TODAY marks 30 years since Chernobyl, the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
On April 26th, 1986 an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the
Ukranian town of Pripyat caused deadly radiation to leak from Reactor 4 and
spread over much of the western USSR and Europe.
The day after the accident the 50,000 residents of the once bustling Pripyat
were evacuated, leaving behind a deserted ghost town which remains eerily
empty to this day.
These chilling images show dilapidated schools, leisure centres, factories,
hospitals and homes untouched since the catastrophe.
One shows a desolate classroom where desks and chairs lie in crumbling heaps
surrounded by peeling walls and littered with workbooks, pencils and toys.
Another reveals what looks like a teacher’s desk, strewn with children’s text
books, an open register with a list of pupil’s names and a child’s gas mask
from the Cold War.
READ MORE:
One photograph shows the interior of a supermarket scattered with rusting
trollies, shattered shelves, stained walls and pieces of rubble.
An abandoned lecture hall in the Soviet-era Palace of Culture looks like a
scene from a horror film, while a shot of the empty Azure swimming pool is
hauntingly sad.
Rooms in the Pripyat Hospital also lie desolate, with piles of foam, battered
chairs and a forlorn-looking potted plant still standing as a bizarre focal
point.
Rows of empty, wrought iron bed frames are scattered with dusty pillows and
bed pans, while one incredibly creepy shot shows a doll lying among
children’s beds in the abandoned kindergarten of Kopachi village, inside the
Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
The Jupiter Factory, which used to manufacture cassette recorders and other
minor parts, is the town’s largest abandoned industrial building.
Now it lies bare and soulless, having been plundered for its Soviet machinery
and left to rot.
While the majority of the town used to work at the Chernobyl nuclear power
plant, much of the remaining population were employed here.
Rusting vans and cars lie in forgotten pile-ups in the town’s vehicle dumps
while a decaying boat is still moored in the town’s dockyard amid swathes of
scrap metal and reeds.
The once vibrant Pripyat amusement park, which opened its gates for the first
time for a couple of hours on April 27 to keep residents entertained before
the announcement to evacuate the city was made, also lies desolate.
The Ferris wheel is a prominent symbol of the disaster and visitors are
reportedly known to place stuffed toys in the Ferris wheel to reflect the
tragedy.
The accident itself claimed 41 lives in the immediate aftermath, but it
exposed an estimated five million people to devastating radiation in
Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
The radiation leak triggered an epidemic of thyroid cancer still believed to
be affecting people today.
The Chernobyl exclusion zone, which stretches over an area of approximately
2,600 km squared (1,000 sq miles) in Ukraine, remains one of the most
radioactively contaminated areas in the world.