Pripyat today
Every year about 6000 tourists visit the city of Pripyat where Chernobyl is located, now a ghost town, frozen in time since that distant April 25. The Chernobyl Tour, unauthorized by the relevant authorities, has achieved some success to the point that the Ukrainian government itself has made it official because Chernobyl has become, by now, one of the most visited places in Ukraine.
If you do not stay long around Chernobyl, the radiation risk is not high. The radiation levels have greatly decreased but it is important to take the right precautions such as not touching anything, not leaving the designated area. Horror tourism or memory tourism, whatever you want to call it, today Pripyat shows the other side of the coin that opens itself to reflection and remembrance.
Visiting Chernobyl
Il Chernobyl tour is also a small money-making machine. The cost of the visit, lasting about 4 hours, ranges from 400 dollars per person to 160 dollars per person if in a group. Some private companies organize the visit. Tour2Chernobyl is one of them. The details of the Chernobyl tour are available on the company’s website, complete with images, videos, useful information, calendar, and online booking. The Chernobyl disaster, still an open wound.
It has been five whole decades since that April 26, 1986 when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant suffered an accident that revealed the full vulnerability of the atomic complex.
The nuclear power plant still needs new interventions today, and the radiation level, despite all these years having passed, remains high though under control.
In recent months, the memory of that terrible day and the ensuing period has been sadly recalled, not only because it marked an important anniversary (25 years since the tragedy), but also because another plant, this time in technologically advanced Japan, at Fukushima, showed its fragility following a devastating earthquake. In Italy, meanwhile, the debate about nuclear power has become very topical, despite the risk having always been high due to some nuclear plants in neighboring countries which were built, for some reason, right on our borders.
