- CHERNOBYL -- Nearly 20 years
after the world's worst nuclear disaster, the Chernobyl power plant and
the poisonous wasteland that surrounds it has become an unlikely tourist
destination.
-
- Day-trippers armed with Geiger counters take guided tours
from Kiev through military checkpoints to the doorstep of the reactor.
Increasing numbers of adventurers are finding their way into the irradiated
zone, seeking the eerie thrill of entering family homes unchanged since
they were evacuated at a few minutes' notice, two decades ago.
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- They sift through the abandoned homes of 48,000 workers
and their families, whisked away as a veil of plutonium settled over the
city. Family photographs, telephones, furniture upturned in the hasty departure,
shoes, clothes and other belongings lie scattered through apartments.
-
- Naturalists come to explore Chernobyl's "Garden
of Eden" - the proliferation of greenery and wildlife that has sprung
up in the exclusion zone around the ruined power station since the local
population fled. More than 3,000 visitors go to the site every year, and
hundreds more explore the abandoned villages in the 20-mile evacuated "dead
zone".
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- "Strange as it may sound, people visit here from
all over the world - the United States, Australia, Japan, the UK,"
said Yulia Marusich, an official guide who leads visitors to a viewing
platform overlooking the concrete sarcophagus that encloses the remains
of Reactor Four.
-
- As she spoke, standing beside the sarcophagus, a Geiger
counter began to tick frantically. It registered 50 times the natural background
level of radiation - apparently a "tolerable" level of exposure
for a short visit, officials say.
-
- Engineers say that there is a serious risk that the sarcophagus
could collapse, exposing hundreds of tons of unstable nuclear debris.
-
- The Chernobyl catastrophe took place 18 years ago tomorrow,
on April 26, 1986, when a powerful explosion destroyed the reactor, expelling
a huge plume of radioactive dust that drifted across Europe.
-
- Some 31 firefighters who fought the blaze were killed
by massive doses of radiation, and thousands of civilians are thought to
have died since from radiation-induced cancers. About 200 tons of concrete
and other debris mixed with nuclear fuel are still trapped under the hastily-constructed
concrete shell. Now, travel companies in Kiev are cashing in by charging
day-trippers $190 (£110) for a tour of the disaster area in northern
Ukraine.
-
- Tourists can enter the dead zone, visit the ruined fourth
unit, talk to villagers who returned to live in the area and see a graveyard
of hundreds of trucks, helicopters and armoured personnel vehicles which,
according to brochures, are "so soaked with radiation that it is dangerous
to approach".
-
- Towns and villages that were evacuated in the days following
the disaster are the biggest attraction - a time capsule from the late
Soviet era. At Pripyat, two miles from the nuclear plant, communist banners
painted for May 1 - a date the city never greeted - are stacked in the
back of a ruined theatre.
-
- Tour agents say that there is no health risk from taking
the trips. Areas of high radioactivity are marked off with triangular yellow
signs. The journey involves passing through a series of military roadblocks.
Last week, officials from the nuclear plant led a group of foreign journalists
and aid workers on a tour of the disaster zone.
-
- The concrete sarcophagus is to be covered by a new steel
shell in 2008. Mrs Marusich said that debris stacked against the inside
of the existing shell's southern wall is slowly shifting and "could
result in the entire structure collapsing". Parts of the concrete
shell are criss-crossed by cracks.
-
- As preparations for the new structure advance, several
thousand employees are working to dismantle the plant's remaining reactors
and process the leftover nuclear fuel. Each night they are taken by train
to Slavutich, the town built outside the dead zone especially for workers.
-
- Visiting the skeleton of the city that Slavutich replaced
is the most poignant moment on the Chernobyl tour. Pripyat was a model
town with elite apartments, shops, swimming pools and kindergartens. A
day and a half after Reactor Four exploded, the entire population of the
city was loaded on to buses and taken away.
-
- "There was a forest nearby that turned red from
radioactive dust," remembered Nikolai, a driver who was a traffic
policeman overseeing the evacuation that day. "People begged us to
get past it as fast as we could."
-
- Today, Pripyat is a ghost town where time has stood still.
A fairground ride, finished days before the disaster, is enveloped in weeds
and contorted vines. Birdsong is clear in the total silence.
-
- Many locals are surprisingly unconcerned by the legacy
of Chernobyl. About 600 people have returned to live inside the dead zone.
Maria Dika, 42, leaning from a balcony in Chernobyl town, said she had
suffered no long-term ill effects after three months of treatment for acute
radiation sickness. She was working as a security guard at Reactor Four
on the night of the disaster.
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- "We're fine," she joked. "No health problems.
The radiation has got used to us." Tatiana Khrushch, 66, agreed. "The
air's clean, the water's lovely and the mushrooms are great," she
said. "This is a fine place."
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