In the city of Pripyat in Ukraine, built for workers at the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant, stands a bronze statue of the god Prometheus clasping fire in his outstretched arms. It was intended to symbolise the triumph of human ingenuity in taming and harnessing the forces of nature – in particular, the fire locked inside the atomic nucleus, released in a controlled manner from radioactive uranium to generate power.
Now the statue has taken on a very different meaning. Like Prometheus, Pripyat seems to have been punished for the hubris of stealing this inner fire. It is a ghost town where weeds and wilderness encroach on deserted apartments still scattered with the abandoned relics of a population evacuated suddenly more than 30 years ago, surrounded by an exclusion zone in which the radiation levels from the disaster are still too high for human habitation. Visitors arriving for official tours find scenes straight out of Andrei Tarkovsky’s cult film Stalker. (The survivalist horror game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is set in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.) Swings rust slowly in silent playgrounds; signs saying “meat” and “cheese” still hang in empty supermarkets. Guides with Geiger counters warn of areas still too “hot” with radioactive contaminants to enter.
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