IN the wake of the intrigue surrounding the Chernobyl disaster, a Walney man who visited the site has recounted his experience seeing the devastation which was left behind first hand.

Adam Armstrong, from Walney, visited the site of the 1986 nuclear accident in Soviet Ukraine.

He described how he travelled two hours from Kiev to the exclusion zone surrounding the nuclear power reactor.

He said: “We crossed over the checkpoint with a Geiger counter.

“We saw the abandoned city of Pripyat and got to see what life was like there.

“We saw an abandoned school and a hospital as well as the fairground.

“We weren’t allowed to touch anything whilst we were there.

“We went in to the reactor, we were only allowed to be there for a few minutes and again couldn’t touch anything.

“Everything has just been abandoned.

“Before we left we had to have full body scans.

There has been a recent increase in public interest in to the disaster which saw tens of thousands of people evacuated from there homes after a nuclear reactor ruptured and caught fire, sending huge amounts of radioactive particles in to the atmosphere.

The interest has been prompted by the publication of a historical mini-series on the incident.

The series focuses on the nuclear plant disaster, revealing how and why it happened, and telling the stories of those people who helped and died in tackling the disaster, as well as the Soviet cover up which followed.

Since the show aired, there has been an increase in the number of tourists visiting the site.

Mr Armstrong spoke about what it was like to be there in person and to learn about the events first hand.

He said: “When we were learning about the disaster, I couldn’t believe that it actually happened.

“When you go to see it in real life, you just think ‘how did this happen?’

“They ruined huge areas of land and then tried to cover the whole thing up.

“It was a real eye opener, it was very interesting.”