If you go, don’t eat at the restaurants
If you’ve ever wondered whether anywhere in the world could draw tourists, consider Chernobyl, the site of the worst nuclear accident in history. Yes, it will be a new tourist attraction, the Ukrainian government announced, and may open this month.
Where tourists are allowed to go, how long they may stay, and what they eat will be carefully controlled, government officials say, so the radiation risks are "negligible."
"They will be properly channeled at all times," said Vadim Chumak at the Research Center for Radiation Medicine of Ukraine.
A nuclear reactor exploded at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. The blast knocked the 2,000-ton lid off the reactor and spewed out 400 times more radioactive fallout than the Hiroshima bomb, contaminating more than 77,000 square miles (200,000 square kilometers) of Europe, according to CNN.
Roughly 600,000 people were exposed to high doses of radiation. The number of actual casualties was never identified though some estimates were that 4,000 people died from radioactive poisoning.
After the disaster, it was uncertain how contaminated the surroundings were, and authorities declared an arbitrary distance from the reactor off-limits. Researchers later found that some areas within the exclusion zone contained only low levels of radiation.
Radioactive cesium, strontium and plutonium are also still around, however. Plutonium in particular is expected to linger; it takes thousands of years to decay.
"However, the visits of the tourists would be strictly monitored so that they would not have access to locations with relatively high radiation levels," Chumak said. "The visitors would be safe from the radiation point of view, as they would not be free to go wherever they want.”
Some experts say in “safe areas” the levels of radiation are equal to no more than an X-ray
But experts warn the biggest potential threat is from food, which will not be available to tourists, according to Chumak.
A limited amount of tourism to Chernobyl is already being tolerated, and given the new Ukrainian administration’s increased emphasis on economic development, opening Chernobyl for tourism could pay off, suggests CNN.
So what is there for visitors to see? Stopovers would include Chernobyl town, "where the level of man-made radiation is small in comparison to the natural radiation background," Chumak said.
Tourists could also visit the town of Pripyat, "which had been evacuated the day following the accident," Chumak added. "The radiation levels there are relatively high, but due to limited stay time, cumulative doses are kept very low."
By David Wilkening
David
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