Day-tripping tourists flocking to Chernobyl 'dead zone'

[Susan Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

    Day-tripping tourists flocking to Chernobyl 'dead zone'



/April 25, 2004/



*BY TOM PARFITT *



CHERNOBYL, Ukraine -- Nearly 18 years after the world's worst nuclear 

disaster, the Chernobyl power plant and the poisonous wasteland that 

surrounds it has become an unlikely tourist destination.



Day-trippers armed with Geiger counters take guided tours from Kiev 

through military checkpoints to the doorstep of the reactor. Increasing 

numbers of adventurers are finding their way into the irradiated zone, 

seeking the eerie thrill of entering family homes unchanged since they 

were evacuated at a few minutes' notice, two decades ago.



They sift through the abandoned homes of 48,000 workers and their 

families, whisked away as a veil of plutonium settled over the city. 

Family photographs, telephones, furniture upturned in the hasty 

departure, shoes, clothes and other belongings lie scattered through 

apartments.



Naturalists come to explore Chernobyl's "Garden of Eden" -- the 

proliferation of greenery and wildlife that has sprung up in the 

exclusion zone around the ruined power station since the local 

population fled. More than 3,000 visitors go to the site every year, and 

hundreds more explore the abandoned villages in the 20-mile evacuated 

"dead zone."



"Strange as it may sound, people visit here from all over the world -- 

the United States, Australia, Japan, the UK," said Yulia Marusich, an 

official guide who leads visitors to a viewing platform overlooking the 

concrete sarcophagus that encloses the remains of Reactor Four.



As she spoke, standing beside the sarcophagus, a Geiger counter began to 

tick frantically. It registered 50 times the natural background level of 

radiation -- apparently a "tolerable" level of exposure for a short 

visit, officials say. Tour agents say that there is no health risk from 

taking the trips. Areas of high radioactivity are marked off with 

triangular yellow signs.



The Chernobyl catastrophe took place 18 years ago Monday, on April 26, 

1986, when a powerful explosion destroyed the reactor, expelling a huge 

plume of radioactive dust that drifted across Europe.



Travel companies in Kiev are cashing in by charging day-trippers about 

$190 for a tour of the disaster area in northern Ukraine. Tourists can 

enter the dead zone, visit the ruined fourth unit, talk to villagers who 

returned to live in the area and see a graveyard of hundreds of trucks, 

helicopters and armored personnel vehicles which, according to 

brochures, are "so soaked with radiation that it is dangerous to approach."



/http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-cher25.html/





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