Chernobyl Becomes Tourist Hot Spot

prostoalex writes "18 years ago on April 26, the Chernobyl disaster occurred in Central Ukraine. Nowadays, as British Telegraph reports, the radioactive disaster area is becoming a tourist hot-spot with 3000 visitors paying $200 for a guided tour each year."

Illness

[andy666]

Yes but apparently you have an 50 % higher chance of getting ill on such a trip. A lot of travel agents won't give you insurance.

Hot Spot?

[l810c]

While it is literally a Hot Spot, I would not call 8.2 visitors per day a Tourist Hot Spot. Your average Porta-Potty gets more visitors per day than that. Would you call a Porta-Potty a Hot Spot?

Perhaps to catch a glimpse of the future....

[GillBates0]

Strange as it may sound, people visit here from all over the world - the United States, Australia, Japan, the UK...

...to see what our planet will look like a few years/decades from now if something isn't done about the political situation real soon real fast.

Re:Three-mile island

[Paulrothrock]

So where is my Three-Mile island tour?

Dude, I live there. It's not that interesting. Nothing blew up, and there are only a few fish with three eyes. But it's near Hershey, so you could pick up some chocolate while you're there.

souvenirs . . .

[StateOfTheUnion]

Will unscrupulous tourists pick up irradiated rocks and plants just like they steal from Petrified Forest National Park [time.com]?

3000 = "hot"?

[autopr0n]

Well, if by 'hot' you mean radioactive. I'd hardly call 3k visitors a year (and at $200/pop that amounts to about $600k, hardly what you'd find in a place like galviston, TX)

Motorcycle Tour Through Chernobyl

[ayden]

I submitted a related story to this last month. Kidd of Speed" [kiddofspeed.com] rides her Kawasaki Ninja into the dead zone through the abandoned towns, cities and villages surrounding Chernobyl.

The pictures are strikingly beautiful.

Mmmmm, radiation is bad, um ok

[WwWonka]

Hell, when I was a Navy Nuke working at the GE facility in Ballston Spa, NY we were decommissioning the S3G nuclear reactor and had to work in the reactor compartment daily. Of course we wore dosimeters and watched our daily exposure.

Routinely we were lazy and didn't want to work a full day so we would stand next to the main coolant pumps (one of the hottest spots for radiation in the compartment) and crank our dosage and be over our daily limit so we wouldn't have to work the rest of the day.

Now as I write this 10 years later I wonder why we just didn't take off the damn dosimeter and place it and not us next to the damn hot spot!

I'm kind of afraid now my first kid will have an extra testical and be able to read people's minds.

Stalker

[Serious Simon]

This somehow reminds me of the movie Stalker [filmref.com] by Tarkovsky, in which three men enter a mysterious area, called the Zone enclosed by barbed wire and armed patrol.

The scenes filmed inside the lush nature of the Zone are in colour, this strangely adds to the eery impression, due to the contrast with the first part of the movie (the normal world) which is filmed in black and white.

Re:Look Maw!!

[justinmc]

John, Are you from Ireland - bet you are. In Ireland there is a huge understanding of the awful event in 1986. Today a huge amount of Irish people are working to help the victims. From organising Aid convoys to having Children from the area come to Ireland for the summer to get clean air. A documentary on this won an Oscar this year!! J

NO health problems?

[OpenSourceOfAllEvil]

Perhaps it's simply a matter of wanting or needing the cash generated by tourists, but the area is hardly safe for those that live there. For example in nearby Minsk in Belarus most adults have had nearly 20 years to resign themselves to the consequences and their greatest concern right now is their children. There are programs that try to arrange for children to spend at least 3 months of the year outside the country to minimize the chances of cancer, infertility and birth defects of the next generation. The programs do not allow parents to travel with the children out of a concern that it is unlikely they would return. The "official" line is that everything is just fine of course.

The Chernobyl motorcycle HOAX

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the Swedish Aftonbladet [aftonbladet.se] Elena Filatov hasn't ridden a motorcycle in the zone [aftonbladet.se] (in Swedish). She hasn't got a father who's a nuclear physicist. The pictures were taken by Elena and her husband Igor under the supervision of the zone's administration.

Re:Radiation

[AKAImBatman]

Based on what we *know*, radiation is semi-cumulative. When the radiation hits your body, it can cause various forms of damage. A healthy body will attempt to repair this damage as if it were caused by normal background radiation. However, your body only has so much ability to repair. Thus a lot of radiation in a short time can have a cumulative effect. But low doses over long periods of time should have no discernible effect.

You also need to define what type of radiation you're talking about. e.g.:

Alpha - Only dangerous if emitted internally or through skin breaks
Beta - Similar to Alpha, but with more penetrating power. Basically an unfocused electron beam. A certain amount of voltaic pressure is required to penetrate the skin externally.
Gamma & X-Ray - High penetration power, more dangerous externally.
Neutron - Better hope you have good life insurance, because parts are going to start disappearing.

Gamma and X-Ray are what's known as "cosmic rays" because they are prevalent in background radiation. Alpha and Beta don't usually occur naturally. Neutron radiation is really only something you'd find at the heart of a reactor.

And that is your 10 minute science lesson for today. :-)

radiation badges (dosimeters)

[Anonymous Coward]

My group was doing some neutron beam tests on computer components a few years ago with everyone involved wearing radiation badges. One of the guys stepped out to make a cell phone call, driving his badge to it's highest indication level in the process. Sadly he didn't discover this till he prepared to re-enter the radiation area and didn't take the indication that he had already received a dangerous (or lethal - I can't remember) dose of radiation too well.

Anonymous troublemaker

Proper DoubleSpeak Term: "Sunshine Units"

[quarkscat]

Back in the good old days of the Cold War
(before global terrorism with WMD), the US
Dept. of Energy cajouled the private sector/
public utilities into building nuclear power
plants by promising electrical energy to
consumers that would be too cheap to meter.

Above ground nuclear testing (with live troops),
and down range fallout were dismissed with the
use of the term "sunshine units", as though
excess radiation was no greater a danger than
forgetting to put on sunscreen lotion before
going outdoors.

Little mention was made of the radioactive
isotopes that would increase the risk of
skin, lung, and thyroid cancers. The same
lackidasical attitude still exists in the DoD
with the possible long term effects of the use
of depleted uranium in tank and artillery shells.
The Middle East (and Iraq especially) will not
be a very healthy place to be for centuries.
Of course, we already have a scapegoat picked
out, in the form of Saddam Hussein (who was
already an "environmental terrorist".)

Personally, I would not consider either Iraq or
Chernobyl as a tourist "mecca".

Re:Trinity site is nearer

[e9th]

I was in the USAF at the time. Got to go on a special visit with some physicists (I was the token computer guru with the right clearances). On the way out (5 of us, plus 6 MPs), we were talking about stuff like this and joking about how cool it was to visit without tourists around. But once we got there and looked around a bit, everyone became quiet, and we never discussed it again.

You're right. A fascinating, desolate, desert place

Re:Must be looking for the nuclear biker chick.

[thpdg]

The linked news story exactly describes the photos on her site. I'm begining to doubt that the reporter used anything else as a resource.

Re:Radiation

[Mt._Honkey]

Gamma and X-Ray are what's known as "cosmic rays" because they are prevalent in background radiation.

This is a common misconception. I learned the real meaning of the term from an astronomy professor just a few weeks ago. Most people who know the term think that it means really high energy EM radiation, like X-rays or gamma rays, but in fact they are high-energy charged particles. They are frequently protons, but can also be nuclei of almost any element. They can be big, heavy nuclei moving at quite nearly the speed of light.

It turns out that almost all Boron and Beryllium in existence is formed when a cosmic ray nucleus like carbon, oxygen, or nitrogen smacks into an interstellar gas atom like hydrogen and breaks apart (it's called spallation). Only trace amounts of B and Be were produced during the nucleosynthesis phase after the big bang, and only trace amounts are produced in supernovae.

Fascinating stuff.

comments I read are mostly nutz

[cdn-programmer]

Well - there are good comments also.

The issue with the 1/2 life is that it is inversely proportional to the danger. Of course this is modified by what nuclear trash is ejected when a nucleus splits. This part should be obvious to all.

A second point is that the dangers of low level radiation are drastically overstated. While there is disagreement on the casualties, the fact there is a rift in the attributed numbers is very clear. The UN reports fewer than 50 people died and a few 1000 (horrible of course - I feel so sad for these people) with thyroid cancer. These numbers are in stark contrast to the 300,000+ that some people cite.

We can learn from the accident, learn a great deal and perhaps from this will come an understanding that nuclear energy has been bad mouthed for decades and has been the target of a rather large disinformation campaign.

It is my suspicion that the disinformation campaign was fueled by large Texan oil interests who collectively realised that in a nuclear economy - their oil would not be worth much... and hense their power base would erode.

So they bought themselves a few years of prosperity at the expense of mankind in general, because now this wonderful chemical feedstock has been burned about a fast as possible. From an economic point of view, oil resources are not valuable and the value can only be achieved by burning them up ass fast as freking possible and converting them into money. Right?

I personally think the disaster is a tragedy. I really feel for these people, they have suffered a great deal. Yet, we now see the beginning of a rebirth.

Perhaps what we should be looking to do is have all nuclear nations fund actinide transmutations technology based in Chornobyl. This is the perfect place to build these facilities and conduct this research. The area is alreay poisoned and public opion says it will be uninhabitalable for 1000+ years.

The Nuclear physists and engineers may choose to differ, and they should have the opportunity to put their money where their mouths are so to speak. The area is beautiful. Actinide transmutation technology can reclaim it.

Rather than be negative about this, lets be positive. Lets build the biggest bloody actinide transmutations lab, then facility in the world and end our nuclear waste problems in the process.

Stockpiling is just bullshyte. Burning the garbage gets rid of it and no-one can build a weapon out of nuclear isotopes after they have been burnt up. Its the perfect solution and the Ukrane can export the surplus power to Europe. Right?

NASA images

[rmolehusband]

The NASA earth observatory thang has some images taken from MIR [nasa.gov] of the area. Maybe that's about as close as I'd want to get for now.