Chernobyl Goes Solar

I remember Chernobyl. I was 13 years old, doing a morning paper round, it had been raining heavily the night before, but the sun was shining. I was walking up a road, reading the headlines of The Sun, although it might have been TODAY, and there were these fat worms on the ground, having been brought to the surface by the rainfall. And I remember looking at the worms, and the water, and wondering if they were radioactive. 

Thirteen, wow, that was a while ago. And now, Chernobyl is enjoying a respite from humans. The wildlife is prolific, according to National Geographic there’s an abundance of wolves, wild horses, birds of prey, more wolves, beavers, red foxes, swans, moose, and badgers. Seems like paradise happens without us. 

And surely, a sign of the times a changed. A solar farm has been installed there. According to PowerTechnology.com “The 1MW solar park was officially opened on Friday and consists of 3,800 panels across four acres, producing sufficient energy to power around 2,000 households in the area. The plant uses existing power transmission lines connected to the site and also makes use of regional feed-in tariffs to generate power in an otherwise unusable area.” 

Great news. And reassuringly, the land will ‘remain unsafe for human habitation for another 24,000 years.’ 

Everything works for good eventually. 

Photo by Hugh Mitton on Unsplash