of the accident has repeatedly changed. To a single opinion did not come and still.

Among the causes of the accident are mistakes in the design of the nuclear power plant, a number of constructive shortcomings of the RBMK-1000 reactor, the unprofessional actions of the personnel of the operating shift, because of which an uncontrolled chain reaction resulting in a thermal explosion occurred in the reactor.

Among the reasons were also the lack of a training and methodological center for effective training, refusals in the work of equipment that remained without investigation, from 1980 to 1986. Among the various hypotheses was a narrowly-directed earthquake with a strength 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, in the diseases of the victims refused to see the reasons for the radiation exposure. Attempts to minimize the scale of the catastrophe were constantly observed.

Land of alienation

The zone in Chernobyl is a land of alienation. Such a state of emergency was due to substantial radioactive contamination of the territories that are in close proximity to the nuclear power plant. This area was divided into three zones that are under control: directly the nuclear power plant itself, the so-called special zone, the 10-kilometer and 30-kilometer zones.

On their borders, strict dosimetric control of vehicles is carried out, decontamination points are deployed.

In Chernobyl, law enforcement agencies are working to protect the territory of the zones and control over the illegal penetration of unauthorized persons into their territory. Here, the main enterprises, utilities and other structures that carry out work to maintain estranged land in an environmentally safe condition are based.

Second Life

A little-known town with unremarkable gray two-story buildings and clean green streets - such was Chernobyl before the accident, and after the accident He instantly becomes known to the whole world, The town, forever frozen in the Soviet Union.

It attracts fans of post-apocalyptic from around the world. Chernobyl and Pripyat, once confidently marching into a bright future, are now in the exclusion zone and are included in the visit program as part of official excursions. Especially popular this land won in 2007 after the release of the computer game "STALKER: 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 radiation level in the zone exceeds the permissible minimum by 30 times, but this does not stop those who wish to see with their own eyes the most grandiose monument to the technogenic catastrophe. In Chernobyl over the past ten years, visited 40 thousand tourists. Annually a considerable number of stalkers illegally penetrating the place of the local "apocalypse", a place where a person will never be able to live, is delayed. However, the tourist flow generates its demand and supply, which seems to give the city a second life.