Chernobyl...

Saturday 26th April, 1986 took place a catastrophic nuclear accident in Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant ( old Soviet Union –URSS, actually Ukraine). This accident happened during a security drill after a mistake in the operating of the reactor number 4 which produced a power increase of its central core and originated its own explosion.

The devastating effects of the accident sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere overall Europe and part of Asia and marked the worst nuclear power plant accident in the history.

Prypiat, a city of around 50.000 citizens next to the Nuclear Power Plant had to be evacuated in three or four hours. It is calculated than around 380.000 people were working in the removal of the consequences of this nuclear disaster. Nowadays being still registered so many gaps about the amount of aforementioned people which suffering radioactive dosages greater than the ones compatibles with the human life and their own consequences.

There are reports that enter a 134 staff members of the nuclear power plant and emergency equipment who were exposed a very high level dosage of ionized radiation, 28 of them dead because of the radiation and two due to the serious burns.

30 years later, the jobs for the construction and using of a new sarcophagus in charge to seel off the reactor and its contents are finishing. 30 kilometres around this place are still fenced and controlled by Ukrainian military with express prohibition to access unless justified authorisation by the Goverment of the country.

Nowadays Prypiat is considered a poisoned and ghost city.

This pictures are only that…a reflection of what you find there; a silent city consumed by a land which try to regenerate itself and get out of a agonizing past where the trees start to grow up and break through injured cements, where some bird starts to sing in the nearness and breaks the silence of the forests, the silence of the crosses, statues and conmemorative monuments.

Jose Maria Rubio Calonge.