Pripyat 25 Years After Chernobyl

A visual and narrative tour of Pripyat 25 years after Chernobyl. “When I think of Chernobyl, three words come to mind: radiation, cancer, mutation,” says Max, but when he is asked about Pripyat, where he used to live and where the tragedy unfolded, his features soften into a smile. His thoughts reach back to a deeper horizon, before the accident, when it was easy to fall in love with Pripyat. “Good memories,” he says. Built in 1970, to house the workers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Pripyat was a darling of Soviet urban planning. It is still possible to appreciate its staid elegance. It is hard to remember a place that existed for less than two decades, and even in Ukraine Pripyat’s name is often lost within the magnitude of the Chernobyl accident. “It doesn’t matter if people don’t know the name and can’t distinguish it from Chernobyl,” remarks Ms. Anna Vitalievna, Deputy Director of the Chernobyl Museum, “What matters is that they understand what happened and how to avoid it.” This is an intimate tour of the city, that also includes interviews with former residents and resident experts.

A visual and narrative tour of Pripyat 25 years after Chernobyl.
“When I think of Chernobyl, three words come to mind: radiation, cancer, mutation,” says Max, but when he is asked about Pripyat, where he used to live and where the tragedy unfolded, his features soften into a smile. His thoughts reach back to a deeper horizon, before the accident, when it was easy to fall in love with Pripyat. “Good memories,” he says. Built in 1970, to house the workers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Pripyat was a darling of Soviet urban planning. It is still possible to appreciate its staid elegance.

It is hard to remember a place that existed for less than two decades, and even in Ukraine Pripyat’s name is often lost within the magnitude of the Chernobyl accident. “It doesn’t matter if people don’t know the name and can’t distinguish it from Chernobyl,” remarks Ms. Anna Vitalievna, Deputy Director of the Chernobyl Museum, “What matters is that they understand what happened and how to avoid it.”