Ukraine Markets Chernobyl To Tourists

CIVIL NUCLEAR

A ferris wheel and a carousel are abandoned 26 May 2003 in the amusement park of the ghost town of Prypyat, adjacent to the Chernobyl nuclear plant. The Chernobyl plant blew up at 1:23am 26 April 1986, spewing out a radioactive cloud and contaminating much of Europe. An estimated 15,000 to 30,000 people have died in the aftermath. AFP photo/ Sergei Supinsky.

Kiev, Ukraine (UPI) Oct 18, 2004
Cash-strapped Ukraine is generating foreign currency reserves by commercializing the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster as a tourist site.

In the evening of April 26, 1986, Reactor No. 4 exploded in the world's worst nuclear disaster, the Guardian reported Monday. Estimates of fatalities from the fallout reach as high as 15,000.

Eventually, Soviet authorities sent 1,200 buses to evacuate 48,000 of the nearby villagers and erected a makeshift cordon around the power plant complex.

Now, however, tourists can pay $250 per person for an all-inclusive, day long bus tour of the catastrophe, about 40 miles north of picturesque Kiev.

About 90 tons of radioactive waste lies under the vast concrete that now covers the destroyed reactor.

Paradoxically, much of the land around Chernobyl is lush: Most of it looks more like a nature sanctuary, with abundant forests, lush grass and herds of a rare species of wild horse.

The lack of human activity has allowed wolves, foxes, wild boar and myriad other species to flourish.

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CIVIL NUCLEAR

Yucca Mountain Site Must Make Use Of Geological Safety Net

Bloomington - Nov 11, 2003
A proposed federal repository near Yucca Mountain, Nev., for the long-term storage of 70,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste must take advantage of the mountain's natural geological properties, according to a new study by scientists at Indiana University Bloomington and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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