The Only Church Open in the Chernobyl Zone Shows the Minimum Radiation Level
April 20, 2011
25 years from the date of the Chernobyl accident (26 April 1986), the radiation level in the area of Prophet Elijah Church, the only church operating in the exclusion zone, was well below the level across the zone, Chernobyl disaster liquidators state.
"Even in the hardest days of 1986, the area around Prophet Elijah Church was clean (from radiation - IF), not to mention that the church itself was also clean," the president of the Ukrainian Chernobyl Union Yury Andreyev said in a Kiev-Moscow video conference on Wednesday.
Now the territory adjacent to the church has the background level of 6 microroentgen per hour compared with 18 in Kiev.
Andreyev also said many disaster liquidators had been atheists. "We came to believe later after observing such developments, which could be explained only by God's will," he says.
In particular, according to him, a few seconds after the explosion in the fourth unit of the Chernobyl PP, the cloud containing uranium particles started moving in the direction of Pripyat, a city located about 1,800 meters from the plant. There was a pine-tree in its way (it is featured on a well-known icon called Chernobyl's Savior.)
"The cloud stopped short of this pine, divided into two parts by some unknown reason and continued moving to the left and right sides of the city instead of covering its residential areas. The radiation level in contamination areas was four or five roentgen per hour, and the city showed only half a milliroentgen," Andreyev said.
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| The pine tree |
This icon was painted in the early 21st century in remembrance of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. It depicts Jesus Christ the Savior in Heaven, surrounded by a mandorla, with His hand raised in a blessing. Flanking Christ is the Mother of God to His right, supplicating her Son, and the Archangel Michael to His left. A star falls on Chernobyl, reminiscent of the Book of Revelation's reference to "wormwood", which in Ukrainian is translated as "chernobyl". The pine tree that saved the city is depicted in the middle.
