Talk:Chernobyl

Name

I think the Chornobyl article is best called Chernobyl. While Chornobyl may be the Ukranian spelling, the usually recognised English spelling of Chernobyl is about 20 times more frequently used, according to a Google search.

So I moved the page. -- (WT-en) Huttite 08:24, 15 Jun 2005 (EDT)

I copied the "Chornobyl" spelling from the Ukraine page. That was against my better judgement; Chernobyl is better. 130.153.173.15 22:12, 15 Jun 2005 (EDT)

On another note, saying that reactor number four exploded is rather emotive and indicates a certain point of view of the writer. It would be more neutral POV to say that reactor number four experienced a steam explosion, containment disruption, graphite moderator fire and reactor core meltdown.

Bad research on my part, if what happened wasn't an explosion. 130.153.173.15 22:12, 15 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Name, again

"Chernobyl" is the Russian name. "Chornobyl" is the Ukrainian name. Much like "Kyiv" (Ukrainian) was "Kiev" in Russian. Given the current war and occupation, I'd prefer not to be using Russian names for Ukrainian populated places if other, valid names are available.

And changing "exploded" to "experienced a steam explosion"? Is that like "experiencing homelessness" instead of being homeless? Everything needs to be "an experience" to promote it to the voyager? 66.102.87.40 15:54, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Please go ahead and simplify the language. But as for the name, call it anything you want on your own time, but on this site, we use the most commonly used name in English. See WV:Naming conventions. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:09, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Memorial or attraction?

Finally, is this a destination or merely an attraction? Given the historical significance and uniqueness, an article may prove interesting, but should a city template be used? -- (WT-en) Huttite 07:35, 15 Jun 2005 (EDT)

I am not clear on the distinction between the two. I started this after reading a travel article on the subject and was fascinated by it. 130.153.173.15 22:12, 15 Jun 2005 (EDT)

and we are glad you did! Thank you.

For what it's worth the major distinction between an attraction and a destination is answered by the question "do you sleep there". That said I think that [[Chernobyl] should have it's own article anyway, since surely most Wikivoyagers would know it by that name rather than the name of the nearest place with a hotel. -- (WT-en) Mark 00:57, 16 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Wow, I'm really digging up old discussions today, aren't I? Anyway, I think this is not an article per Project:What is an article?. There is no where to sleep, eat, or drink. It should be a "get out" from the nearest town or the usual starting point of the tours. We can have a redirect on Chernobyl and the search engine will get folks to the right page as well... comments? (WT-en) Majnoona 14:02, 1 March 2006 (EST)

Chernobyl turns into a tourist destination because of this unique tragedy. In the last years there has been a high increase in tourists visiting Pripyat. Today you are able to stay overnight in Pripyat. Due to the serious health risks (and the whole area being more or less a military zone) you can't travel individually but guided tours are running. I guess most people would search at wikivoyage for Chernobyl but not look in the Kiev section. It's a national tragedy and therefore the place should have an own page here.(WT-en) Jan 07:40, 26 April 2006 (EST)

Ok, I'm willing to be swayed on this one... It seems like it's big & remote enough to be an exception to the 'can you sleep there' rule of thumb. Lots of great info in here btw... nice job everyone! (WT-en) Majnoona 11:29, 26 April 2006 (EDT)

Radiation levels reported wrong

Umm .. there's a bit under "See - Chernobyl reactor 4" that states (quoted): "Typical dose at the site seems to be about 0.5 - 0.9 micro-Roentgens/hour (winter), slightly higher in the summer."

.5-.9 uR/h is hardly a realistic value, since background radiation in most european cities is between 15 and 30 uR/h. Also, as far as I recall, my dosimeter never showed anything below 1100 uR/h (registered on the roof of the visitors center).

Please, plunge forward and change the article! Especially if you first-hand experience. --(WT-en) Evan 08:51, 7 December 2006 (EST)

I think whoever wrote the article meant milliroentgens/h, not microroentgens/h. I changed it to .5 to .9 milliroentgens/h, which corresponds to 500 to 900 microroengens/h

Watch

Chernobyl Virtual Tour - 29 panoramas 360 degrees, that shows most visited spots in Pripyat ghost town and Chernobyl zone.

http://chernobylvirtualtour.com/

clothes

It should be noted that on most tours, one has to discard ones clothes after visiting chernobyl because there might be radioactive dust on it.

> I would have to disagree with this - having just returned from a two day tour, you go through radiation checks at key points (either when leaving the zone or when going to certain buildings) and this would detect any abnormal radiation levels and you would

> need to have the area cleaned or removed, if and when any radiation was detected.

> It is something that does happen infrequently but they would deal with it there and then, you would certainly not need to discard clothes randomly and it is not most tours.

> 109.156.94.146 19:42, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

hot surfaces

The article mention there is a danger of touching hot surfaces. That seems highly unlikely, anyone who can confirm that's true?

Depends on whether hot is interpreted as hot in a temperature sense of the word (i.e. warm surfaces) or radioactively contaminated surfaces.

Page name

I reverted a page move from "Chernobyl" to "Chornobyl" today as the former is how I've always seen it spelled, and Wikipedia uses w:Chernobyl, but I'm adding a note to the talk page for discussion purposes in case anyone feels differently. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:09, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

The article (or at least the lede) should explain the distinction; "Chernobyl" is transliterated Russian, "Chornobyl" is transliterated Ukrainian. The same issues occur with other points with names in more than one language, like Iqaliut (Frobisher Bay) and Qaanaaq (Thule) in Nunavut and Greenland respectively. Gdansk/Danzig in Poland is the classic, infamous example. K7L (talk) 05:14, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Sentence to be clarified

In the Understand section there is a sentence that reads "The radioactive plume touched down many times in numerous populated areas as far out as 500 km (over 300 miles) from the plant site." I think it should be reworded.

Is "the radioactive plume" something specific or only a way to express the drifting radioactive particles? What does "touching down" mean (I though rain was the main reason to get contamination at some spot)? Is it important to mention "populated areas"? Most of Europe is definitely populated, and I think densely and less densely populated areas were about equally affected. And from where is the 500 km figure? I understand Sweden (very health conscious, which may put things out of proportions) was affected bad enough that some food stuff is still monitored for radiation because of the fallout. --LPfi (talk) 06:59, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Hotel Facilities

Speaking for the ground floor of the hotel at least, the rooms do not have their own bathroom facilities - there are separate toilet and shower facilities (2 rooms with a toilet, shower cubicle) —The preceding comment was added by 109.156.94.146 (talk • contribs)

Problems cleaning up history section

After rewriting the history section, I encountered issues trying to delete remains of the old and poorly structured content. Wikivoyage reports my edits have been declined because they were "automatically identified as harmful" by an "abuse filter" regarding attempts to blank a page. Can anyone do something about this please? Thanks! —The preceding comment was added by 82.132.237.53 (talk • contribs)

It seems to me, a simple solution would be for you to make the necessary deletions in stages instead of all at once. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:18, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

(ec) This comes from editing from an IP. I have temporarily disabled the filter, but we will have to re-enable it soon. If you create an account, you can avoid this issue in the future. It will also keep all your contributions in one place and allow us to contact you. I will leave a talk page message with some links. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 19:21, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Done rewriting history section and deleted the outdated/incoherently written stuff. Feel free to turn your filters back on, User:ARR8, and thanks for the assistance! —The preceding comment was added by 109.170.229.117 (talk • contribs)

Thank you! Small thing: Please sign posts on talk (discussion) pages like this one. Oddly enough, you do that by typing 4 tildes (~) in a row at the end of the post. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:28, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion:

• Chernobyl New Safe Confinement August 2016.jpg
• NSC Sept 2017.jpg
• NSC-Oct-2017.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:39, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

It is about the New Safe Confinement architecture and lack of freedom of panorama in Ukraine. To me there seems not to be much personal touch to the structure, and thus the threshold of originality may not be reached. Take a look at the discussion if you think you may come up with an informed opinion (there is just one discussion on all the files). –LPfi (talk) 16:16, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Breadcrumb

Given that Chernobyl is now under Russian control, where should this article be breadcrumbed? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 05:07, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't change it yet. It's merely under military occupation, not annexed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:00, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Oh yes, I only read the headline and two sentences during a five-minute break but I just read the full CBN article now. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:53, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

No. We cannot be changing breadcrumbs as fronts move in a war. –LPfi (talk) 09:23, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Chornobyl, Ukraine

Swept in from the pub

Why are we referring to Chornobyl by its Russian name, Chernobyl? Chornobyl is Ukraine and, as anyone with any access to non-Russia/non-PRC news sources knows, Russia has been waging brutal war on all of Ukraine since 24 Feb 2022 (and on Crimea and Donbass since 2014). Maybe mainstream media were fine with using a Russian name for a Ukrainian oblast at the time of the original 1986 disaster, when the Soviet Union was very much still extant and, by extension, Ukraine was under Soviet occupation, but we're in 2022 now and the world is a very different place. There's a war on.

We wouldn't file London under Londres or Germany under Alemania - their French and Spanish names - so why would we use a third country's naming for Chornobyl? 66.102.87.40 18:38, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

• because of policy. WV:Naming conventions: "articles should use the city, region or country name most commonly used in English-speaking countries". Chernobyl is still prevalent - the HBO miniseries comes to mind. Ibaman (talk) 18:49, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Precisely. There may come a time when the Ukrainian name is used more in English, but given the pervasiveness of news coverage under the Russian name, I think it'll be some time before it's forgotten in the English-speaking world. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:59, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the above, it's just typical naming conventions. Rubbish computer (Ping me or leave a message on my talk page) 19:57, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

7 days ago the BBC reported Ukraine war: Chernobyl scarred by Russian troops' damage and looting. Can the IP suggesting the name change please provide some examples of recent news coverage in English language sources which use Chornobyl.

I also see that a request to move the page was rejected on WP. We have a redirect from Chornobyl which is sufficient for the limited English language use of the name. AlasdairW (talk) 22:51, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

And as a side note, I sometimes take a peek at what the Chinese media is saying in their news since I understand Chinese, and news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not censored in China. They often bring on pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine commentators to debate with each other, and the tone of the Chinese state media coverage of the war is more neutral than pro-Russia. I know of a Ukrainian woman who posts videos on Chinese social media where she clearly adopts a pro-Ukraine position (and she posts videos in Chinese because she studied in China), and she has not been censored. And in the Chinese media, every now and then, they make it a point to remind people of what Russian imperialism did to them during the "Century of Humiliation", so what they are basically saying is that the Russians cannot be trusted, but they need to have this marriage of convenience for now because America is the bigger threat. But there has also been quite a fair bit of criticism of Russia in the Chinese media for being too hasty to go to war. The dog2 (talk) 23:26, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

That's interesting and sounds like a fairly sensible take for China. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:47, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

It appears that Reuters has changed their spelling, if https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/chornobyl-radiation-detectors-back-online-levels-normal-iaea-2022-06-07/ is representative. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

We should watch things, but we need to keep in mind the impact of all the media coverage in and since 1986, not just current-day changes. I think at the very least, we will probably need to wait x-number of years before changing the spelling if we ever do. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:06, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Also, people should be careful of what media stories they believe. There have been claims in the media that the Chinese delegation walked out when Zelensky gave his speech at Davos, and more recently at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Turns out it was the Vietnamese delegation both times, and people just assumed that it was the Chinese just because they look Asian. The dog2 (talk) 13:50, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Chernobyl remains the most widely used spelling, and even so, the difference is only one letter. Some changes have been amplified due to the war, such as Kiev to Kyiv, but Chernobyl is not one of them. I agree with the consensus to keep "Chernobyl" until the change becomes widely accepted, as was concluded in Turkiye. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 15:16, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• NSC Sept 2017.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:41, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Freedom of panorama issue, needs to be uploaded locally as fair use. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:20, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

We could check what file we want from the category. If they are deleted we won't have a second chance to compare what images there are available. –LPfi (talk) 09:18, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

True. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:23, 8 March 2023 (UTC)