Just leaving Kiev on the long road to Slavutych was an eye opener to a world I had only ever read about in spy novels. Every twenty or so miles there were police roadblocks to negotiate: documents, please, and can you answer some questions? My interpreter called it a giant job creation scheme. There were hardly any cars on the road. I soon understood that freedom to travel did not yet exist in Ukraine.

As night fell, few lights shone from roadside cottages we passed. Old ladies, carrying massive piles of sticks or buckets of water from the well, seemed surprised by the sight of our fast-moving car. They sometimes froze in the middle of the road forcing us to make sudden manoeuvres to avoid killing them. The few cars going the other way appeared to be heading directly at our Volga, which was an old communist party boss’s car well past its peak.

We arrived in Slavutych and went immediately to a restaurant. It was a public facility with high ceiling and loads of ostentatious marble, or marble-substitute, in reddish-brown and gaudy pink, and seats for two hundred people. I named it the Taj Mahal because the tacky-style reminded me of an over-the-top second-rate Indian restaurant I once visited in Birmingham, England.

The six of us were the only diners that night. I would eat there every night for many months to come virtually alone or with a few power station bosses or with very welcome parties of visiting foreign journalists. The menu took twenty minutes to read, but a waitress soon told us that they had nothing available from the menu that night. She brought what they had in the kitchen – it turned out to be caviar and bread.  Most nights we had a choice of only one or two dishes or starving.

When I got up next morning and toured Slavutych, I discovered a large, half-built town with deserted streets, next to no shops, except for roadside kiosks selling Polish biscuits and Ukrainian vodka. There was only one private bar in town; the police used to throw out the gangsters (none of whom worked at the plant) when I visited, then huddle in the kitchen until I left to ensure I was protected. One night a fight erupted at the next table, blood spilled and the police rushed out and made matters worse – but I was kept safe.

Just getting to the office was a nightmare. The creation of Belarus placed an international border between the power plant and Slavutych. So everyday we had to cross into Belarus and back again into Ukraine, and navigate two tightly controlled exclusion zones, there and back. Some days, I was seriously delayed at the Belarus border on the way to work and at the Ukrainian border on the way home. Sometimes all the border guards in both countries appeared to be asleep as we motored past.

At that time, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) was not able to sell electricity for money. It bartered it instead for goods from other enterprises that were equally devoid of cash. The power plant also paid its own workers with plastic tokens which had a notional dollar value that no bank would honour and which were not valid outside of the shops it owned and ran. The shops lacked food, anyway. People were growing their own vegetables, or doing odd jobs for farmers in return for meat.

It took all my powers of persuasion to get the Chernobyl management to open up the “Sarcophagus” to the prying eyes of western journalists. Why, asked the then station manager Parashin [now an even more senior figure], should we show the world our shame, our embarrassment when they can tour two working reactors onsite? I told him that the construction of the protective shelter over reactor 4 was a triumph – and I knew he thought so too. His fear was really that opening the doors would just produce negative coverage. It was also a big decision because it takes a long time to prepare people to safely penetrate the Sarcophagus. Tours inside disrupt the daily work that goes on there. To his credit he signed the order to allow entry.

On days off, I toured hospitals and schools neighbouring the exclusion zone, finding malnourished and sick people everywhere. The hospitals lacked medicine, the schools lacked new books and other essential material – nobody had been paid their wages for months.  There was no interest in politics; the atmosphere was fatalistic and quietly depressing.

In the villages I found evacuees decanted to places they didn’t really like (there is no place like home) among people who could barely support their own struggling communities. Chernobyl victims appeared to receive additional support denied to “real” locals.  That was resented, until villagers realised they too could claim victim status certificates from their doctors because they considered it unjust to say no.

At that time, life spans were getting shorter and health levels were declining all over the former Soviet Union. Evacuees, and people living on contaminated land, were convinced radiation was the root of all their troubles. Others only pretended that was the case to gain access to scarce health services and other benefits, including weekly invalidity cash and free holidays for their kids. I even met power station workers whose kids, born elsewhere, cynically took advantage of holidays to Ireland – and who could blame them?

It was sad. There was nothing I could do to help – except in working to get decent information out. I found Chernobyl to be an amazing place. Five thousand people turned up every day to run two working reactors and to keep the rest of the site maintained and safe. The worst of the accident was not visible. The staff had smart, well pressed, uniforms. The corridors and offices were full of pot plants. There was a busy and professional buzz about the place.

I soon discovered that communism and centralism were not dead; certainly not at Chernobyl where a gigantic bust of Lenin overlooked the main entrance. The station manager ran the plant and the town of Slavutych with its 30,000 or so residents, including shops, hospitals and schools. All major decisions crossed his desk and awaited his signature. Sometimes it seemed to take forever to get an answer.

I was one of the first westerners to enjoy life in the exclusion zone.  I saw how its wildlife flourished in a verdant setting without parallel elsewhere in Europe. In the zone, wild animals roamed unmolested through ancient forests and luscious marshes, along untouched riverbanks and across riotous unfenced meadows. It rather defied expectations and gob-smacked me; what nine years of human absence had produced in a so-called dead zone.

Today, I have selfishly mixed feelings about the world’s discovery of Europe’s best-protected nature reserve.  My joyrides in a speedboat on the broad empty river observing the fish, birds, grazing animals and natural shoreline brushed by rushes, trees and beaches, may not be so special an experience in future. Others will also now be joining me by the roadside overlooking waterlogged fields at sunset in the forsaken land.

Ends.

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Story #1: “125,000 Death-toll”
The BBC, news agencies and other media reported in April and May 1995 that 125 000 people had already died as a direct consequence of the accident in Ukraine alone, according to the Ukrainian health ministry.  This was a lead item on BBC TV news and radio and the story was carried prominently in newspapers across the globe. It was a case of sloppy reporting with no verification of the facts.

The health ministry had actually said that 125,000 deaths in Ukraine represented the normal rate of loss one would expect in the nine years that had followed the accident among the millions of people defined as living in affected territories. Most of the deaths were from natural causes and among predominantly elderly people.

The World Health Organisation issued a special briefing report at that time to squash the reports. WHO clarified that the official toll from the accident remained 28 dead from acute radiation syndrome and 200 or so people (sick, not dead) with radiation burns from fighting the fires in April 1986; and 500 cases of thyroid cancer among potentially 3 million children living in the most affected regions.

The thyroid story was very important, because it seemed to play to the argument that Chernolbyl’s radiation had indeed been a huge horror story. Indeed, the figure for the thyroid cancer toll has now risen to 4,000, almost all of which were non-fatal.  It is true that incidence of thyroid cancers in children were higher than had been expected. One of the most interesting (and mostly rather reassuring) experts on Chernobyl’s cancer legacy, Keith Baverstock, has noted (1998) that Chernobyl had taught us that radioactive iodine was more carcinogenic than had been supposed. He added that the US and European atomic weapons programmes had put more of the stuff – and more danger – into the atmosphere than Chernobyl did. In 1995, he was perhaps the first Western expert to consider the thyroid issues.

One of their main points was that hysterical reports were causing real health problems among people living in affected territories by unnecessarily increasing anxiety and stress levels. (The IAEA produced also produced a useful little booklet.)

The then chairman of the BBC Marmaduke Hussey apologised to the British nuclear industry trade association for the publicising the story. He blamed the mistake on inaccurate wire reports from a journalist who misunderstood a quote from the Ukrainian Health Minister at a one-day seminar in Kiev. In fact, the Ukraine Health Minister issued statements to the media at that event in English and in Russian saying that deaths and cancers, such as leukaemia, resulting from the accident were not then detectable, beyond some already known thyroid cancers among children.

Hussey emphasised that: “it is not practicable to check every detail of dispatches sent by correspondents of reputable agencies”. (1, 2)

Story #2:  Remember Igor Pavlovets?
In May 1995, Igor, Child of Chernobyl, a highly promoted documentary made by Carlton for the Network First strand on the UK’s ITV reported the tale of Igor Pavlovets, born after the 1986 accident in Belarus with stumped legs and a missing arm. Publicity for the programme highlighted that over one million children were either deformed like Igor or harmed as a result of the accident. It quoted a survey of 500 children in Minsk which found only one healthy child – which may have been the case given the parlous state of the Belarus economy and health service in 1995. Actually, there was no evidence linking his problems to Chernobyl.

After the barrage of TV and newspaper coverage about Igor, the World Health Organisation pointed out that the average rate of deformities among children in Belarus was 2, 000 per year. WHO clarified that given the number of children born there each year, that was inline with rates found elsewhere in the world. (3, 4)

Story #3: The tale of the collapsing building

In March 1995, The Observer newspaper led with a story that was supposedly based on a leaked industry report that had been suppressed by the European Commission. The substance of the report, whose origins were never revealed, was that the supporting pillars of the then working Reactor 3 could collapse onto the Sarcophagus built over Reactor 4, because they shared common weakened foundations and supporting walls. The Observer quoted an unnamed expert saying “supporting pillars could burst at any time”, meaning that a working reactor would effectively crash into the remains of the 1986 accident. A new international-scale disaster threatened, The Observer said.

Following the March 26 report, many ambassadors from Kiev’s embassies made for the offices of Mikhail Umanets, the then Ukraine minister for nuclear facilities, demanding an urgent explanation. He told them that The Observer’s case that Reactor 3 shared common foundations or supporting walls with the stricken Reactor 4 was nonsense. Each reactor building was built at different times; each had its own foundations independent of the adjacent reactor. It was only a cosmetic façade that made the two buildings look from the outside like they were one building. In fact, there was still an operational railway line in the gap between the two reactors; and the service block situated between the two reactors was no more than the access route linking the two buildings together, above the railway line.

The Observer ran a follow up report. It claimed that as a result of its coverage the US Vice president Al Gore and Norway’s Prime Minister Gro Harlem Bruntland had placed the issue of western funding for Chernobyl high on the next G7 summit; held in Canada in June, 1995. Whether The Observer was a victim of industry or environmentalist lobbying remains a mystery. (5, 6)

References
1. Letter to Roger Hayes, the then director general of the British Nuclear Industry Forum, from Marmaduke Hussey, then chairman of the BBC, dated 20 June 1995
2. NucNet News No. 196/95, 10 May, 1995, reporting on a briefing document issued by the World Health Organisation’s Dr. Keith Baverstock.
3. The Times 1 June, 1995, by Nigel Hawkes, science editor,  Born under the cloud of Chernobyl
4. Sunday Times, 17 March 1996 by Steve Connor, Chernobyl: the fallout myth
5. The Observer 26 March, 1995, by Polly Ghazi (substantiated by the nuclear industry PR who accompanied her: me)
6. The Observer 30 April, 1995, by Polly Ghazi (substantiated by the nuclear industry PR who accompanied her: me)

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The dilemma for Ukraine is that while it may no longer be on very friendly terms with Moscow [this was written in 2006], it is not yet fully integrated into the West either. This double jeopardy has been particularly galling as Ukraine also knows that it cannot survive without Russian fuel for its atomic reactors, or Russian storage facilities to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. In short, Ukraine depends on Russia for its nuclear fuel cycle almost as much as for its gas and oil.

Ukraine’s response is a fierce desire for as much nuclear independence as it can manage.

There are three big nuclear issues:

1. The domestic production of new nuclear fuel or the continued reliance on Russian fuel to keep the country’s 15 working reactors running, as well as for the two now under construction.

2. The continued transport of spent nuclear fuel to Russia, or finding a purely Ukraine-based solution for storing spent fuel safely.

3. Removing and storing all the spent nuclear fuel from Chernobyl’s three undamaged reactors, and their cooling ponds, which is the first major act of the decommissioning process at the plant; as well as the pre-condition for placing the new protective shelter over reactor 4. (1)

The background
Just over 50% of Ukraine’s electricity is generated by nuclear power from VVER reactors, similar to western pressurised water reactors (PWRs). Ukraine is rich in uranium and it is a major supplier of the ore to Russia. In return, for a fee, Russia enriches the uranium and produces the fuel assemblies needed to keep Ukraine’s reactors operational. Russia also proposes to take back the spent fuel and either reprocess it or store it long term.

If Ukraine does not take control of its nuclear fuel cycle it will remain almost totally dependent on Russia for meeting all its energy needs from nuclear, gas and oil. So it should not have been a surprise when, immediately following the gas crisis between the two countries, Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko said that his country should produce its own nuclear fuel for power plants. (2)

However, the establishment of uranium enrichment in Ukraine is a highly controversial proposal.

On the one hand, to Ukraine’s credit it made itself a non-nuclear weapons state by disposing of all of the 1,300 nuclear warheads it inherited from the USSR in 1991. Ukraine is also not barred by international treaty or IAEA rules from enriching uranium. On the other, the IAEA has called for a moratorium on any country developing new enrichment capabilities and the US backs this stance. If either the US or the IAEA were to make Ukraine a special case this could undermine their authority over other countries; Iran comes to mind. (3)

The temptation on the part of Ukraine to enrich uranium is clear. The secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Anatoliy Kinakh, has pointed out that the country’s uranium-ore deposits are “enough to satisfy domestic demand for 100 years.” (4)

However, President Yuschenko went further than that. He called for a national debate on Ukraine’s increasing determination to store all of Ukraine’s spent fuel at Chernobyl instead of sending it to Russia for reprocessing. He argued that the cost of developing waste storage facilities there would not be more than Russia currently charges to transport and store fuel today.

Yuri Nedashkovsky, President of National Nuclear Energy Generating Company (ENERGOATOM), the operator of Ukraine’s active reactors, recently clarified that, “Ukraine ships spent fuel to Russia for reprocessing and temporary storage for an annual fee of around $100 million.” He added that Ukraine takes back the resulting waste products for long-term storage. (5)

There is certainly a need for debate and more public information regarding President’s Yuschenko’s plans. As part of Ukraine’s current parliamentary election battles, a storm has erupted over the award of a multi-million dollar contract to the US-based company Holtec International.  The contract, for a centralized spent fuel storage plant in Ukraine at Chernobly, has been condemned by former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko as part of a US conspiracy to dump their nuclear waste at Chernobyl instead of at Yucca mountain.

The more boring truth is that VVER fuel from Ukraine’s working reactors requires different storage facilities and treatment to the graphite moderated RBMK reactors’ fuel located at Chernobyl today.  As to storing foreign nuclear waste at Chernobyl, the Ukraine President has clearly ruled this option out. (6)

Meanwhile, all is not running smoothly at Chernobyl when it comes storing RBMK spent fuel. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has funded a dry storage facility for spent fuel at the plant designed to handle spent fuel from Chernobyl’s shutdown Reactors 1, 2 , 3 and their cooling ponds nearby. (7)

In a six-year project, the French nuclear contractor Framatome ANP, owned by Areva (which also owns the giant nuclear company COGEMA), has largely completed the dry storage plant. But it stands empty amid accusations of incompetence and cost overruns.

It transpires that the spent-fuel containers that the facility was designed to manage did not account for the corrupted, damaged, fuel that now rests in Chernobyl’s shutdown reactors.

The project should have cost €68 million ($84.2-million). According to a well-researched piece in Nucleonics Week, costs were revised upward to €90 million ($111.5-million), then to about €150 million in 2003, when Framatome discovered that even more fuel than expected was corrupted by water. And then the estimate rose yet again by an additional €125-million ($155-million) after Framatome said it discovered that some spent fuel also contained reprocessed uranium, which has a different neutron spectrum than spent natural uranium fuel. (8)

EBRD has refused substantial additional funding. Instead it urged both parties to find a reasonable compromise. That has not been reached. Rather, the two parties have fallen out. The Ukrainians accuse Framatome of “a less than professional approach” in tripling the original estimate. In return, the company says the Ukrainians kept them in the dark about the true extent of the corrupted fuel and expresses outrage that its expertise, which is world-leading, has been attacked. Now the EBRD is investigating the next steps using independent consultants. (9)

UA says it will go-it-alone
Today, Ukraine says it will do the job independently. Chernobyl plant management, frustrated by ongoing delays, is beginning to move some of the spent fuel from Reactors 1, 2 and 3 into an existing wet fuel storage plant located onsite. This move has required modification of what was previously considered to be an ageing Soviet-style facility with no more than an official ten-year or so lifetime left. And there can be no doubt that the wet-storage option is an interim measure – a second choice option.

There is understandable pressure on the Chernobyl plant management to remove the fuel from the shut down reactors quickly. Not least because fuel stored in reactor 3 must be removed before serious construction of the new shelter over reactor 4 begins; the covering arch will partly encase reactor 3 too in 2009.

One must also understand that a nuclear plant really only begins decommissioning as the fuel is removed – hence a shutdown should not be confused with decommissioning – and that Framatome is now estimating a completion date of 2010. (10)

Nucleonics Week reports that there are 21,352 fuel assemblies at the site, including 65 fresh assemblies. Cores of the first and the third reactor units contain 812 and 1,563 assemblies, respectively; there is no fuel in Unit 2. In the cooling ponds of Units 1, 2, and 3 there are 1,288, 1,057, and 961 assemblies, respectively.

Delays in the decommissioning work due to the lack of the new spent fuel storage facility (officially entitled Spent Fuel Storage-2) costs the Ukraine’s state budget €15 million annually, according to Ms. Tetyana Amosova, first deputy minister at the Ministry for Emergencies (which handles Chernobyl issues). (11)

Is this a disaster?
It is not unusual for any large construction project to experience escalating costs and delays. Moreover given the complexity of the funding and the complexity of dealing with anything at Chernobyl, it is not surprising that the project didn’t run smoothly.

It is difficult for outsiders to detect the real situation through the fog of competing negotiating positions. But there are some clues we can examine.

Framatome says that to ensure safe dry storage of the spent fuel costly design modifications are required.

The company’s brief is narrow. At the top of its agenda is the technical and safety analysis for the storage project it is responsible for. Clearly, Framatome cannot compromise its reputation for high standards. On the other side of the equation, the plant management at Chernobyl is keen to get on with decommissioning their reactors – that’s their job. And the removal of the fuel into the existing wet storage facility onsite is, after all, a tried and tested practice. But it is certainly a short-term measure, rather than the medium-term solution that dry storage provides. (12)

The long term
Some commentators argue that Ukraine is full of bravado when it talks about creating its own nuclear fuel cycle and decommissioning Chernobyl without the West’s money and expertise.

The posture could be a tactical move: a show designed to attract more G7 and EBRD funds and attention; not just for Chernobyl but for the nation as a whole as it struggles to meet its energy needs. Ukraine may back down, it is argued, if the West offers serious assistance to help the country gain independence from Russia’s grip on its energy supply.

Ukraine is in any case at least finding solutions which should enable progress to be made on dealing with the ageing and decaying Sarcophagus built to keep the worst of the weather out of  the ruined Reactor 4. If temporary wet storage allows sufficient decommissioning of neighbouring reactors, then that is one less obstacle to starting on the new protective shelter over Reactor 4 – which is, by the way, a shining example of international co-operation at its best, though it too has experienced some inevitable bumps.

Moreover, the Holtec contract, which is funded by Ukraine taxpayers rather than international aid, highlights the country’s commitment to handle its radwaste within its own borders.

It is possible that Ukraine is striking out for a genuine and bold independence. It may assess correctly that Western aid for developing its own nuclear fuel cycle will not be forthcoming. And, given how Ukraine is an emerging nation, distrustful of its old alliances, and not secure with its emerging ones, it may really mean it when it says energy independence is the only secure way forward.

If Ukraine plans to seriously go down this path, it will not want to replace its dependence on Russia with dependence on the EU, or anybody else. Perhaps it wants to be more of a lion than a pig in the middle.

Notes/Sources

(1) The new shelter planned to cover stricken Reactor 4 is formally known as the Shelter Implementation Project (SIP). The first phase of SIP – the creation of new safe confinement over the existing shelter – is underway. The second phase – withdrawal of radioactive-fuel containing elements from the existing Sarcophagus – needs to be formulated by the Memorandum of members comprising of Ukraine and G7.
(2) Associated Press January 14, 2006.
(3) Ibid
(4) December 14 (Interfax-Ukraine), Kininakh calls nuclear energy and energy security development state priority
(5) Yuri Nedashkovsky, President of ENERGOATOM, Ukraine’s national operator, interviewed on Ukraine TV
(6) Kiev, December 15 (Interfax-Ukraine)
(7) Nucleonics Week, September 15, 2005, Ukrainians say they will ditch Framatome from spent fuel project
(8) Ibid
(9) Ibid
(10) From a speech given at the IAEA Conference on Chornobyl 20 anniversary in Vienna, September 6-7, 2005, attended by the author.
(11) Briefing by plant management and safety experts at Chernobyl NPP, in November 2005
(12) Ibid.

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I’m partly responsible for rehabilitating Chernobyl’s reputation. In 1995 I had the good fortune to be sent to the site as a PR seconded from the western nuclear industry trade associations. Their view was that the media, campaigners and all sorts of other players were talking nonsense about the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl accident and the 10th anniversary of the accident might need some special attention.

When I first arrived on site, I was the only westerner permanently based there. Entry into the Sarcophagus that shielded the remains of the explosion was forbidden. The two exclusion zones that surrounded the stricken power station had a separate administration. They were closed even to people working at the Chernobyl power station. (And there were thousands of those, running nuclear power units pretty safely.)

I’m proud of my small role in opening the place up: the world’s media were welcomed with open arms in 1995/6 and have been ever since.

My subsequent returns to Chernobyl and its exclusion zones have been one- or two-day affairs. I’d go back on official business and, when my work was done, slip my minders. Ignoring the official exit-itinerary I’d go runabout in a mini-van with some friends, food and a crate of beer. We rarely knew where we were going; we just followed our instincts.

Freed from official minders, we walked through Europe’s most isolated meadows and forests. We sat by the wild riverside, smelling the smoke from the wood fires lit by liquidators having BBQs on the beaches. Occasionally they’d invite us to share their feast.

My illegal excursions gave me the joy of calling unannounced on refuseniks as they worked their land. They’d long-since dodged the security barriers to return home. At first they were scared off by armed guards, but they’d kept coming back until the guards gave up chasing old folk across contaminated ground.

Sharing a beer, or perhaps a shot of vodka, I’d ask the locals about the threat from contamination. One told me “I’m too old to care”. Another said that where they’d been resettled had taken the meaning out of their lives. It seems there really is no place like home. The Chernobyl region was always recognised as one of Ukraine’s natural treasures.

Sometimes we’d visit waste dumps to inspect the rotting carcasses of abandoned helicopters, earth-moving machinery and other contaminated vehicles lined-up in massive fields. Once, we were nearly arrested by soldiers with dogs when we got too close – on foot – to an off-map former Soviet early-warning radar station that, though abandoned, was still considered a military secret. We escaped thanks to the quick wits of our driver.

Returning to the official route many hours later than was allowed we’d tell a half lie to bewildered – sometimes angry – guards. We’d claim that we’d accidentally separated from our official guide, and spent hours driving around in circles looking for the way out. Those acts of irreverent rebellion have made me an expert on the wonders of Chernobyl’s exclusion zone.

But it is with a sense of sadness that I now read about the official tours. For as I wrote in another article:

Today, I have selfishly mixed feelings about the world’s discovery of Europe’s best-protected nature reserve.  My joyrides in a speedboat on the broad empty river observing the fish, birds, grazing animals and natural shoreline brushed by rushes, trees and beaches, may not be so special an experience in future. Others will also now be joining me by the roadside overlooking waterlogged fields at sunset in the forsaken land.

Now the secret is out. But Tom Whipple’s article in The Times does not do full justice to the exclusion zone’s wonders. There’s too much focus on geiger counters, and too much said about dust and contamination for my liking. It is actually – as to be fair Whittle says – a low-risk but exciting outing. In praise of Whipple, he captures well how gobsmacking a visit to the ghost-city Pripyat is:

The Communist Party headquarters is just visible behind 20 years of forest growth, displaying the logo of an atom. The angular concrete of a restaurant beyond is softened by a small copse on its roof. This is the apocalypse, and the apocalypse is leafy.

On the way into the Chernobyl exclusion zone, Maxim explains that it is now a wildlife reservation.

Beautifully put. His mostly upbeat account will inspire other travellers to experience Chernobyl for themselves. But get there soon. What Whittle doesn’t say is that the barriers around the outer Chernobyl exclusion zone are starting to come down. Much of the abandoned land is now deemed safe to live and farm on. So go see Europe’s only medieval-style green wilderness before it is too late.

Chernobyl is a scene of man’s folly and of his and nature’s triumph. Chernobyl is not a place of desperation and despair. It is one of hope, courage and beauty that puts content into the expression “we shall overcome”.

Those of you interested in my myth-busting work at Chernobyl – and those wishing to brief themselves on what’s there – can read more here and here. Moreover, romantics might find this PR Week piece, “Chernobyl seems an odd place for romance to blossom, but,” interesting. By the way, my son – for anybody who worries about so-called pre-conceptual cancer – is healthy.

I do hope that people who go on the tours will drop a comment here afterwards.

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