Chernobyl, the site of the world’s deadliest nuclear accident, has been open to the public since 2011, when authorities deemed it safe to visit. To enter the 18.6km (30km) exclusion zone, visitors need a day pass, which is only available from the Chernobyl administration. The site is now a popular tourist destination, but lethal radiation still exists.
To visit the exclusion zone, which is a 30km radius surrounding the plant, one must fly into the closest airport, two hours away in Kiev, Ukraine. The exclusion zone has a range of radiation levels, but is safe to visit on a specialist tour guide. A lethal dose of radiation is in the vicinity of three to five sieverts in an hour. During a Chernobyl tour, the levels of exposure can range from 130 to 2,610.
The official company that is allowed to organize tours to the Exclusion Zone can organize a trip on any day suitable for you. Several thousand people visit the area every year, and nothing has been done to increase the radiation levels. The risk of contamination is minimal, and tourists who deviate from official routes are not allowed to visit the area.
The most dangerous place to be in Chernobyl is anywhere near the reactor, as that area will be the most dangerous. The site has been open to the public since 2011, and the exclusion zone is a 30km radius surrounding the plant. However, there are still risks associated with visiting the site, such as lethal radiation and the risk of contamination.
📹 WHAT IT’S LIKE INSIDE CHERNOBYL (is it safe?)
Are you curious what Chernobyl looks like in 2019? Today we go inside the exclusion zone and get within a few hundred meters …
Can you visit inside Chernobyl?
A guided tour of the former Chornobyl Nuclear Reactor is available for 195 EUR per person, which includes lunch and a full-day tour from a hotel in Kiev. The tour is guaranteed to be radiation-free.
How bad is Fukushima compared to Chernobyl?
The Fukushima nuclear disaster was caused by tsunami waves and damaged cooling systems, while the Chernobyl accident was caused by a flawed reactor design and human error, resulting in the release of 10 times the radiation emitted by the Fukushima disaster.
Was Chernobyl worse than a nuke?
The Chernobyl nuclear accident, a catastrophic event resulting from human error and flawed reactor design, was the worst nuclear disaster in history, releasing over 400 times as much radioactive material as the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The accident led to a chain reaction inside the reactor, causing a sharp temperature increase, fuel rod fusion, steam explosion, and fire. The melted fuel rods pooled at the bottom of the reactor chamber before entering deeper levels of the power plant. Recent research published in American Mineralogist reveals tiny zircons formed at Chernobyl, providing new insights into Earth’s past.
How long will it take Chernobyl to be safe?
Experts predict that the area will become safe within 3, 000 years, while others believe this is unrealistic. A 2016 report suggests that the reactor site will not be habitable again for at least 20, 000 years. Professor Tim Mousseau from the University of South Carolina explains that the exclusion zone is highly heterogeneous in terms of radioactive contaminants, with some areas largely unaffected and safe to visit or work in, while others remain heavily contaminated with various radionuclides.
Is it safe to visit Chernobyl in 2024?
As of March 2023, the Chernobyl site is currently off-limits due to the Russia/Ukraine war. There is speculation that Russian forces may have caused damage to the site, leading to radiation escaping, making it potentially dangerous for visitors. Despite this, people hope that the war will end soon and the site will be open again. The site is known for its nuclear power and is a popular tourist attraction. Visitors should wear appropriate clothing and pack appropriately for the visit. The site is accessible via various transportation methods.
Are tours of Chernobyl legal?
The Exclusion Zone is a restricted area in the Philippines, where tourists are only allowed to visit with a guide. Illegal access is strictly prohibited, and deviating from safe routes can result in administrative and criminal liability. Tourists must also avoid deviating from official routes, as they may be exposed to radiation contamination, injuries, and wildlife hazards. The zone is also prohibited from eating and exporting fruits, berries, and mushrooms, as they can accumulate radionuclides. Additionally, wild animals and pets are not allowed to visit the zone due to potential hazardous radionuclide contamination.
Are there mutated animals in Chernobyl?
Following the Chernobyl disaster, genetic abnormalities in farm animals increased, with around 400 deformed animals born in 1990. These deformities included facial malformations, extra appendages, abnormal coloring, and reduced size. Domestic animal mutations were most common in cattle and pigs, and cows exposed to fallout and radioactive feed produced radioactive milk. The health and reproduction of wild animals near Chernobyl were diminished for at least six months, but since then, plants and animals have rebounded and largely reclaimed the region.
Scientists collect information about animals by sampling radioactive dung and soil and watching them using camera traps. The Chernobyl exclusion zone, covering over 1, 600 square miles, is essentially a radioactive wildlife refuge, with some populations growing. The damaging effects of radiation inside the zone may be less than the threat posed by humans outside of it. Examples of animals seen within the zone include Przewalski’s horses, wolves, badgers, swans, moose, elk, turtles, deer, foxes, beavers, boars, bison, mink, hares, otters, lynx, eagles, rodents, storks, bats, and owls.
Is there still a lot of radiation in Chernobyl?
The Chernobyl disaster has significantly impacted the safety of the area, including the exclusion zone, a 30km radius surrounding the plant. Although some radioactive isotopes, such as Strontium-90 and Caesium-137, remain at tolerable exposure levels, some residents have returned to their homes at their own free will and live in areas with higher than normal environmental radiation levels. However, these levels are not fatal, and studies have not linked any direct increase in cancer risks to chronic low-level exposure.
The IAEA has provided assistance to Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, focusing on identifying and improving design safety of VVR and RBMK reactors. Upgrading was performed on all RBMK units to eliminate design deficiencies, improve shutdown mechanisms, and raise safety awareness among staff. Operational safety and regulatory oversight systems have also been prioritized.
Currently, 187 small communities in the exclusion zone remain virtually abandoned, with some residents returning to their homes, but children are not allowed to live in the area. The evacuated population lives mainly in newly constructed towns like Slavutich, in areas with minimal contamination.
What is the most radioactive place on Earth?
The Chernobyl disaster, a devastating nuclear disaster in 1986, is considered the most radioactive place on Earth and the worst nuclear catastrophe in history. The disaster resulted from a failed safety test, leading to a mass explosion and evacuation of surrounding cities. The residue from the explosion continues to contaminate the atmosphere, causing ongoing radioactive effects both locally and globally. The disaster has been rated 10/10 on the ‘Wow, let’s not go there on holiday’ scale, making it a poor destination for tourists.
Is Chernobyl still radioactive today?
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 resulted in two devastating explosions, releasing radioactive debris and fuel into the surrounding environment. The area remains highly radioactive today, with estimates ranging from a few thousand to almost a million people killed. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, now a ghost town, is filled with decaying buildings and a lack of human settlement, but the nuclear legacies of the site continue to this day. The area is considered some of the most polluted territory on Earth, and the nuclear legacies of the site continue to this day.
Why is Chernobyl still radioactive but Hiroshima is not?
The nuclear disasters at Chernobyl and Hiroshima are distinguishable from one another due to the disparate methods utilized to initiate the explosions. The Chernobyl incident occurred on the ground, whereas the Hiroshima explosion took place in the air, which resulted in a notable reduction in radioactive levels. The distinction in the methods of explosion exemplifies the contrasts between the two catastrophes.
📹 I Got Access to Chernobyl’s Deadliest Area
Though thousands of people have toured the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, almost no one has been allowed inside the New Safe …
Great coverage, can’t believe we were in chernobyl the same time, I wanted to explore the safety confinement, but dod get to explore reactor 3 and control room 3 and also control room 4 it was amazing but also scary at the same time, I’ve Bern trice now but want to return again soon, thanks for the content
The gigantic NSC almost appears like a museum exhibiting the reactor. Kind of eerie. It still puts things into perspective to see all the people working there. Reactor 4 is not that almost mystical, horrific entity it has become in my mind. It’s the site of a horrific catastrophe, but also a workplace. My heart goes out to the workers that have been held hostage by the Russian troops. It must have been especially terrifying with soldiers who were uneducated about what happened at Chernobyl and were acting completely reckless.
I’ve always been fascinated by Chornobyl. The footage of the men cleaning the rooftop not long after the explosion and seeing the radiation smoke filling the sky is eerie. I have watched so many documentaries about what happened. It was so careless of that man to push it to its limit. Of course, no one thinks it would happen to them, but it did. He knew it was very dangerous to do such tests, but he was being cocky. None of those men deserved to die. Especially in such a horrible way. Seeing the first picture of the Elephant’s Foot scared me even though it’s just a picture. But knowing it is corium, which is one of the most deadly things on this planet, and seeing the faded man is both incredible and scary. Standing next to that for 2 minutes, you would be basically burned from the inside out. It would be amazing to see, but not worth dying for. This was a great article! Thank you for sharing your articles about Chornobyl. It is important to show these kinds of things. And I hear there are now “influencers” going to Pripyat and touching all of these radioactive materials just for views. Just goes to show you how careless and stupid Gen Z are when it comes to making money these days.
It’s a real bummer to see a piece of history being removed forever. I wish they could remove the radiation, and just keep it in it’s original state for all people to enjoy. I mean, I have always wanted to see the place IRL, and I wish the original decay and that kind of stuff that can’t be recreated to be preserved in some way or form.
I so badly want to look into the worst of the ruins. I want to see a drone fly over the top of it, I want to see updated footage of remote controlled cameras gaze upon the elephants foot. I’m not sure how much of it is actually buried in cement, but I want to see it!! I’d love to work for this place, I’d love to be a part of the continuous containment. I love the history of this place, and the amount of work that has gone into making this place safe again. It never ceases to amaze me.
6:30 seeing them walking into the vacinity of one of the most deadly places on the planet actually scared me. My eyes were as big as pie plates. The elephant’s foot and a certain, horrible death is merely meters away. It’s like this is THE place where humanity’s biggest nuclear blunder happened. I think about the articles of the initial cleanup with the guys clad in lead plates shoveling pieces of the reactor off the roof for only a few minutes then sent home never to come back because the radiation was so high that was their lifetime exposure limit, or the camera guy in the helicopter who had his camera film distorted from the radiation. I think about how that very location spread radioactive contamination to other countries and now this guy is just meters away from the source. I admit, I got an adrenaline rush perusal that. I’m amazed and grateful they have been able to clean it up and contain it so well.
The commitment and dedication of the people that do this as a job. Even in safe zones, there are still higher than normal radiation levels, and of course the hotter zones. They work endlessly to keep this once disaster from being a problem again. Sadly, every last person that doesn’t die from an accident will all eventually die from cancer as they get older.
what really boggles my mind is that even after the disaster of Chernobyl, reactors 1,2, and 3 were full operational for a decade or so. And if I’m not wrong reactor 3 was the last one to shut down in 2000, and it’s right next to the exploded reactor 4! So around that area where radiation levels are 100 times the normal level, where you cannot touch or sit apparently, people used to go and operate the nuclear reactors as a day job!
I really wonder how they created a ‘negative’ pressurization compared to external without venting air out to atmosphere. Usually the way you create that kind of pressure gradient is to exhaust more air from the space than you are supplying. But that would obviously do exactly what they’re trying to avoid with that system.
I’ve always had a deep respect for anyone working to contain and clean nuclear disaster areas. Even within relatively safer work conditions, you know the radiation impacts their health. While I would hope all workers have their privacy and dignity respected, I also hope that they are routinely followed by medical professionals and scientists. That way we continue to learn as we cope with the best technologies we have at the time.
Been to chernobyl as stalker and I explored everything and tbh I was surprised how low radiation actually was. Prypjat was and still is amazing. It’s impressive how much the stalkers know about radiation and the accident. But also how its normal to them. They see their geigers blinking and hear them scream and literally say “no its fine its just 10 meters” and it is only 10 meters. They know this place in and out. We drank rainwater from the roofs tho. I filtered it and so far im good. Even got a sample of the water and measured it with multiple geigers and its 0.09 uSv/h (direct contact). I havent been tested yet tho. Its been the best week of my life. I love this place. Felt more like home than anywhere else
3:45 i often had difficulty determining scale of objects in photos. I a thing i look at is stuff humans are supposed to directly interact with such as driver areas, cockpits, stairs, or normal looking doors. For ex. i used to think modern fighter jets were the size of sports cars maybe trucks based on photos but now i look at the cockpit and realize theyre a lot bigger than I thought. In these photos look at the construction equipment and specifically where the human is supposed to go
I remember when the NSC was finished. My immediate thought was “wait, so Chernobyl wasn’t properly covered before?” I knew almost nothing about Chernobyl, nuclear power, or radiation in general at that time (I’m not even sure how I knew Chernobyl existed), so I’d just assumed it wasn’t any harder to clean up than a burst oil pipeline. There’s no real point to this story. I just flashback to the moment I learned about the NSC every time you talk about it.
I sometimes imagine a future society, a thousand years from now, long after our own present day world order has faded into history, and how this zone in the woods might have become a mythical no-go zone, long after the particulars have been lost in time. We like to look down on people of long ago as superstitious and uninformed, but who knows what forgotten events shaped their world view? Not everything makes it into the books.
The scale doesn’t really come through except for some shots where you can see some of the old building go up to the roof of the arch. I worked with a security company and got to delivery parts to a nuclear power plant (this was before Sept 11th). The cooling tower and buildings themselves look a hell of a lot different standing outside the fence than standing when you park under a cooling tower. I keep on perusal out for the gamma pixels on the stills and articles in all the articles so far 😉 Cheap man’s radiological badge was just a piece of 35mm film 😉
This structure and its harrowing event has haunted my dreams for nearly 4 decades. It was very scary for us, as kids, when we had food scares, health scares and I’m definitely CERTAIN that this event has been responsible for the deaths of even some of my family members. It absolutely RAVAGED the successive generations of Ukraine in life-changing and life-shortening, life-debilitating and disabling ways. To think of those children taken from their homes, denied their lives.. It brings tears to my eyes. I am so grateful of those HEROES who chose to go back multiple times to clear up the graphite and dig away to seal up that core…. GOD BLESS EVERY ONE OF THEM.
I remember when I retired from the military and tried going back to college for a Comp Sci degree. One of my courses was Intro to Renewable and Sustainable Energy. We had this real tough teacher. If you missed class without a reasonable excuse you weren’t given material you missed and more. He gave us an option. You could build a catalog of sorts of everything we learned throughout the length of the course and present it at the end after the finals, or write a report to present. I chose to write a report. During the entire length of the course I spent every evening researching Chernobyl. I had every report ever written from Iinternational Atomic Energy Agency to everything I could get my hands on from the USSR, to include KGB reports. I had binders of information stacking up. I managed to write out a detailed timeline. Finals came around and I presented my findings and timeline. Partially focusing on the impact on humanity and loss of life to give gravity to the power of the incident and how it was handled. I apologized to my teacher for not having a full report. He just told me to build him and second set of binders with all my info and timeline. He paid for the duplication cost. He didn’t care about me not writing the report itself. He was enthusiastic about all the information. It was the most intense and deep I have ever really researched. It was amazing seeing all the info, it was also the most heartbreaking research I have ever done. Once I got past the “scientific” aspects and into the “human” side of it all.
even tho ik that place isnt even a fraction of how bad it was, id still pee my pants like a toddler walking in there and seeing that giant, imposing sarcophogus, knowing if it collapsed while i was inside, the amount of radiation that would burst out would probably cook me like a TBone steak in seconds
I’d like to say a few things. Starting with something minor and easily overlooked, but since this was uploaded just 3 weeks ago, the incident is now 36 years ago, not 35; no big deal. When he said thousands of people work day and night to “make Chernobyl….no more” roughly…that royally bummed me out. I have an odd love and obsession with Chernobyl, the site, the incident and the history, so to turn it into little more than JUST history, to make it no longer a place one could visit, really hurts a part of my heart. I’m barely older than this incident and have zero ties to it, but I love it, I can’t explain it. I’d love to visit as much of Pripyat and as much of the site as one could possibly explore! I hope that as long as I am alive, Chernobyl is too…I don’t want to live in a fucked up, crazy, bullshit world without it!