Someone Turned the Lights On in Pripyat, 31 Years After Chernobyl

Pripyat is a radioactive ghost town just outside Chernobyl, the site of the infamous nuclear disaster in 1986. Deep within the Exclusion Zone, Pripyat has been permanently evacuated. Because of the contamination, officially you can't live there, although 200 or so defiant oldster locals still do. They just kept on going back to their houses until the officials gave up.

Chernobyl seems like exactly the kind of place to not go. But there's a booming local tourism industry that has -- dare I say it? -- mushroomed in the Exclusion Zone. Disaster junkies and radioactivity enthusiasts flock from all over the world to make their nuclear pilgrimage to Chernobyl. There's a shuttle from Kiev, frequent official tours, even a hotel you can stay overnight in. There's even a report of a couple who got engaged in the Zone. Apparently he asked the tour guide to guide them to the most contaminated spot possible, so he could make his proposal.

Just before the 31st anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, a group of enthusiasts from Poland took their own unguided tour through the streets of Pripyat, with a singular purpose in mind. Lugging a gas generator with them, the adventurers wanted to see if they could turn on the lights in Pripyat. Would any of the electrical tech work, after all these years? In a statement, the explorers said, "We wanted to prove that if Soviet technology doesn't fail instantly, it'll last forever." Sure enough, when they connected their generator, the lights came on.

Pripyat By Night

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(all photos credit: naprowmieniowani.pl)

The group tags itself "naprowmieniowani.pl," and they have a Twitter account(Opens in a new window) where they post memes and trivia about Fukushima, Chernobyl and other nuclear incidents. They also post similar photos to the ones they took while on their Pripyat expedition. The expedition, and its associated photoset, have been making their way rapidly through Russian-language social media. Frankly, the place looks like a vignette from Fallout 4. And that classroom is something else. It's surreal. I keep expecting a mini-boss to jump out at me from the edge of the frame.

"The Russians do know how to get things working, like they did in the space field," said(Opens in a new window) Henry Sokolski, dryly, of the Chernobyl disaster and ensuing cleanup. "But sociologically and historically they have a lot working against them when it comes to quality assurance."

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of that is the massive sarcophagus covering what remains of Chernobyl #4. The French-built New Safe Confinement is a 354-foot tall, 843-foot wide tomb, made of concrete and steel. It took decades of construction. The sarcophagus was designed to hold the radioactive remains of the old reactor for centuries to come. While Chernobyl is far from the radioactive hellstew it was in the hours following the catastrophic loss of containment on April 26, 1986, the radiation levels are still high enough that individuals and workers must carefully monitor their own exposure.