Chernobyl officially opens for tours

Chernobyl officially opens for tours

Pripyat, the Ukrainian town with the misfortune of sitting just miles from the world’s most notorious nuclear power plant, Chernobyl. Twenty-five years ago this once heavily forested area bore the brunt of the world’s deadliest nuclear power disaster, leaving untold victims who suffered from the radioactive fallout and ecological disaster in its wake. Now it is one of Ukraine’s most visited sites. Roughly 6,000 tourists—most of them Europeans—stream through this ghost town annually on private tours unsanctioned by the authorities. But starting this year, the government is also looking to cash in on the plant’s notoriety, with plans to open up the zone to official tours, as well as boost its safety by building a giant concrete shell to encase the reactor by 2015.

If the government is going to start operating “official” tours, do you think they will shut down the private ones that are already there? Perhaps it would bring in tourism revenue, but maybe it would be best to hold off until 2015 when they finish encasing that reactor.

Among backpackers the current tours are said to be very interesting, if a bit disturbing. Has anyone been there?

From WikiTravel:

To gain access to Pripyat, Chernobyl or any of the surrounding villages, you will need to enter the 30 km exclusion zone - and to do that, you will need to arrange a day pass. The easiest way of obtaining one of these is through a tour operator, of which there are many based in Kiev.

There seems to only be one hostel in Kiev that offers tours to Chernobyl.