Wick man Chris McIvor took a day trip to Chernobyl – scene of the devastating nuclear accident in 1986 – and left feeling an unexpected sense of optimism

One of the countries I have to visit regularly as part of my new job with HelpAge International is Ukraine. Unfortunately, as if often the case with the aid world, it is trouble and conflict that has brought us here. The east of the territory is now contested by several warring parties and, as is usual when wars happen, it is children and older people who suffer the most.

Finding myself with a day to spare when I was there, I ventured into an office that advertised local tours. They had a good variety of one-day trips on offer: Old Kiev, a river cruise on the Dnieper, historic Lvov in the west of the country. As I inspected the brochures that had been handed to me, the lady I was speaking to asked me if I would be interested in their most popular tour. When she added that it was to the site of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl I expressed surprise firstly that it was open to visitors, since I thought it was still highly radioactive, and secondly that it was so popular among the thousands of people a year she had mentioned.

Gallery1

No, it was not dangerous any more, she said, because of several clean-ups and because we would be guided through parts of it that were less contaminated. And as for the interest in visiting, well, a recent HBO TV series of the same name had helped. "Fame and notoriety are bigger tourist attractions than churches and monuments."

The drive from Kiev to Chernobyl takes about three hours. Entry to the exclusion zone, a vast area of land prohibited to human settlement, is through a military checkpoint where you are asked to present your passport, given a set of instructions as to what you are permitted to photograph and issued with a small device that on your exit will let you know if you have been contaminated. No-one could tell me what would happen if that turned out to be the case.

Our guide is a bright, cheerful student from Kiev who tells us that he pays for his studies by ferrying groups of people around Chernobyl every weekend. "Don’t you worry that after so many visits you might end up being affected?" I ask him. He shrugs off the risk by saying that if he couldn’t pay for his studies he would be unable to find a proper job in the future, and that without work he would probably die of boredom and frustration.

Now buried within a large, metal sarcophagus, Reactor No 4 does not exude the atmosphere of menace and threat that I had expected. The fate of much of Western Europe depended for several weeks on being able to prevent a second, more serious explosion at that same reactor. In the end disaster was narrowly averted but only at the cost of thousands of lives and a radioactive cloud that spread through neighbouring countries.

The tragedy of what happened was better represented for me by our walk through the city of Pripyat, the nearby settlement that housed the thousands of people who worked in the Chernobyl reactors which supplied most of Ukraine with its electricity. A few days after the explosion, and much too late by all accounts, the city was entirely evacuated. People were told that they could return in a few months when it was safe to do so but that was a promise that was never kept. Our guide was of the opinion that, while radioactive burns, poisoning and cancers were terrible physical consequences of the disaster, the disruption of people’s lives and the forced abandonment of the place that was their home left deeper psychological scars that have not been so readily recognised.

I left Chernobyl, radioactive-free, with an unexpected sense of optimism. What most remained in my mind of that day was the sight of a group of wild horses within the exclusion zone, and the information imparted by our guide that these and other wild animals had now reclaimed this territory as their own. Over the city and the several settlements that were evacuated the forest has also regrown. Vegetation pokes through the windows of houses, and on the roof of the stadium where people used to watch football matches trees have established a foothold. In a few more decades the evidence of past human presence will have disappeared, our guide informs us. The fact that nature can recover if left alone provides some reassurance at least that, no matter our past mistakes, our planet may turn out to be stronger than our failures.

• Chris McIvor is regional director, Eurasia and Middle East, with HelpAge International which works to create a fairer world for older people so they can live safe, healthy and dignified lives.

Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print.