“Isn’t is dangerous?” is the first question when I mention my trip to Chernobyl und Pripyat in 2017. No, it is not. During a cross-Atlantic flight a person is exposed to a 10 times higher dose. When reactor 4 exploded on April 26th 1986, the 160-ton concrete lid was blown off, releasing a radioactive cloud of plutonium and other deadly nuclear isotopes into the atmosphere. The wind carried the radioactive cloud northwest, away from the town of Chernobyl. So it was spared the fate of Pripyat, now a ghost-town.
Trips to the exclusion zone are organized by various operators in Kiev. On the Ukrainian side trips to the 2600km2 exclusion zone started in 1999 . This is an area that was fenced off after the tragic accident. In 2017 approximately 20.000 visited the zone. The exclusion zone in Belarus, north of the reactor, is much worse off. About 70% of the radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl disaster landed in Belarus, heavily contaminating one-fourth of the country. More than 2,000 towns and villages were evacuated, and about a half-million people have been relocated since 1986.
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