Saving the Duga radar from being cut for scrap.

In 2013 the Duga radar at the Chornobyl-2 site was nearly cut up for scrap metal. The giant antenna, once built to be the first to detect missile launches, could have vanished as quietly as the liquidators' machinery had.

Yaroslav Yemelianenko, Sergii Mirnyi, Oleksandr Syrota and others who cared raised the alarm: they called in the press and brought the issue to the public council of the Exclusion Zone Agency. Sergii Mirnyi and Oleksandr Syrota were put in charge of monitoring the condition of the Duga.

We also laid out a tourist route there. Before, tourists were not allowed into Chornobyl-2 precisely because the antenna was going to be scrapped. The first to come to the Duga that fall was a multinational group on a three-day trip. People from different countries craned their necks, took pictures and could not believe that such a giant could simply be cut up for scrap. Later hundreds of tourists photographed the Duga every day, and it became impossible to dismantle it unnoticed. The tourists turned out to be the best guards.

We kept pushing for protected status for the Zone's sites, and the Duga was always on that list. The initiative was supported by ICOMOS Ukraine. In 2021 the antenna finally received protected status. "I am happy that we managed to save the antenna in time," Yaroslav wrote then.

Next in line is Prypiat.