The radioactive trains at Yaniv station in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

On April 26, 1986, the famous accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, then part of the Soviet Union, took place.

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The explosion of reactor number 4 at that plant caused the worst nuclear accident in history, the consequences of which are still present today in Ukraine and Belarus, the two countries in whose territory the Chernobyl exclusion zone is located. Both the plant itself and the nearby city of Pripyat are two of the most famous places in that zone, which also has a train station, next to the ghost town of Yaniv, Ukraine, one of the towns that had to be evacuated because of that accident. This station is south of Pripyat and west of the Chernobyl plant.

Yaniv station was founded in 1925, long before the founding of the city of Pripyat. This station served passenger and freight trains. The station had three receiving tracks and several storage tracks. Curiously, the station was not electrified until after the nuclear accident, to serve the trains carrying the liquidators and contractors in charge of carrying out the work on the enormous Chernobyl sarcophagus. The catenaries were later removed.

Some tracks from this station are still in use today, to serve the builders of the new Chernobyl sarcophagus. On 9 July 2021, the Ukrainian state-owned company Energoatom completed a new 43-kilometer track between Vilcha and Yaniv, connecting the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to Ukraine's railway network for the transport of radioactive waste to the area.

Rolling stock contaminated by the 1986 accident still exists in Yaniv. This material includes several locomotives, passenger cars, freight cars and a railcar. These trains were not contaminated enough to be buried along with other materials used in the liquidation of the plant and the removal of the famous "red forest", but they were radioactive enough to be unusable.

The most dangerous material at Yaniv station is an IMR engineering vehicle that belonged to the Soviet Army and was used in the work to cut down the red forest in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. This vehicle has very high levels of radioactivity, as can be seen in this video by Abandoned Explorer, published a few days ago:

In September 2016, the Polish channel Tmechatronik posted this video showing trains at Yaniv station:

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Main photo: Paweł 'pbm' Szubert.