Chernobyl Robotic Vehicles Graveyard
Liquidation of the consequences of Chernobyl accident started as soon as it became clear that the situation is serious and fourth reactor is out of control. Evacuation of population, decontamination of the surroundings of the power plant and 30km zone, construction of Sarcophagus – these are just some of the tasks that needed more than 600,000 people to be accomplished. Obviously, there was a need for huge amount of the vehicles. Today, many of them rest in vehicle graveyards in Chernobyl zone.
As long as all those vehicles were working in contaminated zone, they were not able to come back to the “clean land” without being decontaminated. However, not all of them could be cleaned up. The most contaminated ones were left in the burial site called “Buriakivka” and it is located approximately 4 km away from the power plant. This Chernobyl machine graveyard has big size – 1200×700 m – and has 30 trenches with buried equipment and vehicles. Famous “robot” Joker (the one made by Germans to clean up the roof of the third reactor and didn’t work longer than 40 seconds) is left there as well.
Another Chernobyl vehicle graveyard is located in the 30 km zone close to the village of Rozsokha. This one was supposed to be temporary one. It was thought that cleaning up would take a lot of time and resources, so some of the vehicles could simply “wait” till the radioactive decay decreases the level of radiation on their surface. This site had some buses, some helicopters and a lot of other cars. Unfortunately, since 2000, many of those vehicles have been cut for scrap metal and looted.
Finally, one Chernobyl truck graveyards is located in Prypiat. That one contains some of the armored vehicles and even a couple of trucks called Belaz. Those ones were used to poor water on Prypiat streets to prevent the dust from being blown off. This site was in use till autumn, 2019, so the condition of the vehicles there is one of the best out of all Chernobyl car graveyards.
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