Precis

ItÕs byword for disaster and contamination. A lasting reminder of the devastation of nuclear meltdown, government-sanctioned cover-up and radiation sickness.

Now, thanks to the wild success of the HBO series dramatising the worldÕs worst nuclear accident, the site of Chernobyl in Ukraine has become a global tourist hotspot.

Geiger-counter in hand, Europe correspondent Linton Besser explores the enduring impact of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

He joins the hordes of tourists who arrive each day to wander around the ghost towns and near the abandoned reactor. ÒI heard a lot of storiesÉthere are mutants there, there are creatures inside,Ó says Australian tourist Nick, one of hundreds visiting the site from around the world.

Besser goes where tourists canÕt, beyond the decaying town of Pripyat, into the contaminated exclusion zone where he meets the secret communities who have defied evacuation orders to return home.

The ÔbabushkasÕ Ð grandmothers Ð continue to grow their own food and drink water from their wells, despite the persistent presence of radiation.

ÒThis is our motherland, it cannot be replaced,Ó says one babushka, sipping homemade vodka. ÒWe want to die in our village. ItÕs our most cherished dream,Ó says another.

Foreign Correspondent uncovers the strange sub-culture of Stalkers, young rebels attracted to the dangers of the zone - the threat of police, wild animals and radiation. ÒLife among death, is the main philosophy of Stalkers,Ó says one man whoÕs made a niche business smuggling thrill-seekers in by night.

And we meet the disasterÕs youngest victims Ð the children from the fallout zone who are suffering from radiation-related illnesses. ÒThe soil should have been removed from the contaminated area,Ó says one nurse at a childrenÕs hospital. ÒBut that wasnÕt done. Everything was left as it was.Ó

Thirty years on, Ukraine still has 15 nuclear reactors providing the nationÕs energy and many are operating despite reaching their designed lifespan. Local anti-nuclear campaigners say another disaster is a real possibility.

While some locals see this tourism boom as exploitative, many are glad their story is being told. ÒEveryone should know what had happened here,Ó says 73-year-old Sofia, standing barefoot in her garden. ÒItÕs hard to remember. Very hard,Ó, she cries. ÒRadiation is an invisible enemyÓ.

Exteriors. Abandoned Pripyat

Music

00:00

Title:  FALLOUT

00:14

Super: Pripyat, Chernobyl

00:19

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  For 33 years this city has been abandoned.

00:24

Besser walks through abandoned school. Super:
Reporter
Linton Besser

00:32

Everything was left behind Ð toys, shoes, books. Even the kidsÕ schoolwork is here. It looks like they're practising their handwriting in this book. And I want to leaf through it, but weÕve been told we can't touch anything because the dust covering this might be radioactive, but itÕs incredible being here.

00:41

Music

01:06

Exteriors. Abandoned apartment buildings

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:   This is Pripyat, now a city of ghosts. At its peak, it was home to 50,000 people. A model Soviet city,

01:22

Pripyat. Chernobyl reactor in distance

built to service the nearby Chernobyl nuclear reactor.

01:35

Abandoned buildings

With a modern hotel, an indoor swimming pool, even an amusement park.

01:41

Excerpt. HBO series. 'Chernobyl'

01:54

Today, Pripyat is being brought back to life, thanks to the wildly-popular HBO series 'Chernobyl'. The site of the worldÕs worst nuclear disaster is now

02:00

Road signage 'Chernobyl-Tour, UA

a major tourist destination.

02:13

Tourist buses at checkpoint

Music

02:19

Tourists alight from buses

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:   WeÕre two hours out of Kiev and up here

02:27

Besser to camera

is the Chernobyl checkpoint where the exclusion zone begins, and there are dozens of tourist buses here, hundreds of tourists. It really feels like weÕre going to Disneyland.

02:33

Tourists/Ice cream van/Hot dog vendor

Music

02:45

Tourists line up

LINTON BESSER, Reporter: They donÕt always come dressed for the occasion.

05:52

Tourist in protective clothing

Tourist:  "We forgot to wear long pants, so we had to buy a special suit just to enter the town."

02:57

Tourists take photos

LINTON BESSER, Reporter: The tourists hail from all corners of the planet, including Australia.

Tourist:  "Aussie, oy!"

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Nick Singh is from Melbourne.

03:09

Nick Singh interview

NICK SINGH:  So thatÕs why I want to visit this site to see the actual ground report. So thatÕs what interested me, because I heard a lot of stories and documents about that there are mutants there, there are creatures inside [laughing] É

03:19

Buses into tourist zone

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  The tourist zone is still highly restricted due to radiation risks.

03:33

Tourists walk with guide, and carrying gigametre

For their safety, each visitor is assigned a guide, and a gigametre.

03:42

FEMALE GUIDE:  "You will see a reading much higher level of the radiation than we saw before."

03:50

Tourists measure radiation

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Tourists measure radiation levels along the way. Limited exposure to one to two microsieverts is safe, and thatÕs what theyÕre likely to get if they stay on the paths.

03:55

Besser to camera

But there are hotspots, and within just a metre it can spike to extraordinary levels. Down here it's jumped straight to 30 microsieverts.

04:10

Tourists walk with guide

Prolonged exposure at this level is dangerous. Those working here could be risking their health.

04:21

Lara leads tourist group

Guides like Lara Graldina are spending more and more time here as the demand to visit Chernobyl increases.

04:30

Lara interview

LARA GRALDINA:  I come here quite often, nowadays itÕs very busy. I spend about 20, 22 days a month.

04:38

The busiest day maybe this year what I remember was more than 1000 people, about 1200 a day. 

04:47

I can be wrong, but about 70,000 people last year, and this year I canÕt even forecast, I absolutely donÕt know, but I suppose two times higher.

04:56

Tourists take photographs

OLEKSIY BREUS: Chernobyl tourism is a very positive, necessary and useful phenomenon. It's useful in the sense of preserving the memory of this event. It all depends on the attitude of the tourists.

05:11

Breus walks down path

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Oleksiy Breus lived in Pripyat before the explosion.  He worked as a Chernobyl nuclear engineer.

05:28

Abandoned Pripyat

OLEKSIY BREUS:  People used to get together here., they held various events. They had events for kids here. The Ferris wheel had just been built.

05:38

[Archival] Chernobyl reactor after explosion

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  On April 26 1986, everything changed.  A routine safety check went horribly wrong, and exposed terrible flaws in the design of the Chernobyl plant. It sparked an explosion which tore open reactor number 4.  Six hours later, Breus arrived for his morning shift.

05:50

OLEKSIY BREUS:  I saw the destroyed block and I thought it could not be true.

06:19

Breus interview

By around 11 a.m. it was clear there was no reactor. It had already collapsed and there was nothing to cool it down.

06:25

But Moscow kept demanding to continue the water supply to the reactor, even though by 10:00 a.m. weÕd run out of water and there was nothing to pump.  I call it Ônuclear surrealismÕ.

06:36

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Oleksiy Breus and his colleagues were stuck in the nightmare of Soviet denial, while the exposed reactor pumped 400 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

06:55

OLEKSIY BREUS: Black debris was scattered on the ground.  It looked like the chunks of graphite from the reactor.  I had helped  assemble the fourth reactor, I know what graphite looks like.  But I didn't allow myself to believe it was really graphite.

07:11

[Archival] Chernobyl clean up

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Over the next 12 months more than 200,000 so-called liquidators were called in to clean up the site.

07:29

OLEKSIY BREUS:  My friends and acquaintances , people I was friendly with, some of them died, and, of course, it is very sad.

07:39

Breus

When I learned that one person died, then the second, the third, that was tragic news that was hard to bear.

07:49

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  More first responders would eventually  succumb. A UN report in 2005 found fewer than 50 people died as a direct result of the accident, and estimated 4000 people could die from radiation exposure.

08:02

Abandoned hospital

PripyatÕs state of the art hospital was the Chernobyl frontline.

08:27

Besser walks through hospital

08:34

Besser to camera

These corridors would have been absolutely chaotic with nurses and doctors trying to save people. This is where they brought the firemen who were trying to put out the reactor.

08:58

Besser down stairs

The uniforms of those first responders were stripped off them and theyÕve been stored in the basement down these stairs, now contained under a giant mound of sand.  ItÕs the most radioactive part of the building.

09:14

Drone shot. Apartment buildings

The government ordered the cityÕs evacuation 36 hours after the explosion.

09:30

VOICE OVER LOUDSPEAKER:  "Attention! Attention! Due to the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the city of Pripyat, adverse radioactive conditions are forming."

09:40

Interiors. Abandoned apartments

LINTON BESSER, Reporter: PripyatÕs 50,000 residents had just hours to pack. They were initially assured they would be back three days later.  They left everything behind.

09:56

WRITING ON WALL:  "We will always keep memories of you our dear apartment."

Music

10:10

Ferris wheel

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  The Ferris wheel never actually operated; itÕs opening was scheduled five days later.

10:15

GFX map showing exclusion zone

Six days after the explosion, an exclusion zone of 2,600 square kilometres was established across Ukraine and Belarus.

10:33

Village inside inclusion zone

More than 300,000 people were forcibly removed from their villages, but a few returned.

10:51

Sofia in garden

SOFIA BEZVERHAYA:  We are used to our village. We love this nature. We love our motherland.

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  About a year after the disaster Sofia Bezverhaya took an enormous risk and came back home.

11:00

Sofia interview

SOFIA BEZVERHAYA:  Our grandparents and great grandparents are buried here. We also want to be buried in our very own graveyard, and nowhere else. We want to die in our village. ItÕs our most cherished dream.

11:17

Sofia harvests vegetables

We begin to plant potatoes, onions. We plant tomatoes, zucchinis, pumpkins. We planted 33 raspberry bushes in autumn. TheyÕre survived and are already bearing fruit.  We have strawberries. Today I woke up early to work in the garden.

11:29

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  For decades, Sofia has grown her own food in her own soil in her village of Kupovate. The radiation here is less intense than in other parts of the exclusion zone.

SOFIA BEZVERHAYA:  There is no better place for us.

11:55

Sofia interview

I find my work restful, it's like a holiday. ItÕs my garden, where I can get up and see a squirrel collecting nuts, hear the singing of the nightingale and the cuckoo.

12:12

Sofia eats strawberries

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  ItÕs early in the season and her strawberries are still a little tart.

12:08

Sofia's outdoor shower

At 73, she lives a hardy, outdoor lifestyle, with few of the mod cons.

Linton: "Is it cold? Oh, itÕs good. What about in winter?"

Sofia:  "There is no shower in winter. It freezes so we take the tank away."

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Sofia doesnÕt need to worry about her modesty.

12:36

Sofia interview

SOFIA BEZVERHAYA:  There is nobody here. You can run naked on the highway. Nobody will see you.

13:12

Besser and Sofia walk to abandoned council building

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Before the accident, Sofia ran the local council. This is all thatÕs left.

13:18

SOFIA BEZVERHAYA:  People used to come to us with their various problems. They brought their joys and sorrows here. Newlyweds used to get married here. Everything was alright until the accident, and then, wellÉ we have what we have.

13:35

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  She was placed in charge of the local evacuation.

SOFIA BEZVERHAYA: They kept telling us ÒItÕs only for three days, three days." "Take only your papers.Ó So that's what they did. They only took their papers.. But the way it all worked out, we were removed for good.

14:03

ItÕs very hard to remember. Very hard.

14:27

Drone shot over settlements within exclusion zone

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Surprisingly, SofiaÕs not alone.  There are about 120 so-called self-settlers still living in the exclusion zone.

14:30

Hanna and Linton drink vodka

Hanna Zavorotnya is 85, and lives a short walk away. She insists we sit down for a meal and a glass or two of her own homemade moonshine.

14:43

Linton: "You make this vodka?... It's really good."

15:04

HANNA ZAVOROTNYA:  What has changed? Lots of things. There are only 15 souls living here. Everything has changed.  What can we do?

15:10

Hanna's son fixes fence, draws water

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  HannaÕs son has come for his first visit in two months, and thereÕs much to do. Living on contaminated land is a choice theyÕve made.

15:22

Hanna

HANNA ZAVOROTNYA:  We wanted to come back because this is our motherland. It can't be replaced. Your mother and your motherland are irreplaceable.

15:41

Sofia walks into house

SOFIA BEZVERHAYA:  If we die, we die. Sooner or later we all die, we are not afraid. We came home and we were happy.

15:49

Drone shot over garden

This was our land, our way of life. We were born here and living here and this place was good to us.

16:05

Church. Self-settler congregation

16:13

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  The government turns a blind eye to the Chernobyl self-settlers, including their local priest, who serves the elderly community, and the others who live here for short stints -- shopkeepers, soldiers and officials.

16:23

Music

16:50

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:   Another group is drawn to the exclusion zone for very different reasons.

16:55

Kirill walking in abandoned building

TheyÕre illegal explorers known as Stalkers, who seek out the danger.

17:01

Kirill interview

KIRILL STEPANETS:  Life among death is the main philosophy of Stalkers.

17:09

Kirill walking in abandoned building

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Kirill Stepanets has snuck into the exclusion zone about a hundred times in the past decade. Stalkers deliberately push the boundaries to explore the zoneÕs abandoned buildings and Soviet era structures on their own term.

17:11

Kirill interview

KIRILL STEPANETS:  I still discover something new every single time. I feel my whole life is connected with the Chernobyl zone and somehow all the fateful meetings that happened in my life, all the key events in my life, all the key people who've entered my life, it all happened through Chernobyl. The zone is like a living being for me.

17:30

Travelling to Chernobyl with tourists, dusk

17:57

"To really meet the Chernobyl zone you have to go on illegal trip."

18:02

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Kirill Stepanets has turned his passion into a business.  Tonight, heÕs taking four young British men into the Ôno go' areas of the exclusion zone.

18:08

Tourists in van

TOURIST BOY #1: ItÕs an amazing experience that most people canÕt say they have done and I think it will be worth it.

TOURIST BOY #2:  The standard ones just seems so boringÉ  I want to explore the cities and it is so restricted.

18:21

TOURIST BOY #3: They said there will be wolves and wild horses.  We never seen that in EnglandÉnone of that. I mean Adrian has seen a lynx, once, but we have never seen any of that.

18:35

LINTON BESSER, Reporter: TheyÕll trek for several days and cover about 80 kilometres.

18:48

Kirill in van

KIRILL STEPANETS:  Should be a long way, very hard.  A lot of fucking mosquitoes.

18:53

I hope everything will be alright.

19:00

Tourists and Kirill commence trek in the dark

TOURIST BOY #3: ItÕs dark,  itÕs very dark. I dunno, dunno what to expect.

19:17

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  In one of the most contaminated places on the planet, Stalkers seem under prepared.

19:23

Boys show food rations

TOURIST BOY #1: This is the only food we have to eat for three days. For three days!

19:31

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Kirill reminds them theyÕll have to evade the police.

19:40

KIRILL STEPANETS: Just one kilometre from here first police check point.

19:43

Tourists and Kirill commence trek in the dark

19:48

KIRILL STEPANETS: Our authorities say they have to get tough on it,

20:11

Kirill interview

but our people have been brought up thinking the more you prohibit something, the more you want it.

20:13

Village in spring

20:20

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Outside the exclusion zone the radioactive fallout is still present.

20:25

Natalia and friend collect berries

In the forests, locals forage for blueberries, raspberries and mushrooms as theyÕve done for generations.

20:33

NATALIA:   Here berries appear in June. Mushrooms, too. It takes three hours to fill this plastic bucket. ItÕs hard work. Mosquitoes bite. My back is sore.

20:42

Natalia

IÕm as black as an imp, all over.

21:01

Babushka sitting by roadside

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Everyone here has been touched by the accident.

ROADSIDE BABUSHKA:  It was Chernobyl that took my children. 

21:20

Chernobyl took them. My eldest son worked on an excavator. My second son was removing that burned stuff with his tractor, too. 26 years old. Both got sick and never got better.

21:28

Drone shots over forests and villages

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Dangerous levels of radiation are still in the food chain across northern Ukraine, poisoning the environment and contaminating people.

21:46

Drone shots of hospital

On the outskirts of Kiev, a hospital treats the most recent victims. ItÕs called the Institute of Specialised Radiation Protection.  It opened three months after the explosion, but it is still taking on hundreds of new patients

22:03

Children play in hospital

every year. All of them are children. There are more than 350,000 Ukrainian kids who are suffering from a range of health conditions related to the disaster.

22:20

Nataliya walks down stairs

Nataliya Moshko is the instituteÕs senior nurse.

NATALIYA MOSHKO:  All the soil has to be removed from the polluted territory.

22:36

Nataliya interview/Linton and Nataliya visit patient undergoing brain tests

All the trees and vegetation have to go, along with the soil. Only then the radiation would disappear. But that wasnÕt done. Everything was left as it was.

22:47

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Kristina is nine and comes from a small village in the province that borders the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

23:03

NATALIYA MOSHKO:  Kristina is undergoing a test that is checking the way her brain is working, how is the blood circulates across the vessels, what impulses are arising in the brain?

23:13

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  They say theyÕre testing for epilepsy.  Like many children here Kristina already has thyroid problems..

23:26

KRISTINA: Sometimes I feel nauseous. I have a headache and my stomach goes around.

NATALIYA MOSHKO: Why do you think you're here in this clinic?

KRISTINA: To get better.

23:34

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  But many more generations are likely to suffer. ItÕs the children who are the most vulnerable to radiation exposure.

23:50

NURSE:  The girl does have an enlarged thyroid gland, so thereÕs some irregularity. ItÕs a first-class enlargement. There are no structural changes, but the thyroid gland is enlarged already. This is very common for the Zhytomyr and Rivne regions.

24:00

Medic runs test on children

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  The Institute struggles to cope with outdated equipment and a lack of funds.

24:20

NATALIYA MOSHKO:   I donÕt think these children understand the nature of their illness. They do understand that its dangerous and scary.

24:30

MEDIC:  "ItÕs a long measurement, 30 seconds."

24:40

Children playing in hospital

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Some of the children stay here for 21 days just to reduce their exposure to contamination in their home villages, but when they go home, the cycle begins again.

24:51

Nataliya interview

NATALIYA MOSHKO:  ItÕs disappointing because you put a lot of effort into them, you pour your soul into these kids and then they go back home where it starts again. Yet itÕs not within our power as medics or as an institution to change that.

25:04

Kiev GVs

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:   The capital city Kiev looks grand, but the reality is Ukraine is one of the poorest countries in Europe. And 33 years after the worst nuclear accident in history, you might think Ukraine would look elsewhere for its electricity, but youÕd be wrong. 

25:22

Khmelnitsky nuclear plant

Ukraine is so poor, itÕs been forced to continue operating its ageing fleet of nuclear power plants. WeÕve been given rare access to one of UkraineÕs operational nuclear power plants -- Khmelnitsky.

25:48

Besser to camera in nuclear plant

It's incredible being in here.  This nuclear plant was actually designed and built before Chernobyl happened.

26:09

ItÕs not the only one -- and nine of UkraineÕs 15 reactors are still in operation even though theyÕve reached the end of their designed lifespan.

26:18

Interiors. Nuclear plant

A national safety upgrade has been underway to keep them open, but by the end of last year, only 60 per cent of the work had been done.

26:30

Nosykov walks

Yevhen Nosykov, the plantÕs deputy Chief Operating Engineer, admits Khmlenitsky reactor no. 1 will be the tenth to be brought back on online before the safety improvements are finished. He insists another Chernobyl type accident could not happen.

26:42

Nosykov interview

YEVHEN NOSYKOV: All plants did their best to enact many measures before applying for a licence extension. Currently, none in Ukraine have been able to enact this program a hundred per cent.

27:03

Music

27:17

Iryna Holovko in office

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  Ukrainian energy campaigner Iryna Holovko says the risks are just far too great.

27:25

Holovko interview

IRYNA HOLOVKO:  This is why we call them zombie reactors, because on the one hand, we have them running. We use the electricity from them. And from the other hand, we understand that there are safety shortcomings.

27:33

I think that the main lesson of Chernobyl is that there is no safe nuclear power. I mean, the accidents of the scale that can have the tremendous impact on people, and on the environment, even

27:44

far beyond the borders of the country where the plant is operating. These type of accidents are possible, and they do happen.

27:55

Tourists at Chernobyl

LINTON BESSER, Reporter:  For now the Chernobyl reactor is encased in a 30,000 tonne steel structure known as the Ônew safe confinementÕ. Scientists estimate the reactor inside will remain radioactive for 20,000 years.

28:03

Aerial over Chernobyl and Pripyat

The area may never again be suitable for human habitation.

28:26

Music

28:30

Aerial over Sofia's house

SOFIA BEZVERHAYA:  I think everyone should see and know what happened here. 

28:41

Sofia walks into house and cooks

Radiation is radiation. I have told you already it's an invisible enemy.

28:46

Credits [see below]

28:58

Outpoint

29:34