‘Energetik’ gloomily hidden in the shadows: what Prypiat looks like 40 years after the Chernobyl accident

The town of Pripyat in the Kyiv region was abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.

The Energetik Palace of Culture has become a symbol of new life. The State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management published details on Facebook on 2 July.

The name of the facility, as stated in the post, is not accidental, it comes from the word ‘energy’ and a hint of nuclear power plant workers. It was here that the townspeople attended concerts and film screenings. Literary evenings were also organised, and the Edison-2 disco gathered more than five hundred young people.

There was a gym and a swimming pool for children. Boxing tournaments and club meetings were held in the facility, which testified to the active community of the atomograd residents.

The accident on 26 April 1986 prompted the creation of a new style of the palace. The building was used more for the technical needs of the liquidators. Subsequently, the work at the Chornobyl NPP stopped, and since 2000, the Energetik has been in complete decline.

In 2025, the Energetik was turned into ruins. The building still resembles the young city of Prypiat, which was vibrant and alive in the 1980s, full of cultural, sporting and academic energy, but now it does not look like that.

The Chernobyl disaster

On the night of 26 April 1986, a powerful explosion was recorded at the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which destroyed part of the reactor unit and the turbine hall. The Soviet authorities in Moscow concealed the fact of the accident and the consequences of the environmental disaster – the first report appeared only on 28 April.

The major accident released 100 times more radiation than the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. This also proved to be the cause of cancer deaths in a significant number of people around the world, as researchers later stated.

The Exclusion Zone continues to record high levels of radiation.

Decades after the nuclear disaster, land in Chornobyl was declared suitable for farming. These lands can again be used for their intended purpose of farming.