Tanks for the memories
Parked here are some of the three thousand military vehicle that were used in the clean up operation. The vast majority of them are buried in large trenches. Tanks, boats, lorries and even helicopters are hidden in the ground like a giant's toys in a sand play pit.
Wipe your feet on the way out
Here, Katya enters the radiation level sensors desperately hoping to receive the green light. The lights seem to take an eternity to change. Without it, it's a no go for home. If someone had been foolish enough to have hidden a 'souvenir' of their day, this is the place where it gets discovered.
Beers
Finally ending the Cold War with a cold beer. This is probably the strangest place I've had a drink. You may ask yourself "Who goes to Chernobyl?". As you'll see from the photo, this is my group whom visited Chernobyl with me. In it, there's a Dubliner with his Swiss mate, both living in London, a British lad who's travelling the world, a girl from Manitoba who visited Chernobyl to take pictures and use them in her ceramics business, a posh London lawyer in Kiev on a business trip, four guys from Montreal - possibly Call of Duty 4 gamers, a Ukrainian tour guide who genuinely looked interested in her country's sight, Vladimir and then me, a fella from London who's into football and drinking. Oh, and Red Leicester is my favourite cheese.
What Next?
Although the contamination remains, there is no quick and easy solution. The sarcophogus needs to be rebuilt at great cost. The pine trees still have a bizarre red bark on their trunks, yet they're now standing in what is a designated nature reserve. Some animals have flourished without humans encoraching into their forests. Others tunred feral.
My own theory is to turn a negative into a positive and perhaps use the already contaminated area for nuclear waste reprocessing, which is actually a world wide issue.
Harnessed correctly, nuclear power is an amazing and safe energy source.
email: cheyne@ilovespurs.co.uk