Welcome to the town of Chernobyl; or something. Notice the pipe behind the sign; as there is radiation deeper in the ground, they have built new waterpipes that are not burried underground.
In the town of Chernobyl, which is about 17 km from the actual power plant, there's a memorial for all the towns and villages that have been evacuated and no longer exist. There's also a monument with a map of the area with a holder for a candle at the place where each town was -- they're lit every year.
Today Chernobyl is fine to live in, the workers stay here and if one books a two day tour of the site, one will stay in a small hotel/restaurant there. I had lunch there and it was pretty good. But if you planned to move there, just don't plan doing gardening.. (and no, you can't move there)
Chernobyl reactor #5 that was never finished. Reactor #6 is behind this one and it was only 10% finished at the time of the incident.
Reactor #4 on the left, the one that exploded. In the same building next to it is reactor #3 which was up and running until 2000. The two smaller black and white buildings on the right, between the tall pipe, are reactors #1 and #2. #2 was shut down in 1991 after a major fire and #1 was shut down in 1996.
The power plant was originally known as V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station.
#4 and #3 closer.
And here's the birthday boy. Is it radiating? Yes. We had a dosimeter with us and this was the only place where it's safety threshold started beeping quite frequently. Just a few meters from the place where the photo was taken, there would be even more radiation. Radiation decreases exponentially by distance so the simple precaution is to walk away.
One wasn't allowed to photograph the green building on the left, or the grey building next to it (not photographed
. Why? Well, there's plenty of uranium still left on the site. They don't want the bad boys to get too much information.
This is the NSC, New Safe Confinement or the first half of it. The plan is to remove the chimney from the plant (there's a crane next to the plant but it's not working, perhaps because of the radiation?) and put two of these on top of the plant. There will be cranes inside the NSC that can be operated to remove the old sarcophagus and see what's happening in there. The NSC is world's largest moving structure.
There is about 6000 people working on the site in four day shifts so it's far from a "ghost plant". Taking a photo without people actually took some effort.. The workers carry two dosimeters, one two show the current exposure and one for dose log, when the exposure limit is reached, they need to leave the site.
There's a good wiki article about the NSC,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Safe_Confinement