The Photographer Who Flew Over Chornobyl’s Ruined Reactor

The photograph looks down into the wreckage of Reactor 4. What should have been the roof is a broken outline, with debris scattered around the exposed structure. Anatoly Rasskazov, a staff photographer at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, took an aerial image of the destroyed unit on April 26, 1986, the day of the accident. The reactor had been operating at low power for an engineering test overnight when the accident occurred. From ground level, the full extent of the damage was difficult to judge. Rasskazov’s assignment took him above the building by helicopter. The resulting view recorded the destruction in a way that officials and engineers could examine after the flight. Dates matter when identifying Chornobyl photographs. Several aerial views show the damaged reactor before it was enclosed, and the wreckage can look similar across different flights. The IAEA training material credits Rasskazov with a photograph from the first hours after the explosion. A different milestone came on April 29, when Landsat 5 recorded the first civilian satellite image of the accident, according to the USGS. The aerial photograph brought the building into view at close range. The satellite image put the site into a wider landscape. The map point marks Reactor 4 itself. A later view shows the New Safe Confinement arch over the damaged unit. That huge enclosure makes the openness of the 1986 photograph more striking. The early image captures a brief period when the interior of the ruined building was visible from the air.