Pripyat (river)


The Pripyat or Prypiat is a river in Eastern Europe, approximately long. It flows east through Ukraine, Belarus, and Ukraine again, draining into the Dnieper.

Overview

The Pripyat passes through the exclusion zone established around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The city of Pripyat, Ukraine was completely evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster.
Pripyat has a catchment area of, of which are in Belarus. of the whole river length lies within Belarus.

Location

The Pripyat begins on the Volyn Hill, between the villages of Budnik and Horn Smolars of Lyubomlsky District in Ukraine. After 204 km downstream, it crosses the border of Belarus, where it travels 500 km through Polesia, Europe’s largest wilderness, within which lie the vast sandy wetlands known as the Pinsk marshes, a dense network of swamps, bogs. rivers and rivulets within a forested basin. For the last 50 kilometers the Pripyat flows again in Ukraine and flows several kilometers south of Chernobyl into the Kiev reservoir.

Geography

The length of the river is 775 kilometers. The area of the pool is 114,300 km². The Pripyat valley in the upper reaches is weak, in the lower reaches it is clearer. The cave is developed all along, allocating two super-floodplain terraces. The width of the floodplain in the upper course of 2–4 km and more, in some years, is flooded for several months. In the lower reaches, the width of the floodplain reaches 10–15 km. The channel in the upper canalized; below - winding, forms meanders, elders, many ducts ; there are sandy islands. The width of the river in the upper reaches is up to 40 m, on the average - 50–70 m, in the lower reaches 100 - predominantly 250 m, with the entrance to the Kiev reservoir - 4–5 km. The bottom is sandy and sandy-spruce. The slope of the river is 0.08 m / km

Name etymology

in his etymological dictionary notes that the historical name of the river mentioned in the earliest East Slavic document, Primary Chronicle is Pripet' and cites the opinion of other linguists that the name meant "tributary", comparing with Greek and Latin roots. He also rejects some opinions which were improperly based on the stem -пять -pjat', rather than original -петь.
It might also derive from the local word pripech used for a river with sandy banks.

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