Emma Thomson | The Independent
The Ukrainian winter bites like a wolf. But what I hear next chills me more. “I was 28 at the time of the explosion. I was young and wanted to save the world. I wanted to volunteer, but my wife said she’d divorce me if I went. Turns out, she saved my life,” says our guide, Serhii Uzlov. He’s speaking of Chernobyl – the worst nuclear disaster in history.
Thirty two years ago, on 26 April 1986, the crew of reactor number four switched off the safety systems in the early hours of the morning to test the turbine. The reactor overheated, surged out of control, and generated an explosion the equivalent of 500 nuclear bombs.
It blew off the concrete lid and sent a plume of radioactive material two kilometres up into the atmosphere. An 18-mile radius, known as the “Exclusion Zone”, was set up around the reactor.
Remarkably, it’s been open to tourists since 2010, but many are nervous of its silent menace. I’d joined a new tour to see for myself.
Our starting point is the Chernobyl Museum in Kiev, 75 miles south of the reactor. In the first room, a silent black and white video plays on a small television screen, filmed in the nearby town of Pripyat, hours after the event.
The cameraman pans from filming the smoking nuclear plant, just over a mile away, to mothers strolling across the square with their babies in prams. “Notice the flashes on the screen?” asks Natalia Hrvatska, the museum guide. “That’s the radiation reacting with the film.”
I stare at the men smiling for the camera, oblivious to the danger all around them. “It took 36 hours before buses turned up to evacuate them. People were told to take only necessities because they could come back in three days,” she says. It would be a year before the first could return.
Nobody really has an accurate count of how many died, indirectly, as a result of the Chernobyl disaster. Mortality rates have been obscured by propaganda and reports were lost when the Soviet Union broke up.
Around 600,000 ‘liquidators’ (first responders) were drafted in from across the republics to clean everything up. “Men sent onto the roofs of reactors one, two and three to shovel off the debris could only spend two minutes once in their life up there it was so contaminated,” says Natalia.

Serhii Uzlov takes a (large) millisievert reading of clothing worn by the first responders to the Chernobyl disaster
The next day we drive north to the exclusion zone’s 30km checkpoint. Serhii has entered the zone over 200 times, he says, and his bald head and cheeks are reassuringly rosy. “I’m sorry to say it’s safe, I know you wanted adventure,” he teases.
For those thinking of visiting, be assured scientists from other countries have visited to corroborate Ukraine’s claim that it’s safe; and the exposure is the same as a transatlantic flight. Although the form visitors have to sign is alarming: “I understand and fully realise staying in the area with high levels of ionizing radiation can cause potential harm to my life and health in the future.”
A wide avenue of tapered silver birch trees guide us towards the inner 10km checkpoint, where military men outfitted in camouflage and carrying automatic rifles come out to inspect us. “The Exclusion Zone is a state within a state – it has its own rules,” says Serhii. A solemn nod and we’re through.
As if matching our misgivings, the mercury slides to -17°C. The cold saps the energy from phone batteries like bad spirits (not that they’d be much use – there’s no reception here). As we pass abandoned homes, my pen freezes instantly, as if Nature itself is forbidding me from sharing secrets of this place.

An abandoned dormitory in Chernobyl
On the horizon is the domed roof of the reactor. It’s inside the Special Zone that’s demarcated by a 10 foot concrete wall topped with an electric fence and barbed wire for good measure. No tourists are allowed inside this section.
“People still get ill working there,” says Serhii, as we pull up outside the observation deck where a hulking granite memorial stands to those who died. I’m shocked to learn around 4,000 people still work inside the zone, cleaning debris.
“They usually work on a two weeks on, two weeks off rota, but inside the reactor it can be as little as an hour before they reach their daily limit,” explains Serhii. We don’t linger long.