Explorer finds dangerous radioactive bag sitting in woods near Chernobyl

An urban explorer said a tiny bag discovered on the outskirts of Chernobyl is believed to be ‘one of the most radioactive things’ in the area.

Neil Ansell was visiting the devastated nuclear zone near Pripyat, Ukraine, when his guide came across the discarded item.

A Geiger counter placed over the small plastic bag measured a radiation high of 2809 millisieverts (mSv) or 2.8 sievert (Sv) – almost 200 times stronger than an adult CT scan, which measures 15mSv.

His guide agreed that it is ‘one of the most radioactive things in Pripyat’.

A single dose of radiation that measures 5Sv would cause half the people exposed to it to die within a month. The threshold for relocating people from Chernobyl was just 350mSv.

Mr Ansell said: ‘I was stunned just how radioactive some of the items were.

‘Fortunately, we didn’t open the bag and weren’t exposed to it for long enough.’

The nuclear exclusion zone around the area where the 1986 catastrophe took place has become a tourist hotspot in recent times, particularly following the success of a TV show about the incident.

And fascination with the disaster has led to a resurgence in interest in the people that still live there and the objects and wildlife left behind.

But the contents of this latest find remain a mystery.

Mr Ansell added: ‘We’re still not sure what exactly was in the bag, even our tour guide didn’t know.

‘I wasn’t interested in trying to find out either as if we’d touched or inhaled it, it could have been fatally dangerous.

‘I felt really emotional after leaving Chernobyl as it has become a ghost town where it was once a lively town.’