Chernobyl visit leaves lasting impression

Having visited 55 countries and with more to come, Lubec resident Roger Quirk considers his recent visit to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant site in Ukraine the most interesting trip he's ever taken. "This was certainly the odd adventure of a lifetime," he adds. With New Brunswick's Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station about 20 miles as the crow flies from the Passamaquoddy Bay area, Quirk's understanding of the devastating effects of nuclear power has deepened. "I was a little unsure about it before, but after visiting Pripyat I really understand that nuclear power can destroy the world. It's very scary."
Quirk embraces solo adventure travel, carrying his possessions in a backpack, staying in hostels and hopping around on flights depending on ticket price and where the flight is going. When a fellow traveler from Brazil told Quirk about a visit to Chernobyl, Quirk decided that would be his next trip. "I always have had a fascination with nuclear power and remember well the Chernobyl disaster and all that unfolded."
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 directly affected at least 600,000 people, including those who lived at the facility's nearby city of Pripyat, but also in heavily contaminated areas in Belarus and the Ukraine, where the governments decided to permanently relocate citizens away from heavy radiation.
Chernobyl and the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan are the only two nuclear disasters rated at the maximum disaster level by the International Nuclear Event Scale. In April 1986 Chernobyl's nuclear power plant number four reactor malfunctioned because of a combination of human error and faulty design and released radioactive materials. Prevailing winds meant that the materials heavily contaminated a 20‑mile radius as well as landing in Russia, Eastern Europe and beyond. Two workers were immediately killed in the blast, and 29 emergency workers died of acute radiation poisoning in the following weeks and months and 18 a few years later.
While the number of people who have died or became ill because of the disaster is unknown, the scientific community has noted that by 2005 the number of thyroid cancers in children had exceeded 7,000 in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Thyroid cancer in children is traditionally considered extremely rare. Reactor number four has been contained by two concrete and steel containment shelters but still leaks radiation.
Quirk spent a good part of his day in the ghost city of Pripyat. The Soviet Union formed the ninth "nuclear city" in 1970 to serve Chernobyl, which itself had about 14,000 inhabitants. Quirk explains that Pripyat's 40,000 or so residents didn't know anything about the disaster for the first 48 hours and then were given just a few hours to leave. They boarded buses and never returned. "They were told they would be able to come back, but they weren't." Within a few weeks looters stormed the city. Over 350,000 civil and military personnel, called "liquidators," were hired to clean up the city and try to contain the radiation. The WHO estimates that eventually over 600,000 liquidators were involved in the continuing the cleanup, with about 240,000 exposed to high levels of radiation. Quirk says, "All the topsoil was removed. I don't know what they did with it." The mess that was left behind is still very much in evidence, including the decay of buildings left to nature for 31 years and an amusement park that never opened. Former residents are scattered all over Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
The buildings were quintessential Soviet style, Quirk says. "They were very gray, plain, very basic."
"I went into many, many buildings. You're not supposed to," he adds, but he couldn't resist. "I even went into the hospital. In the basement are the clothing of the first responders, and they are soaked in radiation." He adds quickly, "I didn't go down there."
One of the more startling sights among many were the piles of gas masks and hand grenades in the elementary school. He and his six fellow travelers wondered why. The end of the Cold War was still five years away. The guide told them, "Students in the elementary ages were trained on a daily basis in warfare."
The city is named for the Pripyat River that runs through it, and Quirk explains that those waters were used by workers to wash off vehicles contaminated by nuclear dust. "The river has radiation at very high levels." There were also "hot spots" all over the city where the mandatory Geiger counter held by the guide went "crazy." On the return to Kiev where the journey started 12 hours before, Quirk and his fellow travelers stopped at two radiation machine readers. "They were like TSA [Transportation Security Administration] machines. You press a button and it says yes radiation or no radiation. I have no idea how they work or if they're accurate."
The effects of the Chernobyl disaster will be felt for generations to come, Quirk notes. According to a 2016 article in the British Daily Telegraph, parts of the contaminated area are estimated by Ukrainian officials to have a radiation life of 20,000 years. The WHO notes the difficulty of tracking the ranges of cancers and illnesses affecting those former residents still alive as well as generational birth defects, but a report states that "there may be up to 4,000 additional cancer deaths among the three highest exposed groups over their lifetime, the 240,000 liquidators; 116,000 evacuees and the 270,000 residents of the strictly controlled zones. Since more than 120,000 people in these three groups may eventually die of cancer, the additional cancer deaths from radiation exposure correspond to 3‑4% above the normal incidence of cancers from all causes." A friend of Quirk who was in Eastern Europe during the disaster still cannot donate blood 30 years later.
While Quirk has a large social media following, he's pretty sure most of his followers would not want to do this trip. "But a very few would C more of the risk takers." That obsession with travel, firmly cemented when he spent his 20th birthday in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, is just about a first profession these days. Quirk has spent 43 years working with the Roosevelt Campobello International Park. A year or two ago he pulled back from his position as conference manager and now hosts tour guides during the summer season and conducts office work during the winter months. It gives him more time to travel, with Bhutan, Mongolia and maybe even North Korea on his up‑next list. However, the experience of the abandoned and desolate Pripyat and its nuclear power legacy won't be leaving him anytime soon.