[ RadSafe ] Re: Another Chernobyl tourist story

[Emil]

John, 

I would imagine for that amount of money the tourists would be
allowed to use Pripyat's Sport Complex with saunas and covered
Olympic size pool....


Emil.
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From: "John Jacobus" <crispy_bird at yahoo.com> 
To: know_nukes at yahoogroups.com, "radsafe" <radsafe at radlab.nl> 
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 10:43:30 -0700 (PDT) 
Subject: [ RadSafe ] Another Chernobyl tourist story 
This appeared in today's New York Times at
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/international/europe/15chernobyl.html?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 15, 2005

New Sight in Chernobyl's Dead Zone: Tourists

By C. J. CHIVERS 

PRIPYAT, Ukraine, June 11 - Sometime after visiting
the ruins of the Polissia Hotel, the darkened
Energetic theater and the idled Ferris wheel, the
minivans stopped again. Doors slid open. Six young
Finnish men stepped out and followed their guide
through a patch of temperate jungle that once was an
urban courtyard. 

Branches draped down. Mud squished underfoot. A cloud
of mosquitoes rose to the feast. The men stepped past
discarded gas-mask filters to the entrance of a
ghostly kindergarten. They fanned out with cameras, to
work.

Much was as the children and their teachers had left
it 19 years ago. Tiny shoes littered the classroom
floor. Dolls and wooden blocks remained on shelves.
Soviet slogans exhorted children to study, to
exercise, to prepare for a life of work. 

Much had also changed. Now there is rot, broken
windows, rusting bed frames and paint falling away in
great blisters and peels. And now there are tourists,
participating in what may be the strangest vacation
excursion available in the former Soviet space: the
packaged tour of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, scene
of the worst civilian disaster of the nuclear age.

A 19-mile radius around the infamous power plant, the
zone has largely been closed to the world since
Chernobyl's Reactor No. 4 exploded on April 26, 1986,
sending people to flight and exposing the Communist
Party as an institution wormy with hypocrisy and lies.

For nearly 20 years it has been a dark symbol of
Soviet rule. Its name conjures memories of
incompetence, horror, contamination, escape and
sickness, as well as the party elite's disdain for
Soviet citizens, who were called to parade in fallout
on May Day while the leaders' families secretly fled.

Now it is a destination, luring people in. "It is
amazing," said Ilkka Jahnukainen, 22, as he wandered
the empty city here that housed the plant's workers
and families, roughly 45,000 people in all. "So
dreamlike and silent." 

The word Chernobyl also long ago became a dreary,
shopworn joke, shorthand for contaminated wasteland.
But Chernobylinterinform, the zone's information
agency, says its chaperoned tours do not carry health
risks. 

This is because, the agency says, radiation levels
here have always been uneven. And most of the zone is
far cleaner than it was in 1986, when radiation levels
were strong enough in places to kill even trees. 

A lethal exposure of radiation ranges from 300 to 500
roentgens an hour; levels in the tour areas vary from
15 to several hundred microroentgens an hour. A
microroentgen is one-millionth of a roentgen. Dangers
at these levels, the agency says, lie in long-term
exposure. 

Still, the zone in northern Ukraine has much more
radioactive spots than those where tourists typically
go. So there are rules, which Yuriy Tatarchuk, a
government interpreter who served as the Finns' guide,
listed. 

Don't stray. Stay on concrete and asphalt, where
exposure risks are lower than on soil. Don't touch
anything. (This one proved impossible. Tours involve
climbing cluttered staircases and stepping through
debris. Handholds are inevitable.)

No matter its inconveniences or potential for medical
worry, the zone possesses the allure of the forbidden
and a promise of rare, personal insights into history.
Its popularity as a destination is increasing. Few
tourists came in 2002, the year it opened for such
visits, according to Marina Polyakova, of
Chernobylinterinform. In 2004 about 870 arrived, she
said, a pace tourists are matching this year.

Tourists cannot wander the zone on their own. One-day
group excursions cost $200 to $400, including
transportation and a meal. 

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