Ask Onix
Midnight rumble: The night Chernobyl changed everything
Iryna Stetsenko had just finished painting her nails for her wedding when a deep rumble shook her apartment in Pripyat. It was just after midnight on April 26, 1986. Less than 2.5 miles away, reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear plant had exploded, releasing radioactive material across Europe.
A wedding in the shadow of disaster
Iryna and her fiancé, Serhiy Lobanov, a 25-year-old power plant engineer, were preparing for their wedding day. Serhiy, sleeping in a nearby apartment packed with guests, felt a tremor and briefly wondered if it was an earthquake before drifting back to sleep.
By morning, Serhiy noticed soldiers in gas masks and streets being washed with a foamy solution. He saw smoke rising from reactor four but had no idea of the scale of the disaster. He bought tulips for Iryna's bouquet in a deserted market, a stark contrast to the usual Saturday bustle.
Iryna, staying with her mother, received worried calls from neighbors but heard nothing on the radio. Soviet authorities downplayed the incident, insisting all planned events proceed as usual. Children were sent to school, and the couple's wedding went ahead at the Palace of Culture.
A somber celebration
The wedding banquet felt subdued. Guests sensed something was wrong but lacked details. For their first dance, Iryna and Serhiy abandoned their practiced waltz, hugging instead as the weight of the unfolding tragedy pressed on them.
"Everyone understood that something had happened, but no one knew the details," Serhiy recalled.
Evacuation and a lifetime of displacement
In the early hours of Sunday, a friend knocked on their door, urging them to rush to an evacuation train leaving at 5 a.m. Iryna, wearing her wedding dress and running barefoot through puddles, grabbed only a flimsy dress for the next day's celebrations.
From the train, they saw the glow of the collapsed reactor, likening it to "the eye of a volcano." The evacuation was described as temporary, but they never returned. The Soviet Union's delayed response drew international criticism, with Mikhail Gorbachev not addressing the disaster publicly for over two weeks.
The human cost of Chernobyl
The official death toll stands at 31, including two killed in the explosion and 28 who died from acute radiation sickness. However, estimates of long-term deaths vary widely, with some suggesting tens of thousands could eventually succumb to radiation-related illnesses.
Nikolai Solovyov, a lead engineer in the turbine hall, recalled the moment of the explosion: "It was like an earthquake beneath us. We saw the roof collapsing... A blast of air came towards us and brought all this black dust."
Cleanup efforts involved hundreds of thousands of "liquidators" from across the Soviet Union. Jaan Krinal and Rein Klaar, deployed from Estonia, described working in one-minute bursts on the roof of reactor three, wearing lead plates and dosimeters to limit radiation exposure.
Health struggles and a new life in Berlin
Iryna and Serhiy fled to Poltava, where doctors revealed Iryna was three months pregnant. Despite warnings about radiation's effects on unborn babies, she carried the pregnancy to term, giving birth to a healthy daughter, Katya. Decades later, they believe radiation may have contributed to Iryna's knee replacements and Serhiy's 2016 heart attack.
In 2022, they relocated to Berlin after their daughter's Kyiv apartment was struck by a missile. Their marriage, forged amid uncertainty, remains a source of strength.
"After 40 years, I can say with certainty that we are like a thread with a needle. We do everything together," Iryna said.
Chernobyl today: A site of war and decay
The Chernobyl plant remains a hazardous site. A £1.3 billion metal shield was installed in 2016 to contain leaks, but in 2022, Russian forces seized the plant, taking staff hostage and damaging infrastructure. A drone attack last year breached the shield, though radiation levels did not rise.
Pripyat, once a symbol of Soviet progress, now lies abandoned, its buildings crumbling. The exclusion zone remains uninhabitable, with pockets of dangerously high radiation persisting in areas like the "Red Forest."
