during the trip to Chernobyl, we passed through a grassland, the guide said that this place was a village. after the accident, the whole village is buried underground. also there're some signs with radiation logo, which means there're radioactive materials under the soil. that's why it's not allowed to walk freely in the exclusion zone.
we passed thorugh a small forest as well, it was the place where "magic trees" were buried. after the accident the tress here grows red (!) because of radiation so they're called "magic trees". they're cut and buried so the land here is very toxic. new trees are grown for scientific researches.
i have no ideas how much radiation will be harmful, but when i think of the invisible nature of the radiation i feel a bit uncomfortable.
Pripyat is a small town which located near the no.4 reactor. there were about 47,000 ppl living here but after the accident they're all forced to leave.
at the first glance i can't imagine a town like this can be a no-man land.
everything remains original, except most of the valuable things were taken away by the robbers. however the trees and grass grows in the past 20 years, which make the town looks like a town-in-the-forest. the radiation here will last for several hundreds years, so this town will be alone for the coming centuries.
near the no.4 reactor, which is a highly restricted area. you're suggested to take photos at certain points, in one angle only. once i turned around and took a picture, the guide told me that a guy did the same like me last year, afterwards he got catched by the police and all his films are taken away. also he has to stayed and being questioned until midnight......
i was told that the workers in the plant can only work for several minutes (!) per day because of the high radiation near the plant. so how can the liquidators worked here? i'm sure they worked more then 15 mins during that period after the accident.
there're 300,000 to 600,000 liquidators. where are they?
i couldn't visit any liquidators during this trip, that's the main disappointment of mine. i do interest in what they saw during the liquidation.
