Pripyat & Chernobyl - May 2010

[Anthillmob74]

how and where did you go to get to do such an amazing trip? id love to go.

 

[shj35]

Dude... that is a wicked report... the best i have seen for sure... thumbs up to you mate... Its a place ive always read about and would truly love to visit... time for a bit more research

 

[muppix]

There’s an area in the centre of the fairground where my guide puts down his Geiger counter. I’m amazed at what I see. It shoots up to 49.95 μSv. That’s 13 times stronger radiation than outside the front of Reactor 4! He explains that this is the area where the helicopters landed between flights to drop water and sand on the reactor fire. Each time they went over the reactor they became more and more radioactively charged

Nearly.

There are two small patches of tarmac in the amusement park which have much higher radiation levels than the surrounding area. If you look very closely you'll see that the material is also different from the surrounding tarmac. This is because the adjacent manholes were installed as part of supporting infrastructure for a company that was to monitor the zone following the accident. Some tarmac was being produced near the reactor at the time of installation, and since the whole area was deemed to be contaminated anyway they just used the tarmac from the reactor to patch up the manhole installations in the amusement park. The difference was that the radiation in Pripyat town was caused largely by fall-out and stayed on the surface, whereas the radiation in the new patch of tarmac was much more deeply ingrained and thus prevailed longer than that of the surrounding area in the amusement park, hence the higher readings.

I was there over the August Bank Holiday weekend and will have finished sorting my pictures soon. I'll post a new thread when they're ready, if you want to see some previews before then you can search FaceBook for "muppix.net".

Sorry for the blatant plug there, I hope the info has been useful all the same.

Mup.

 

[UrbanX]

If your blatent plug bumps my thread, I don't mind

I didn't know that about the tarmc. I knew it had been replaced, but just assumed it had been re-contaminted passively by the surrounding area.

I shall head over to Friendface and have a nosey I look forward to your report too

 

[devonian42]

Wonderful report UrbanX.

I was scanning the new posts list and, due to your recent post, this overseas report listed and hence I'm here, spell-bound. I'm old enough to remember this appearing on the news - there was word in the UK that sheep on high ground (such as in the lakes, Scotland or the Pennines) could be contaminated and needed to be checked out .

Anyway, I've been a browser on this gem of a site for some time now, and I feel that, with this report of yours, I've found the jewels