WHAT IT'S LIKE INSIDE CHERNOBYL (is it safe?)

just because it's close to the ground rather concentrate I don't know how I feel about this it does now seem likely that sometime in the last couple of days has been perhaps the worst accident in the short history of the world's nuclear power industry the Russians may have been hoping they could contain it without having to release the news as they appear to have tried to do so in earlier axons in the Urals 19 years ago the accident was at Chernobyl a town of around 50,000 people about 50 miles due north of Kiev in Ukraine 33 years ago on April 26 the number four reactor in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded causing a massive amount of deadly radiation to be released into the air [Music] the soviet death toll stands at just 31 people immediately following the accident while the final number remains in dispute research now shows that the long term death toll ranges between 9,000 and 200,000 people [Music] today some parts of Chernobyl still contain high levels of radiation however there are some areas that are considered safe to visit so this morning we were getting picked up by a local side in Kiev and spending the next two days in this renewable exclusion zone so we are about to head to Chernobyl and we've just been given these Geiger counters so this is what measures the level of radiation and just one important thing to understand before we go is that there's always gonna be like some level of radiation we are pretty much in the kiev city centre and it's measuring 0.11 so you kind of are always exposed to like some level of background radiation in your life and I don't think the radiation that we're experiencing here in Kiev is any different than like any other major city in the world so just something important to note is we're carrying these around today so we've just made it to the security checkpoint of the exclusion zone and there's no filming here for obvious reasons but they're just checking our passports and then we had to sign some forms basically saying that we would follow all the rules while we're in the zone a couple of which were interesting no eating berries mushrooms starting fires bunch of accountant says thinks we're putting on boots long pants long sleeves pretty much the idea is just to cover all of your exposed skin because there's a small risk of radioactive particles attaching to you and from what we've learned it actually takes some force for them to be like blown into the air so the weather is pretty good today he said it worse like maybe something with stick to your shoe just in case so from what we understand this little USB looking device around our neck is gonna tell us how much radiation is building up in our body over the next two days hey all this was a jam-packed day with a ton of information in many different locations so we've put this map together to hopefully help you follow along this black radiation warning symbol represents reactor 4 and you can use it for reference as we explore the exclusion zone so we've just entered the 30 kilometre exclusion zone which means that we're 30 kilometers away from reactor 4 where the explosion happened and the Geiger counter is showing point 0 9 which is actually less than it was showing in the center of Kiev when we started this morning [Music] as we've been driving in we've been passing these white signs on the road and they have information about the villages that were evacuated so how many people used to live in them when they were evacuated the name of the villages and we've just stopped in our first one all eight Oh so we're just entering the town hall of one of the evacuated cities super eerie feeling it hasn't been touched in almost 30 years except for maybe like looters who have come in here and stole stuff and on the stage back here behind me you can actually still see old Soviet propaganda the ground here is just covered in old camera film I mean it's obviously totally ruined but how cool would it be to be able to see the pictures that were on this so crazy and residential area the five storage buildings Lizabeth father will be toasted buttocks vomit risk for the workers so if you've seen the HBO series true noble you may remember the trial towards the very end of the series and we are currently looking at the courthouse where that trial actually took place it's not actually where they filmed it but this is like where it took place in real life in 1986 37 1987 okay so this is probably the craziest thing that we have learned all day and that's it they're still over a hundred people that live inside the exclusion zone just like just people walking around here going about their everyday life so at one point the government started moving people back to some of the zones that they felt like we're safe and then the Soviet Union collapsed and they stopped the program but there are about a hundred people who have permission to still live here and who live here full-time which just sounds absolutely insane but we have our Geiger meter and it's reading 0.1 which is less than what it was reading in the kiev city centre it's just I mean I guess like it's science it makes sense that you can live here but it just seems absolutely crazy and like this purple house behind us has a sign on it and it says the owner of the house lives here so like people know not to mess with that not to come inside the workers here won't come and take anything [Music] so just entered the 10 kilometer exclusion zone and looking at the Geiger counter it is still point 1/1 which is pretty much exactly what we were experiencing in the city center I thought for sure by this point it would be going up still nothing okay you know point one you know Quentin starts to grow so we're currently standing where the first village was inside of the ten kilometer exclusion zone the houses here were all made out of wood and there's pretty much no way to clean radioactivity out of wood so what they decided to do was pretty much just bulldoze the entire village and bury it underground so this is one of the many burial sites for radioactive waste that are located inside of the exclusion zone and just walking shortly off the road the Geiger counter went from point 2 to point 5 but he said it just like skyrockets if you keep going any further [Music] Wow just because it's close to the ground this I don't know how I feel about this that sound just makes it so intense the beeping noise telling us like it's not safe or is it just letting you know that the levels are rising I start if it's more than 0.3 meters will be all the time more than 0.3 so we move it higher more than 3 [Music] so we just pulled over to the side of the road and stopped in the first village inside of the ten kilometer exclusion zone and we are inside of an abandoned preschool it has to be one of the creepiest places I've ever been [Music] it's crazy it feels like they set all of this stuff here on purpose like to create what you would see in a movie scene but apparently the people who left we're told that they'd be coming back in three days to a week so they just didn't take anything except the necessities with them so that's why you're seeing like baby dolls school papers notebooks pillows they just left it all behind because they thought they were coming back [Music] the crazy thing is even though the school is just right down the road from where the explosion happened they weren't evacuated until six days later so the explosion happened on a weekend and the kids would have come back to school that week with all of the radioactive stuff in the hair [Music] we are inside of a laboratory where they were studying the effects of radiation on fish from one of the cooling ponds that's located close to one of the nuclear reactors [Music] I'm currently standing as close as you can possibly get to reactor four which is the one that exploded and my reader is saying 0.86 so to put that into perspective if you're on an airplane it could be between two and three so I'm getting less radiation next to reactor four then I would be on an airplane which I don't know if that's a good thing because we spent a lot of time on airplanes but that's pretty crazy we're only 300 meters away but what I thought was also really interesting is if I said it's behind this concrete memorial the number goes down even more it's like point three five so it just shows how big of a deal like a barrier is to keep the radiation from coming out also the silver sarcophagus that you see above the reactor was put there in 2016 it weighs 36 thousand tons and it's the largest movable structure the largest constructed and the heaviest movable construction in the world they built it away from the reactor because obviously they couldn't build it above it because there was too much radiation and then they just slid it over top and it's used to confine all of the radiation inside because the goal is to eventually dismantle and bury everything in there that's radioactive which is the whole thing so that was the old one so that's the first one so it we musta see it like before 2016 [Music] it's at 14 and in the car second ago it was 0.5 just from the bear to here so this is the start of the red forest which got its nickname because all the trees died and it turned this hue of red and it's because when the reactor exploded this is the way the wind was blowing so pushed all of the radioactive material into this force and it's still a place that is highly radioactive today so we've just entered the town of Pripet where the majority of the people who worked in the power plant lived and it's also the closest town to reactor 4 so it's the one that was damaged the most when it exploded somehow our guide has timed it perfectly everywhere we've gone today to completely avoid the tour buses we've passed so many groups of people and somehow we've had every place all to ourselves we're in an abandoned town alone this is an old furniture store in the town of Pripet that's just been completely abandoned the only thing left in here is the wood stuff because it's cheap and everything else has been stolen so after being here hundreds of times we feel like you might grow an extra finger I hope to help but again like free decent not so scary if you stick to the roots and if you doesn't do something crazy or stupid follow the rules and you'll be okay yeah we are currently walking through the big beautiful hip and happening town square which now looks like this we've just come into this theatre currently standing on the stage looking out at the audience this giant light fixture fell from the ceiling way up there he was the leader of the Soviet Union at the time of the disaster and this is a poster celebrating 60 years of the Soviet Union [Music] round metal piece on the ground made our reader go faster than anything that we have seen so far apparently they don't know what it is but whatever it was that was super radioactive right there it was easier to just cover it up now we're in a grocery store shopping carts everywhere refrigerators Wow we're driving through pretty much the middle of the red forest right now and even through the car the readers at 5.77 so this is where all of the radioactive debris was blowing after the reactor exploded and so it's one of the most highly contaminated areas that's crazy and just like that we're out of it so we're about to leave the ten kilometre exclusion zone but in order to do so we have to go through a radiation check can I show what that Intel's their wills and under the car so if something stick okay the car pass no radioactive molecules are attached to us tonight we were saying it's the only private hotel inside of the exclusion zone I had no clue to us [Music] all right we have about a two hour oh there's car so from what we understand these little USB devices that were weighing around our neck are gonna tell us how much body how much pot how much radiation and apparently they live here for free water and electricity it's all free if you work here and you get paid double so scientists fuel [Music]

Channel: Kara and Nate

Views: 1,538,066

Keywords: chernobyl 2019, chernobyl nuclear power plant, chernobyl disaster, exclusion zone, chernobyl tour, chernobyl exclusion zone, chernobyl documentary, reactor 4, inside chernobyl exclusion zone, chernobyl nuclear power plant sarcophagus, chernobyl nuclear power plant today, chernobyl nuclear power plant 2019, chernobyl nuclear power plant now, chernobyl vlog, chernobyl hospital, chernobyl school, chernobyl hbo, travel, exploring chernobyl, abandoned places, chernobyl today

Id: yLoR7btSxtg

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 23 2019