Driving through decay

Due to the absence of posts in the past few months, some of you (the HIAT readers) asked me if I engaged into the ironic deed of abandoning the blog. Well, not that I ran out of places and thing to write about, but I got tired of posting the photos that are already out there, on the internet. Because of that, I struggled a bit and finally got myself a nice DSLR to go out and capture them myself, maybe even some of those that have not been captured before. This is one of the first sets I made with the new camera. I'm still learning the art of using a good camera, as I mainly worked with phone or cheap cameras until now, so don't expect to be amazed by the level of professionalism just yet.
This was a test run which I did from my car. It was 30 minutes to sunset and the area is full of dogs, scrap metal thieves and other dangers so I didn't go inside any of these structures. If any of my old readers are still among my present readers, you will probably recognize this area, which was posted twice before when I visited it with Alex. If not, here they are:

Communist industrial ruins

The industrial leftovers of communism in Romania

Abandoned stadiums

Being that I'm not into football and other such sports that involve balls and stadiums, these places were never significant to me. For me, a stadium, mainly a soccer or football stadium, is that place where people dressed in shorts and T-shirts, run around in circles with the purpose of touching a ball. That is not my kind of fun. But recently, I found some pictures on SkyscraperCity that really caught my attention. I'm of course talking about a collection of abandonments, abandoned stadium to be more exact, just like the title suggests.

The following stadiums have nobody to run around in circles for the purpose of touching a ball anymore. They are ghostly and dusty. Weird how some things need to be abandoned in order for me to like them.

The unfinished nuclear plant

The "Crimean Atomic Energy Station" (Ukrainian КримськаАЕС, Russian КрымскаяАЭС) is a nuclear power plant that was never completed, situated in the Republic of Crimea, Ukraine. It was intended to create energy for the whole area, but construction was terminated earlier than planned.

Construction works on the nuclear plant were started back in 1976, when Crimea was part of the Soviet Union. The construction progress was very slow, lasting for more than 10 years. Shortly after the Chernobyl disaster, there was an inspection at the plant, which resulted in it being closed down, even before it got a chance to server it's purpose.

This is how a new nuclear power plant was left behind, with equipment and everything. Some parts of the equipment and nuclear reactors were reused, however, at other nuclear plants in Ukraine.
The nuclear power station building is also featured in the Guiness  book of records as the most expensive reactor construction in history. The city of Shchelkino, that was created to host the workers, lost half of it's inhabitants when construction on the plant stopped.