Kopachi Village Kindergarten

Kopachi (Копачі in Ukrainian) was a small village south-east from the town of Pripyat with population of 1114 in 1986. Due to the proximity to the Chernobyl Power Plant it was heavily contaminated by the nuclear fallout and subsequently bulldozed.

Only two brick buildings remain in Kopachi after the Chernobyl Disaster, the kindergarten being one them. Several unnaturally looking mounds can be found in the woodland surrounding it, they’re remains of the homes buried under the ground, each marked with a radioactivity symbol sign. The Ukrainian government didn’t take the ground waters into consideration when issuing the demolition order, all contaminated houses and soil were simply buried in hastily dug pits, leaking radioactive isotopes deeper into the ground. As a result most of the ground water surrounding the Kopachi village is heavily contaminated with caesium-137, strontium-90, and plutonium.

The Kindergarten survived a close forest fire in April 2020.

Another notable structure is the nearby World War II memorial still looked after by the exclusion zone workers.

 

 

One Comment

  1. Pavlo Reznichenko
    24th July 2017
    Reply

    Thank you for these stunning photos!
    I can’t look at them calmly.
    By the way, people even live in the Zone of Alienation.
    They are mostly old people.
    I and my friends visited them.
    It seems that radiation is not very harmful to old people.

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