A curated archive of Cold War-era defense technology
place • FILE-ED8F4E

Jupiter (Pripyat)

Pripyat

A soviet secret production facility of semiconductor components for military use.

ABANDONED
Compiled by: Robin Monks
Place Metadata
Designation
Pripyat
Status
Abandoned
Inside a ruined factory hall at the Jupiter plant in Pripyat: collapsed concrete roof beams lean across a debris-strewn floor, rusted steel trusses overhead, and greenery growing through broken window walls.
Fig. 1 - Pripyat in June 2019: Jupiter factory. Photo by Michal Bělka.

The Jupiter factory operated under the cover of producing magnetic tape and film. However, it was actually a military factory producing semiconductors.

After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster

Although abandoned in the initial evacuation of Pripyat in the aftermath of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster, the factory was then repurposed, ostensibly for the testing of decontamination methods or the testing of radioactive measuring equipment. Sources disagree on whether the factory ultimately closed in 19961 or 19972 . The factory today sits ruined and abandoned, with multiple sources of dangerous radiation still inside.

Resources

Websites

Jupiter Factory Pripyat gallery at Chernobyl.one (archive)

Atlas Obsecura entry for Jupiter Factory (archive)

Jupiter Factory from The Chernobyl Gallery (archive)

Urban explorer on Reddit (archive)

Videos

Books

  1. Atlas Obsecura article lists the date of final abandonment as 1996 ↩
  2. Chernobyl Welcome (original site in Czech) lists the final abandonment date as 1998 ↩