Chernobyl museum

Kiev is located very near the world's worst nuclear disaster - the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. I had hopes of taking a tour. For large groups it can supposedly be done for as little as $65. The best price we could find was over $250. I may someday regret not throwing out the dough for that but on this trip I had to take a pass.

Instead we took a visit to the Chernobyl museum in Kiev.

The 1986 disaster was recreated in various videos and models. Firefighters were brought in to put out the radioactive fire and were not told it was a nuclear fire. They needed to get to a place under core so they brought in unsuspecting coal miners. Workers with little protection spent 30 minute shifts shoveling radioactive material with a tiny shovel. If they spent more than 30 minutes they'd be overcome with radiation sickness.

What you see above is the main newspaper from Kiev a couple of days after the explosion. Rumors had started to spread and the newspaper had to do a story so it did. The tiny red box on the lower left of the paper. It simply said that there had been an accident and that the Soviet government had set up a committee to take care of it.

How reassuring!

This is a list of all the cities evacuated. The people were told they had one hour to board a bus and were promised the evacuation would be temporary. The Soviets knew that if they told them the evacuation would be permanent people would try to bring too much stuff. Thousands of houses in these cities sit abandoned with dirty dishes in the sink.

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During the audio presentation it said the exclusion zone around Chernobyl is "half the size of Luxemburg" which sounds impressive until you realize Luxemberg is only slightly larger than Benton or Linn county.