Elena Filatova has amassed a world-renown reportage of the regions devastated by the Chornobyl nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986.

er. During the last four years, she’s ridden her Kawasaki Ninja in and around the Chornobyl zone taking pictures. She has amassed a world­renown reportage of the devastated region, the latest collection called “Pluto’s Realm.""

 

KP: Why have you chosen to do this way to document the Chornobyl tragedy? 

EF: My aim is to capture important events I have witnessed and rescue from oblivion deeds that have been forgotten or chosen to be forgotten. With time, Chornobyl towns and villages perish and the memories are lost, so the sole purpose of my work is to preserve these memories on the Internet forever.

I do carry this work, because I don’t like when someone tries to make a fool of me. In the case of Chornobyl, I have a very strong feeling that the government, scientific and business establishments have been making fools of us from the day it happened to the present. In regards to nuclear accidents, not much has changed since the days of Communism. The only thing that has changed is that in a totalitarian state, the government kept the information from the people, while now in a free state, the people keep the information from themselves.

 

KP: Please tell us about yourself – where did you grow up? Where did you study? How did your family and studying influence your life? 

EF: I grew up in Kyiv. I was always interested in nuclear science, because my parents were scientists, but I myself studied philosophy.

 

KP: Does the government sanction your trips into the zone? Do you need any special permission?

It is not really permission that is the main obstacle. Impassable roads are the real problem nowadays, and many roads are blocked by fallen timber and are impassable by car. Today, a motorcycle is the only possible transportation, but even for motorcycles traveling is becoming much more difficult. Collapsed bridges, road erosion, fallen trees and poles make it impossible to travel through many parts of the Dead Zone now. In the future, it will be one big forest. I have also ridden through the Russian and Belarusian parts of the exclusion zone. In Belarus, the situation is far worse. Roads to distant villages are ruined completely.

 

KP: You often expose yourself to radiation. How do you protect yourself?

EF: There is no means, no technology that can protect humans from radiation. Nothing can stop gamma rays. The only real defense for the individual is to know the safe exposure time allowable for the radiation levels being encountered. If those levels are too high or can not be detected by your device, then there is no other rule or prescription for saving yourself, except the same ones you used for the plague or a ticking time bomb – run as far and as fast as you can.

When I go for rides now and then, I am not afraid of the radiation. I know where to go and where not to go, so I don’t expose myself to high levels.

 

KP: Is there a danger of wildfires? How big a threat does this pose?

EF: Wildfires release a great deal of radiation into the atmosphere. This spring is not bad. We have rain now and then. Last spring was disastrous.

 

KP: There are several versions of reasons for the tragedy which are related to each other. What do you think played the main role in the tragedy? Could we have avoided it?

EF: The causes of the accident are described as a fateful combination of human error and imperfect technology. Andrei Sakharov said the Chornobyl accident demonstrates that our system cannot manage modern technology. 

We couldn’t have avoided it, because once technology gets ahead of our own development, the accident is just an overdue technicality.

 

KP: Some people returned to their homes in Chornobyl to live out the rest of their lives. Can you describe what their lives there are like?  How long is it possible to survive in the contaminated environment?

EF: Radiation from the reactor’s explosion was disbursed unevenly by the winds, in a chessboard fashion, leaving some places alive and others dead. Whether one can survive or not depends on how badly those areas are contaminated. In some places, it is impossible to live, while nearby places can be safe, but they are dead too, because the infrastructure of the entire region has collapsed. Life is very depressing in the polluted areas. Each year I travel, I see more and more dead places. People who live there receive medical care. They receive some help from the government and different organizations.  They are mostly older people and when they die, no one will know if they died from radiation or old age.

 

KP: Do you think this land has a future – should it be revived for further usage? How do you think it can be used in the future? 

EF: On the gates of the sarcophagus, I’d write what Dante wrote over the entrance to his Inferno: “All hopes abandon ye who enter here.” Land that is heavily poisoned has no future. The areas where radiation levels are mild can be used for production of bio­fuels or other non­food production.

 

KP: What is your opinion about relying on nuclear power? 

EF: Nuclear technology posits a death sentence for the world; it is very dangerous in human hands. Don’t forget there is big money in the nuclear industry, which naturally attracts powerful, big­money political and business interests whose only concern is milking a cow. If they milk it without limit, without giving a damn about the safety of reactors and the health of people, then eventually instead of milk they will be squeezing out blood.

 

KP: Do you think humanity has learned Chornobyl’s lesson properly? Or are there preconditions for repeating tragedy? 

EF: Chornobyl is a warning to mankind. Once this warning is ignored or we fail to learn, then we are doomed to repeat it all again and again. Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up. This is the course of events in the life of individuals, as well as the life of societies.