Ukraine to open Chernobyl area to tourists in 2011This sounds awesome -- there are a lot of photographs of Pripyat and surrounding locations as well as the plant itself and it would be a blast to actually go and visit. My only concern is with that UN flack who says:
Want a better understanding of the world's worst nuclear disaster? Come tour the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Beginning next year, Ukraine plans to open up the sealed zone around the Chernobyl reactor to visitors who wish to learn more about the tragedy that occurred nearly a quarter of a century ago, the Emergency Situations Ministry said Monday.
Chernobyl's reactor No. 4 exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing radiation over a large swath of northern Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people were resettled from areas contaminated with radiation fallout in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Related health problems still persist.
The so-called exclusion zone, a highly contaminated area within a 30-mile (48-kilometer) radius of the exploded reactor, was evacuated and sealed off in the aftermath of the explosion. All visits were prohibited.
Today, about 2,500 employees maintain the remains of the now-closed nuclear plant, working in shifts to minimize their exposure to radiation. Several hundred evacuees have returned to their villages in the area despite a government ban. A few firms now offer tours to the restricted area, but the government says those tours are illegal and their safety is not guaranteed.
Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Yulia Yershova said experts are developing travel routes that will be both medically safe and informative for Ukrainians as well as foreign visitors. She did not give an exact date when the tours were expected to begin.
"There are things to see there if one follows the official route and doesn't stray away from the group," Yershova told The Associated Press. "Though it is a very sad story."
The United Nations Development Program chief Helen Clark toured the Chernobyl plant together with Baloha on Sunday and said she supported the plan because it could help raise money and tell an important lesson about nuclear safety.
"Personally I think there is an opportunity to tell a story here and of course the process of telling a story, even a sad story, is something that is positive in economic terms and positive in conveying very important messages," said Clark, according to her office.
"Personally I think there is an opportunity to tell a story here and of course the process of telling a story, even a sad story, is something that is positive in economic terms and positive in conveying very important messages"Given that this is the United Nations we are talking about here, they are probably going to spin it that Nuclear is horrible and that alt.green.energy is the only way to go. Pity as nuke power is very safe and growing safer still now that we are moving away from 60 year old designs of which Chernobyl was a classic example. The moron that decided to do an un-authorised SCRAM test paid the price with his idiocy. There were specific directives to not do a test like that and he ignored them. Hubris and atomic power do not play well together... Posted by DaveH at December 18, 2010 9:33 PM
You go tour the site. I'll play with your computer and wave at you while you hang out in decontamination afterward. ;P