Chernobyl’s First Solar Farm

Bloomberg Quicktake: Now published this video item, entitled “Chernobyl’s First Solar Farm” – below is their description.

(: Dima Kolchinsky)

A hundred yards from the rusting ruins at the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, a gossamer array of almost 4,000 photovoltaic panels sits atop a thick concrete slab capping a grave of radioactive waste.

When it comes to clean energy, it’s hard to think of a less likely place than Ukraine’s infamous Chernobyl nuclear plant. But final preparations are being made to generate electricity again, this time using safer power from the sun.

It’s part of the country’s plan to reduce dependency on increasingly unreliable Russian gas deliveries and disrupted coal supplies. Dominated by the 300 foot (91 meter) high grey containment structure that entombs the destroyed reactor, Chernobyl’s exclusion zone is almost the size of Luxembourg and the authorities say it’s vital to Ukraine’s push to double its solar energy output.

Solar Chernobyl SPP is at the vanguard of the latest experiment to give a place synonymous with catastrophe a new life after previous efforts failed. The company is a partnership between Ukrainian entrepreneur Yevgen Variagin’s Rodina Energy Group and Hamburg-based Enerparc AG.

The Chernobyl power plant was once the cornerstone of the Soviet Union’s nuclear strategy in Ukraine.

Then the fourth reactor exploded, blanketing the area with radiation that killed 49 people outright and left thousands more with lingering, often fatal health problems. The zone is dotted with abandoned villages and former dairy farms slowly being swallowed up by the dense forest.

Pripyat, once a bustling Soviet-designed town of 50,000 people housing plant workers and their families, is now an eerie tourist destination with collapsing apartment blocks, a decrepit hotel and an empty supermarket. Behind a stretch of buildings with broken windows and peeling facades, an abandoned amusement park is slowly decomposing.

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