CHERNOBYL, Ukraine—Click-click-click. Volodymyr Verbytskyi’s Geiger counter starts going haywire. Beyond the first forests of the exclusion zone surrounding the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin power plant, the counter emits a warning signal before settling down. Verbytskyi, his face weathered by the sun, examines the numbers flashing on the screen.
“It shows 107 micro-roentgens per hour,” he says. “The norm is up to 30, but for the exclusion zone, that’s a normal level.” Verbytskyi worked for years as a “liquidator”—the term used for those sent to decontaminate the site of the worst civilian nuclear disaster in history.
On April 26, 1986, almost exactly 40 years ago, one of the plant’s reactors exploded. Part of the core caught fire, and radioactive particles were released into the atmosphere. Debris was scattered across the entire site. Within two days, radioactive particles would reach Sweden. More than 300,000 people would eventually be evacuated, and thousands would die from conditions caused by the radiation exposure.
Today, yellow signs warning that the area is radioactive dot the landscape. The soil, saturated with particles, remains dangerous. In the distance, from checkpoint to checkpoint along a dusty, reddish road, the massive silhouette of the sarcophagus covering the Chernobyl nuclear reactor comes into view.
The 1,600-square-mile exclusion zone remains largely uninhabited. A few thousand workers still rotate through the area, maintaining the site and monitoring radiation. While major cleanup ended decades ago, decontamination and containment continue.
Each anniversary remains an ordeal, says Mykola Yevsiienko, 70, an engineer originally from Chernobyl. As April 26 approaches, the memories come flooding back.
“I remember what I was doing, how I reacted,” he tells me. “My boss called me at 5 in the morning. I asked him what was going on. He said: You’ll see. I immediately understood something serious had happened.”
He speaks emotionally about his former colleagues, most of whom died in the disaster or its aftermath.
“Every anniversary is difficult. You think about everyone you worked with who is no longer here.”
The causes of the disaster are still debated. For Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy, the flaws of a Soviet system that prioritized secrecy and production over safety are to blame. He points in particular to design defects in the RBMK reactor, known to the elite but concealed from operators.
In the first weeks, about 600,000 soldiers, firefighters, and liquidators, often without proper equipment, were sent to the site to contain the disaster. Verbytskyi, from Pripyat, just 5 kilometers from the plant, was among them. He recalls weeks and months of relentless labor.
“We would get up, work all day, come back late at night, and go back again. That’s all I remember.”
Under constant threat.
At the base of the arched sarcophagus, which resembles an airline hangar, everything feels frozen in the 1980s. Employees and engineers in indigo-blue uniforms move through retro turnstiles designed to measure radiation levels, their metallic frames and analog displays reflecting late Soviet design. Nearby, a statue of Prometheus in a restrained brutalist style stands, and mosaics on the walls still depict workers and nuclear imagery.
The plant continued producing electricity with the remaining reactors until 2000. The site had transferred to Ukrainian control after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Ukraine oversaw its final shutdown under international pressure. Today, the plant still employs staff to manage the complex dismantling process and maintain safety systems.
Reactor 4 is enclosed within a second sarcophagus, completed in 2019. Known as the New Safe Confinement, it covers the original concrete shelter built in 1986, which had begun to deteriorate. The structure, made of steel and equipped with cranes and ventilation systems, stands 354 feet high and 843 feet wide and is designed to contain radioactive material for at least a century while enabling the dismantling of the reactor inside.
Located about 6 miles from the Belarusian border, the exclusion zone has taken on renewed strategic significance since 2022. It was among the first areas seized by Russian forces at the start of the invasion, exposing a site already burdened by nuclear risk to the uncertainties of war. Though no longer occupied, it remains vulnerable, with military activity, disrupted monitoring systems, and the ever-present danger of damage to containment structures prompting fresh concerns about safety in a landscape still marked by catastrophe.
“The Russians were here from February 24 to March 31, 2022,” explains Volodymyr Falshovnyk, 61, a shift supervisor at the plant. “From the beginning of the invasion, our staff worked non-stop. On March 20, an agreement was reached to allow a rotation. I was part of the team sent to replace the workers. We crossed the front line escorted by Russian soldiers.”
While he reports no direct violence, he describes systematic looting of laboratories and administrative buildings carried out by Russian forces. They took scientific equipment, from samples used to measure radiation levels to hard drives and technical documents, as well as vehicles and computers.
“They thought we were building a nuclear bomb,” explains Kyrylo Akinin, 35, a laboratory employee responsible for monitoring radioactive contamination. “The Russians stole very expensive equipment. Since then, our work has become much more complicated.”
He also explains that most plant personnel have historically lived in Slavutych, a small town in the Chernihiv region, 40 kilometers from the plant.
“Before, we could go through Belarus to get to work. It took less than an hour. But since the start of the war, the border has been closed. We now have to go down to Kyiv to bypass the Dnipro River before heading back up to Chernobyl. It takes more than six hours, so we have to stay three or four days in a row and live on site.”
Falshovnyk, the shift supervisor, says that such logistical challenges, along with radiation exposure and the proximity to Russian ally Belarus, has made it difficult to recruit new staff. But beyond all those factors, it is above all the threat of a return of Russian troops that weighs on the personnel.
“Today, we live under constant threat. Sirens go off regularly. Drones fly over the site. One of them, in February 2025, even struck the containment arch,” Falshovnyk says, pointing to the impact on the sarcophagus. “No one can say what will happen next.”
40 years later.
In Pripyat’s central square, rust-eaten bumper cars overtaken by weeds are waiting for no one. The 50,000 residents of the city closest to the plant were evacuated in less than 36 hours. They never returned.
Murals of Lenin, here and there at the turn of an alley, appear like ghosts from another world. The cultural center, torn open by vegetation, drips with rust and water. Verbytskyi walks through the memories of his youth.
“I helped install these mosaics when I was a child,” he says in one of the city’s cafés. “This is also where I had my first drink of alcohol,” he adds with a smile.
By the river, he recalls summer evenings with his friends and the boats that sometimes took them as far as Odesa.
“It will take another 300 years before the zone becomes habitable again,” he says softly.
Among those evacuated from the exclusion zone, only about a dozen were allowed to stay. Mykhailo Pavlovych, a 90-year-old schoolteacher, is one of them. Injured at age 6 during World War II by a German bomb, he moves on two long crutches. His wife died of cancer, which he attributes to radioactive fallout. He himself has never had health problems.
With a trace of sarcasm, he says his life, bound to Chernobyl, feels like it was written in advance: the German massacres, communist terror, the nuclear disaster, and then the Russian occupation in 2022.
“I was fishing when I heard the first explosion. But no one told us anything. The next day, I went back to teach at the school where I worked.”
It was only a week later that the children were evacuated. Mykhailo Pavlovych, his wife, and their sons followed shortly after.
“I came back three years later. My son had found me a job at a church in the area, and I’ve never left since.”
His wife later died from the consequences of the disaster. Pavlovych, now 90, says he feels as strong as ever. He cannot explain why he never fell ill, attributing it simply to his resilience.
Left largely on his own in his small village, he survives on his pension and the occasional visits from former students who bring him food.
“The worst was during the occupation. There was no one left to help me,” he says. “When the Russians arrived, I repainted my gate as fast as I could.”
Leaning on his cane, he points to a door hastily covered in blood-red paint. Beneath the dried layers, the colors of Ukraine are still faintly visible.
“If they had seen my Ukrainian flag on the door,” he says, “they would have crucified me on it. I’m sure of it.”
He says the disaster was already written in the name itself: Chernobyl means “black grass” in Ukrainian. Like a psalm, he repeats it several times, almost under his breath: Chernobyl, Chernobyl.
Leaning on his crutches, without emphasis, Mykhailo Pavlovych continues:
“It was someone with foresight who gave this city its name. He knew what would happen. Here, people suffer. Contaminated waters flow from Pripyat into the Dnipro, then into the Black Sea, and eventually reach the Mediterranean.”
He pauses, then concludes:
“Only vile beings could have built a nuclear power plant on this land. All these facilities must be shut down immediately, and the land allowed to regenerate. Only then will the land, and Ukraine, be reborn.”
Yet Mykhailo Pavlovych has never brought himself to leave his farm.
“I was here when the Germans invaded, and I came back home. Same after the nuclear disaster. And when the Russians came, I didn’t leave either. Why would I? This is my home.”