Some 600,000 people took part in cleaning up the consequences of the disaster. Entire villages were leveled and cities abandoned. Bellona environmentalists and journalists are here in the wastelands of Chernobyl to cover this dark and chilling anniversary.

Estimating the potential death toll from Chernobyl is not an exact science. CNN surveyed expert groups throughout the world and the potential death toll from thyroid cancer linked to the catasrophe is estimated at between 9,000 and 98,000 individuals.

Beyond a road barrier at checkpoint Detyaki lies the Chernobyl Zone—an area defined by a 30 kilometre radius around the remnants of the exploded reactor. A spring day. Barbed wire strung about with the red and yellow signs indicating radiation hazard. A monument to the right of the checkpoint a combination of the Russian Orthodox cross and the Catholic Mother Mary. The background radiation level is high, but within accepted norms—28 to 30 microroentgen per hour. They say that 20 years ago, at the moment of the accident, the background radiation at Detyatki reached into the thousands.

We climb out off a bus to await the approval of our credentials at the checkpoint.

“On April 26 there was no information. Then information started to trickle in, but only to the big bosses, the party nomenclature. Others who heard the voice also learned about the catastrophe, but could not believe it because of the full official silence,” recalled Katya Perovskaya, a journalist from Berlin. On May 1st 1986 she was a student at school 77 on Lutheran Street and abandoned Kiev as the whole city turned out for traditional Soviet May 1st celebrations: To this day, it is not known who, someone advised her parents to send her to Moscow. Those who turned out for the May Day celebrations on that warm spring day, which was most of Kiev, were irradiated by radioactive rain.

Then, in the metro, people frequently began to repeat the previously unknown word “radiation,” and rumors about some “black cloud” from Chernobyl.

Panic began on May 5th 1986. One couldn’t get a ticket in any direction. Party functionaries forbade that children go outside. “Either take your children inside—or surrender your party card on the table,” officials said. Word was needed for simple mortals…

We have completed our document check and the gate rises. We are in the zone. Only those sanctioned to work in the zone and at the Chernobyl station, and 19 illegal elderly squatters who have returned to their native homes, live here. The government considered their age looking through smoked glass: After all, they're just old codgers, so the reasoning ran. But those younger than 18 are absolutely forbidden to enter the zone.

A playground is pictured in front of a building. A radiation hazard sign is placed on it.

Igor Kudrik/Bellona

Buried villages
A kilometere and a half from the sarcophagus covering the exploded reactor No. 4, remains something next to a half-destroyed one story building. This building and a monument to soldiers of the World War II are all that remain of the village of Kopachi. The village, like so many others, has been completely buried. After the accident they simply turned into radioactive waste.

There is a playground in front of the building. A radiation danger sign hangs in front of it. The background radiation is some 1,000 microroentgens an hour.

Childrens’ toys strewn about a room.

Igor Kudrik/Bellona

Our guide Sergei who is accompanying us in the bus confirms that the building was the Cultural Centre. In the building’s foyer hangs a placard reading “The Children’s Corner,” and further down the corridor are cubby holes for children’s clothing. Children’s toys are strewn about the rooms. Whatever happened here 20 years ago is difficult to find out or imagine today.

On the right side of the road are visible the red buildings of reactors No. 5 and No. 6. They were 80 percent complete when the accident happened.

Igor Kurdrik

French efforts
On the bus, we are nearing the Chernobyl station itself. On the right side of the road, the red buildings of the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors are visible. They were about 80 percent complete at the moment of the accident. Construction was never finished, but there are arguments to this day about completing them and putting them into operation today.

The station is surrounded by water canals, water that was used to cool the reactors. In normal conditions, this water would be clean, but here the dosimeter shows a background radiation of more than 5,000 microroentgen per hour.

On the left side of the road is another contemporary complex, which is, alas, also abandoned. In the 90s, the French concern Framatome undertook to build a storage facility for the No.1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactor blocks at Chernobyl with the financing of the European Union (EU). Four years ago, the effort was halted. For some reason, it came to light only toward the end of construction that the French has used the wrong kind of cement—a kind of cement that could not endure Ukraine’s harsh winters. But the most surprising fact is that the designers had not taken into consideration the size of the fuel cells used in Chernobyl’s reactors.

In the 90s, the French concern Framatome undertook to build a storage facility for fuel from reactors No. 1, No.2 and No3.at Chernobyl with financing from the EU.

Igor Kudrik/Bellona

Ukraine has now undertaken construction of fuel storage facility on the site of the station. But extracting fuel from the reactor may prove challenging—it has been there for more than 10 years.

The EU has over the past 20 years doled out EUR500m for the Chernobyl programmes. But far from all the projects have brought the desired effect. Framatome’s misadventure is a case in point.

From this point, behind a two meter fence, the top part of the sarcophagus is visible: It is an image that is notorious worldwide.

Igor Kudrik/Belona

The Sarcophagus
Our bus moves further and we are approaching the sarcophagus. Sergei informs us that we can photograph it from only one vantage point at the demand of the security personnel. From this point, from behind a two-meter barbed wire fence, the top part of the sarcophagus is visible. Most of the world is familiar with the image of this formless construction with a chimney sprouting from its metal carcass from the wide-spread media attention it has received in photographs.

From where we stand, the background radiation is some 2,000 microroentgen per hour. It is much higher at the sarcophagus. On the old checkpoint building there is a modest slogan, in Russian rather than Ukrainian, reading “Let us complete these
stabilisation measures “Shelter” by 2006,” the apparent name of the project to secure the radiation with the sarcophagus.

In fact, the sarcophagus is in need of reconstruction. Built for 25 years of use, it has now covered the site of the explosion for 20. The concrete of the sarcophagus is covered with cracks through which radiation escapes.

Authorities are today actively discussing designs to build a new covering that will guarantee the safe isolation of the Chernobyl reactor for the next 100 years. The project should take eight to nine years, and is estimated to cost $768m. The project is being managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Liquidator Valery Khmelnitsky, who was with us, reminisces while standing on Pripyat’s main square.

Igor Kudrik/Bellona

An abandoned city
The last stop is the city of Pripyat, once home to 50,000 people. Workers from the Chernobyl station lived here. Now it is a ghost town from the previous century. Colourful Communist slogans and kitsch decorate the gray, drab high-rises and their broken windows.

There is graffiti on some of the buildings in the central square that depict human figures. Some years ago, a group of artists snuck in and left these paintings behind. The artists called themselves “The Shadows of Children.” Our guide Sergei is obviously uncomfortable with this. He tells us that the artists were forbidden to enter the zone for 10 years afterwards because local residents are disturbed by such intrusions and that their actions overall represented an act of terrorism. We aren’t even surprised by this declaration. Here, it is hard to be surprised by anything.

The dosimeter crackles and shows a level of 2,000 microroetgen per hour.

Igor Kurdrik/Bellona

Behind the square is an amusement park. A Ferris wheel, carousels. Why these where not taken away is incomprehensible. It can’t be ruled out that they were left for the locals who were assured they would eventually return. The picture is a stirring scene. The Ferris wheel in Pripyat is one of the most well documented subjects in photojournalism from the zone.

Valery Khmelnitsky, a liquidator who took part in cleaning up the accident, is accompanying us. He stands on the square deep in recollection of 1986. “There was absolutely no information about the doses of radiation we received,” he says.

Milya Kabirov from the village of Muslyumovo in the Chelyabinsk Region, home to the notorious Mayak Chemical Combine, measures the background radiation on the square in Pripyat. The dosimeter crackles and shows more than 2,000 microroentgen per hour.

“I would live here,” she exclaims. “The background radiation here is lower than what we have in our village.” Muslyumovo fell directly under the fallout of a 1957 accident at Russia’s former nuclear weapons facility Mayak—a Chernobyl preview, as it were—when a tank containing waste exploded, sending radiation into the atmosphere and triggering a mass migration. High concentrations of radiation in the area are to be found to this day.

From the window of the bus just outside the city, we see wild boars, and a little further off, elk. They wander here freely. Hunting is forbidden, and if poachers go after them, they only go for the young: The older animals have absorbed too high a dose of radiation.

Valentina doesn’t complain of her health. She underscores that many who left have already died, but she is alive and well. Here she is planting potatoes.

Igor Kudrik/Bellona

Migrants
We head to the village of Opachichi. Here live the 19 elderly migrants who refused to leave the zone. The majority of these people left and then returned to their homes a mere year following the accident. Our guide Sergei knows which houses we can visit: Many of the residents willingly associate with passers-though—but many categorically refuse.

A peasant woman named Valentina is 71 and she came back to the zone in 1987. She said the apartments given to evacuees were impossible to live in. Sometimes three complete strangers would be sent to live in your own three-room apartment. These buildings were built in a quick, slip-shod manner and were cold and damp.

Igor Kudrik/Bellona

Valentina does not complain about her heath. She confirms that many who moved have already died, but she is alive and well. She plants potatoes. Her grandchildren come to visit. But her great-grand children cannot come because of the ban on children under 18 entering the zone. The background radiation in the village is normal. Asked if there are any contaminated plots in the village, Sergei interrupts and answers emphatically no. We don’t press the question.

Our guide Sergei speaks with evident regret about the three reactor blocks that were shut down at Chernobyl and the two that were never completed. In his opinion, nothing hindered their continued operation.

It is clear that people who work there admit to the tragedy as a matter of fact, but want to convince visitors that there really is nothing wrong. The consequences are unknown. There is even a booming little business for Chernobyl tourists.

On parting, Sergei says to us “Thanks, sorry if there was anything wrong.” We tell him that: “Here, everything is wrong," but he has already ceased to listen. He exits the bus and climbs into a car. We are neither the first nor the last to take his excursion.