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 (population 45,000) 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. As of 2020, it is being dredged to enable the E40 waterway. 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 Kyiv reservoir. Geography. The length of the river is 775 kilometers. The area of the pool is 114,300 km. 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 (one of them is combined with the lake Nobel); 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 Kyiv reservoir - 4–5 km. The bottom is sandy and sandy-spruce. The slope of the river is 0.08 m / km Name etymology. Max Vasmer 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 "-pjat'", rather than original . It might also derive from  the local word "pripech" used for a river with sandy banks.