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CHERNOBYL: A soft snow fell as a group of visitors equipped with a Geiger counter wandered through the ghostly Ukrainian city of Pripyat, frozen in time since the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986.
More than three decades after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster forced thousands of people to evacuate, there is an influx of visitors to the area that has prompted officials to seek official UNESCO status.
“The Chernobyl zone is already a world-famous monument,” guide Maksym Polivko told AFP during a tour on a recent freezing day.
“But today this area has no official status,” the 38-year-old said of the exclusion zone where flourishing wildlife is taking over official buildings, shops and official buildings from the Soviet era.
That could be changed under the government’s initiative to include the area on the UNESCO heritage list along with landmarks like the Taj Mahal in India or Stonehenge in England.
The April 1986 blast at the plant left swaths of Ukraine and neighboring Belarus heavily polluted, but 124,000 people visited last year, some lured by a popular TV show about Chernobyl. (AFP / GENYA SAVILOV)
Officials hope that recognition from the UN culture agency will boost the site as a tourist attraction and, in turn, reinforce efforts to preserve nearby ancient buildings.
The explosion at the fourth reactor of the nuclear power plant in April 1986 left swaths of Ukraine and neighboring Belarus heavily polluted and resulted in the creation of an exclusion zone roughly the size of Luxembourg.
READ: Fires near Chernobyl make Kiev’s air the most polluted in the world
Ukrainian authorities say it may not be safe for humans to live in the exclusion zone for another 24,000 years. Meanwhile, it has become a haven for wildlife with elk and deer roaming the nearby forests.
Although there are only a few dozen older people left in the area, the area has become a haven for wildlife. (AFP / GENYA SAVILOV)
Tens of villages and towns populated by hundreds of thousands of people were abandoned after the disaster, yet more than 100 older people live in the area despite the threat of radiation.
In Pripyat, a ghost town miles from the Chernobyl plant, rooms in spooky residential blocks are piled high with belongings of former residents.
“THE TIME HAS COME”
Polivko said he hoped the enhanced status would encourage officials to act more “responsibly” to preserve the dilapidated Soviet-era infrastructure surrounding the plant.
“All these objects here require some repair,” he said.
Pripyat, not far from the plant, is a ghost town, its long-abandoned amusement park. (AFP / GENYA SAVILOV)
It was a sentiment echoed by Ukraine’s Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko, who described the recent influx of domestic and foreign tourists as evidence of the importance of Chernobyl “not only for Ukrainians, but for all humanity.”
A record number of 124,000 tourists visited last year, including 100,000 foreigners following the release of the popular TV series Chernobyl in 2019.
Tkachenko said that obtaining UNESCO status could promote the exclusion zone as “a place of memory” that would warn against a repeat nuclear disaster.
“The area can and should be open to visitors, but it should be more than an adventure destination for explorers,” Tkachenko told AFP.
The sarcophagus of the destroyed fourth reactor can be seen behind a monument to the accident: the 20th anniversary of the final closure of the plant in 2000 is Wednesday. (AFP / GENYA SAVILOV)
The government is ready to propose specific objects in the area as a heritage site before March, but a final decision could come until 2023.
After the 1986 explosion, Chernobyl’s three other reactors continued to generate electricity until the station finally closed in 2000. Ukraine will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the closure on December 15.
Tkachenko said the effort to secure UNESCO status was a new priority after work on a giant protective dome over the fourth reactor was completed in 2016.
With the site now safe for a hundred years, he said he expected the world heritage status to increase the number of visitors to one million per year.
Efforts to secure special status intensified after a giant protective dome was installed in 2016. (AFP / GENYA SAVILOV)
It’s a figure that would require an overhaul of local infrastructure and would overwhelm a lonely on-site souvenir kiosk that sells trinkets like mugs and clothing adorned with radioactive fallout signs.
“Before, everyone was busy with the cover,” Tkachenko said of the timing of the heritage initiative.
“The time has come to do this.”
