The site of the nuclear accident at worst in history will be a new tourist attraction, the Ukrainian Government announced Monday (December 13). The area around Chernobyl is scheduled to open next year visitors.
Where tourists are allowed to go, they can remain for how much time and what they eat will be carefully controlled, officials say, the risk of radiation are "insignificant".
"They are properly harnessed anytime," said Vadim Chumak the Ukraine radiation medicine research centre.
Scientific research on the effects of Chernobyl at the U.S. National Cancer Institute has declined comment, refer to Chumak, but a non-affiliated biologist noted that many other adventurous holiday (think a steep climb the mountain) are not safe, either.
Benefits
A nuclear reactor exploded Ukraine, Chernobyl in 1986. Explosion hit cover of 2,000 tons reactor and vomie offshore benefits radioactive 400 times more that the bomb at Hiroshima, contaminating the most 77 miles square (200 000 square kilometres) of Europe. Approximately 600,000 people were exposed to high doses of radiation. [Among the ten biggest explosions already]
Chernobyl - highly contaminated area exclusion zone covering 19 miles (30 km) around the reactor doomed to failure - will be open to visitors next year.
"Tourist visits could be strictly controlled to ensure that the risks of radiation would be negligible," Chumak, who leads the laboratory Ukraine dosimetry external exposure Research Centre said LiveScience.
After the disaster, it was uncertain how contaminated were the environment, and pressed, the authorities have declared an arbitrary distance reactor prohibited. Later, researchers have found that some areas within the exclusion zone contained only low levels of radiation. In addition, radioactive material is disintegrates in time, and some disappear shortly after the explosion.
Still, other areas of the zone of exclusion, such as radioactive waste disposal sites, the sarcophagus covering the remains of the damaged reactor and Red forest where a large part of the radioactive material in the reactor spewed out, are still hazards. Radioactive cesium, strontium and plutonium are also still around. Plutonium is in particular expected to linger. It takes thousands of years to decay.
"However, tourist visits would be strictly will so that they would not have access to the sites with relatively high radiation levels" Chumak said. "Visitors would have been safe from the point of view radiation, as they are not free to go wherever they want."
Do not eat the fruit
Anders Moller at Université de Paris-Sud in France, evolutionary biologist and ecologist said he spent one to three weeks in the exclusion zone each year for the past two decades, to assess the effects of radiation on animals, plants and people.
"Background radiation level I experience during these visits to something like that to a doctor, Cabinet x-ray amounts" said Moller. "But extreme variations in different places are"hot"how." There is more than a difference factor of 10 000 among the cleanest in the warmest areas in the exclusion zone.
The greatest danger to the life in this region, said Moller, would consume all containing radioactive material. "It could end up in your digestive tract problems and causes,", he explained.
"I do not eat the terroir". People living in the contaminated area have this luxury and live what they grow in their gardens. I've seen with my own eyes with a Geiger counter that potatoes grown locally and onions and so forth are often contaminated. »
Tourists will have any food from the region, "and-no radioactivity in the air dust or aerosol - will be present in the areas visited by tourists," Chumak said. (People working in Chernobyl should wear respirators where there is a risk of radioactive particles in the air, and they change inbound and outbound special clothing). (They are sometimes given more comprehensive protection and masks).
A limited amount of Chernobyl tourism is already be tolerated, and taking into account of further focus the new Ukrainian Government on economic development, opening of Chernobyl tourism could pay off the coast. For example, said Chumak, participating in European Cup in 2012, to be held in the Ukraine and Poland, soccer fans might be interested to make excursions aside for Chernobyl
So what is for visitors to see? Ports of call include Chernobyl city "where artificial radiation level is low in the background of natural radiation," said Chumak. (The world is normally bathed in a low level of radiation.)
There is also a special observation terrace which considers the sarcophagus. "You get the sarcophagus, most external radiation, which justifies the use of a place far enough from the sarcophagus to limit exposure to a level two to three times the natural substance,"Chumak said.""
Tourists may also go powerhouse near see and feed on the nuclear power plant cooling pond large catfish. »
You can visit the city of Pripyat "who evacuated the aftermath of the accident," Chumak added. "Radiation levels are relatively high, but because of limited time, cumulative doses remained very low." If they travel back, tourists would be given individual measure their levels of radiation dosimeters, Chumak said.
Called Moller zone of exclusion "a ghostly place." It is strange to many ways. There are all these villages were evacuated permanently, and you can see and hear much of birds and other signs of nature.
"It's a sort of reverse ecotourism," said Tim Mousseau at the University of Carolina's southern Colombia biologist. "It might be useful to raise awareness about the potential consequences of accidents related to nuclear energy, and I think that any type of awareness, it is good.
"As long as people are informed that it is not totally risk-free, I see no problem with him." When people try and climb Mount Everest, they know hundreds of people died trying to, and they still do.
However, Moller added, "I don't know that this is where I go for my honeymoon trip."
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