We are all for enterprising ideas, new products and exploring new markets but we think a tour of Chernobyl's Reactor No. 4 is probably a tour too far.
Nearly 25 years after Chernobyl's Reactor No. 4 exploded, wreaking nuclear devastation upon the surrounding area, the Ukrainian government is allowing tourists to enter the exclusion zone set up after the accident on official tours starting this year.
Though it was previously possible to tour the disaster zone through private tour companies, 2011 brings the first official and legal tours authorized by the Ukrainian government.
Visitors will tour the 30-mile radius exclusion zone on a route designed to minimize exposure to harmful radiation, and have the opportunity to see the reactor from a safe distance, in addition to viewing how nature has taken over the nearby ghost town of Pripyat, abandoned by its 50,000 residents after the disaster.
The disaster occurred on 26 April 1986, 01:23, at reactor number four at the plant, near the town of Pripyat during an unauthorized systems test.
A sudden power output surge took place, and when an attempt was made at an emergency shutdown, a more extreme spike in power output occurred which led to the rupture of a reactor vessel as well as a series of explosions.
This event exposed the graphite moderator components of the reactor to air and they ignited; the resulting fire sent a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive area, including Pripyat.
The plume drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union, and much of Europe. As of December 2000, 350,400 people had been evacuated and resettled from the most severely contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. According to official post-Soviet data, up to 70% of the fallout landed on Belarus.
Following the accident, Ukraine continued to operate the remaining reactors at Chernobyl for many years. The last reactor at the site was closed down in 2000.
Fifty deaths, all among the reactor staff and emergency workers, are directly attributed to the accident although it is estimated that there may ultimately be a total of 4,000 deaths attributable to the accident, due to increased cancer risk.
Leave well alone, we think.
No comments:
Post a Comment