Ghost town (Pripyat)

Pripyat (Ukrainian: При́п'ять, Pryp’yat’; Russian: При́пять, Pripyat’) is an abandoned city in northern Ukraine, near the border with Belarus.

Named for the nearby Pripyat River, Pripyat was founded on 4 February 1970, the ninth nuclear city in the Soviet Union, for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.It was officially proclaimed a city in 1979, and had grown to a population of 49,360 before being vacated a few days after the 26 April 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

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Fantastic study, thanks so much for sharing. Love 23 & 24

glad to see nature is encroaching. Why was it abandoned?

After the distaster at chernobyl....

Interesting set, compare your shot 24 to this shot taken in 2006

Truly superb set of images. very poignant

What a fantastic place to explore and shoot images! Many thanks for sharing.

Fabulous, I am so envious of you going there. Was it a guided tour or can you access it by yourself? (I presume it's safe for short periods at least!)

It is perfectly safe, however it can be expensive if you want to spend your time to take some good photos, I join the day tour and cost me USD 170, the group was far too big with 60 people. I guess it can be less people if you choose not to go on weekends. Officially you are not allowed to go into any building anymore to safety reasons. However if you join a smaller tour it is possible to ask the tour guide to keep an eye close while you spend some time go get inside the buildings to photograph what is left from the ex USSR era.

You will have to go into the zone with a tour guide. If you want the tour just for yourself it would cost you $450 for the day and $300 per person if there is 2 of you. I suggest to go with a few friends who love to photograph the area as well, since a group of 4 would only cost $220 per person and you would be able to control your own timing, eg. spend less time for lunch and instead more time in the abandoned town.

Don't worry too much about the cost since I am sure you can save alot of money with accommodation and food elsewhere in Ukraine during your trip. Everything is very cheap compare to European standard. A single journey ride on the underground/metro only cost around 20p. You can have a reasonably nice meal for £5. £40 for a night for a twin room in a 3/4* hotel.

Spend some money to invest on some fast lenses is a must. Inside the buildings are very dark. I often have to puch the iso to 1600 or higher on my 2.8 zoom.

Very nice! .... reminds me of Yorkshire!

'

cheeky
neil

Lovely collection, the ones of the fairground are superb.

Very strong images, but very sad to see scenes like this.

A nice set of images - very interesting

I read not so long ago that trips there are still limited to reduce radiation exposure though and that regular guides still get sick

I still have the 'Battle for Chernobyl' documentary on sky plus - that is an eye opener and shows just how truly clueless the local and national authorities were in terms of dealing with this - something ex President Gorbachev seemed truly annoyed about.

Given the lack of understanding and the money to be made I would be extremely careful whose 'advice' I would take in terms of how safe it is - no disrespect to you at all.

Strangely, my physics and chemistry teachers in school both surmised circa 1988 that the surrounding area would not be safe to visit for probably twice as long as us young pups in school in the eighties could hope to live and would not be safe to inhabit for a few hundred years if ever (this may be inaccurate)

Equally, if this is safe why does it and the surrounding area remain uninhabited:

I really don't wish to raise an argument merely raise people's awareness that they should check the validity of the claims made by those charging you to visit in terms of safety

If it is safe to visit then that's great but personally as a sceptic I would want to see facts/figures and even take my own/rented Geiger counter with me but maybe that's just me

Cracking photo's though

Hi Stuey, I always wanted to visit the chernobyl and the nearby town since 2005 after I seen a documentary about it. I have done many research about the zone before making my mind up to go there. I have to go sooner rather than later since the government starting to put restriction for us to enter the buildings due to the fact that they can be dangerous since they have not been repaired or any kind of maintenance for over 27 years. It is either now of never. My tour guide always carry a Geiger counter with him at all time during the time we spend in the zone. And yes he live in the zone (2 weeks in the zone and 2 weeks off outside the zone) for the past 9 years and he still seems healthy tome although a bit crazy (perhaps due to exposure LOL).

The average background radiation level in central London is 0.12-0.25 msv per hour. According to the Geiger counter the average radiation level was around 0.3-0.8msv per hour. which is about 3-5 times higher than in London where most people will consider as normal. In some spots in the zone the radiation level can go as high as 15 msv per hour which is 75 times higher than my central London example. Sounds bad to you? if it does might I ask you how many flights you take a year? the average reading on an commercial aircraft is about 9msv per hour due to the fact that we are a lot more closer to space and our o zone protect us from space radiation such as radiation from the sun.

So in theory the radiation I exposed to during my trip to the zone for 5 hours is about the same as taking a flight from London to New york. Nothing to worry about in my opinion.

As to why the zone is still uninhabitable is due to the fact that radiation levels are still many times higher than normal, if people live in there they will grow things there and they are likely to sell their food to the public. While it is perfectly safe to visit the zone it is not safe to drink the water nor eat anything from inside the zone. It is never good if radiative dust goes inside our body.

I am not a scientist and of course I wouldn't know the full effect from radiation. But to me a few hours in the zone is far safer than many activates we do everyday, driving, cycling, getting drunk and so on.