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Ukraine To Open Chernobyl Area To Tourists
Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that 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. Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Yulia Yershova says experts are developing travel routes that will be both medically safe and informative. 'There are things to see there if one follows the official route and doesn't stray away from the group,' says Yershova. Though it is a very sad story.' The ministry also says it hopes to finish building a new safer shell for the exploded reactor by 2015 that will cover the original iron-and-concrete structure hastily built over the reactor that has been leaking radiation, cracking and threatening to collapse. About 2,500 employees maintain the remains of the now-closed nuclear plant, working in shifts to minimize their exposure to radiation and several hundred evacuees have returned to their villages in the area despite a government ban."
But Greenpeace told me that half the frickin' Ukraine was going to be instant radioactive death for ten thousand years...
Nothing. There is little background radiation in most places and I'm pretty certain they'll want to avoid taking you to places with higher radiation if they want this tourism thing to last. Don't forget, there are people who *live* in that area and have lived for almost their entire life. So, a visit of a few days, so long as it does not involve taking you to any highly dangerous places, e.g. the core itself, should really be fine.
I know that the most interesting places will be the apartment buildings and other structures where the cold war era artifacts are left untouched. I hope that they stay that way, and don't get sanitised or removed by tourists. The first tour of the area will probably be the best.
Actually, the area is already open to a plethora of tourists and buses. You pay your $50USD, and you get taken through the exclusion zone(s), stopping at the monuments, reactor, and Pripryat.
Some snaps from my trip, for the interested:
http://ninjito.com/2008-08-16
The reactor: ;)]
http://ninjito.com/2008-08-16/qx-ch-6.jpg
'The' hotel in Pripryat
http://ninjito.com/2008-09-12-PANO/qx-pano-pripyat-1.jpg
Roof of the hotel, with the reactor in the background [Note, this was seen by 'straying from the group
http://ninjito.com/2008-09-12-PANO/qx-pano-pripyat-2.jpg
Neat shot of some of the hidden murels
http://ninjito.com/2008-08-16/qx-pripyat-1.jpg
Some friends of mine did a tour through there - to within ~200 metres of the reactor 'sarcophagus' a few months ago. These tours have been running for years now form several different operators. Look up any travel website or just google 'chernobyl tours' and you'll find plenty about this.
I read the article but still can't understand WTF it's about when you consider these tours have been going on for years.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
There is alot of background radiation, above normal levels, there. At reator #4, the one that blew, as soon as the doors to the vans opened the gieger counters went off. At that place it was around 5x normal levels. Most places were only 2x-3x unless you got near metal structure or some buildings.
When we got to the ferris wheel the guides stired up places where dust had collected due to rain water and that gave alarms of around 18x normal levels.
If you go by what we were told the amount of extra radiation we got from the day there was less then the amount of extra radiation a flight from NYC to Paris would of given.
You hope that tourists don't wreck "it".
The problem I think is deciding what "it" is. The state of the area on 13 December 2010? What happens if a tourist breaks off a piece of something / steals something? do you put a replica in its place? What happens if there is heavy snowfall this year or rainstorms and these threaten to damage the soviet murals in the buildings or even collapse a roof of a building. Do you let them collapse, rebuild them, actively preserve them in some state?
This is the dilemma - what is the state you want to keep things in? Clearly the place has been touched by people, weather, and wildlife since (1986 was it?) - there's decay, graffitti, some stuff has been moved or stolen. What are your feelings? is it a tourist park, or a memorial, or other? Historians and cultural experts all have opinions about this.
Close to home, in the town I live in, Bletchley Park also has this issue to a small degree. They are always struggling for money but one question they have to think about is what state to preserve the place. A lot of the the famous codebreaking huts are in really poor condition - but then they were only designed as temporary wooden buildings to last a few years in the war. Now 70 years on their cheap constructions are falling apart. Do we freeze them somehow? tear them down and build replicas (but maybe to higher quality so they last longer and can survive tourists)? Do we save what is left and incorporate some of that original material alongside new material (replacing rotten wood, etc?
A big challenge for cultural preservation everywhere. What is the purpose of the Chernobyl area? What do you do when the buildings become unsafe because the weather has got in and they are in danger of falling down?
AFAIK, the zone is already open for tourists. In guided tours, with authorized guides, the tour takes at most a day, visitors are screened for radiation levels upon entering and exitting and the guide has an active geiger counter at all times (which is one of major attractions too). At least a few travel agencies in Poland and Ukraine offer these tours (e.g. link)
The route, time and organization of these tours really minimizes all radiation-related danger to bare minimum and as long as you follow the guide, there is no risk of overexposure whatsoever. (still, the free-roaming of Pripyat part of the tour, on the other hand, has a considerable risk of getting hurt by parts of ruined buildings.)
The zone is in major part uncontaminated and totally harmless (save for rabid wolves, collapsing roofs of houses, getting lost and freezing to death, wild boars and the likes) but there are still many smaller or bigger patches of more radioactive areas - not radioactive enough to harm you if you cross in a car or even walking at a fast pace, but enough to mean somewhat heightened cancer risk if you camp there for a night. Generally, if you have a geiger counter and an inch of brain to follow what it says, radiation is not a danger - the count rises, you turn around. If you are an experienced hiker and have some rudimentary means of defense from wild animals, you can spend weeks in the zone just fine.
Generally, obtaining permission to enter the zone is not very hard. Many Airsoft groups organize their games there for example. Which areas you are allowed to enter and for how long, is a different matter. You get day permissions at most for Pripyat, but for example, the far west of the zone is pretty open and accessible - the standard 30km perimeter around the power plant has been extended about 30km more to the east-north-east where one of two major clouds of contamination struck. That cloud was long, wide, but more stretched, so the levels near that border of the zone have already dropped to entirely safe levels by now and getting a prolonged permit for that area is not a problem at all.
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Yeah, I was planning to take my mate there for his Stag Weekend, mainly so that he can't have kids.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Your analogy is stupid. Just because you don't understand the risks of a short visit to Chernobyl doesn't mean that everyone else is as clueless. For example, for point 1, just buy a geiger detector that picks up alpha particles. Problem solved.
Second, a highway has clearly defined borders. There's no similar border between the land near the cask at Chernobyl and your lungs wherever in the world you happen to be. Third, any plutonium from Chernobyl has had decades to chemically bind in Earth's highly reactive environment. Fourth, you're probably taking risks right now, such as driving or taking a shower, which are probably far more dangerous to your long term health than a little time at Chernobyl.
Finally, no matter where you are on Earth's surface, you are in a high radiation environment. Right this minute you are exposed to scary, dangerous stuff like cosmic rays, radon and other uranium and thorium decay products, and even some long term decay products from the nuclear bomb tests and large scale nuclear accidents like Chernobyl. What makes a trip to Chernobyl even slightly increase your risk of dying from scary, dangerous radiation?