from the everyone-gives-it-glowing-reviews dept.
According Gizmodo, the control room of the badly damaged (and entombed) Reactor 4 at Chernobyl is now open for tourists. This comes
[...] following Ukrainian President Vladimir Volydymyr's July decision to proclaim the region an official tourist attraction (and perhaps not coincidentally, a surge of interest following the release of HBO's wildly popular Chernobyl miniseries).
According to CNN:
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant has seen a huge increase in visitor numbers in recent years as part of a growing global interest in dark tourism.
And now, intrepid travelers [will] be able to get inside the control room where the world's worst nuclear accident unfolded, Chernobyl tour companies confirmed to CNN.
Those who venture inside the highly radioactive area at the infamous Reactor 4 will be provided with white protective suits, helmets and masks for the brief visits. After leaving, they will be subject to two radiology tests to measure exposure.
According to the description on a YouTube video by Ruptly:
The destroyed control room is covered with an adhesive substance that does not allow dust to form. The ruins still emit 40,000 times higher levels of radiation than natural environment.
The Gizmodo story further notes:
Sergiy Ivanchuk, director of SoloEast tours, told Reuters in June that his bookings for tours had risen 30 percent in May 2019 (when the HBO miniseries was released) compared to years prior, while bookings for the summer months had risen some 40 percent. Tour guide Viktoria Brozhko told Reuters, "Many people come here, they ask a lot of questions about the TV show, about all the events. People are getting more and more curious... During the entire visit to the Chernobyl exclusion zone, you get around two microsieverts, which is equal to the amount of radiation you'd get staying at home for 24 hours."
The walkthroughs are guided by regular(!) tour guides. The control room itself is somewhat the worse for wear, although apparently in large part due to souvenir hunters.
Those interested can find more information or even book that dream vacation here.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday October 07 2019, @08:20PM (6 children)
I'd like to know the protective suit has aluminum plating adequate to block beta radiation inside.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Monday October 07 2019, @09:43PM (3 children)
Well, you only need to point a sensitive camera. Anyone who has been visiting will exhibit a fine faint green glow. Then, after some time, you will see them make room for a new generation of visitors. That is, when they have vacated the earthly living space after running out of glow.
Seriously, while the dangers are very low with the limited exposure (if any at all in the control room), it is both sad and interesting to see the site of a catastrophic event turn into a tourist attraction.
(Score: 4, Funny) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 08 2019, @01:24AM
And yet, again and again, people turn out for presidential inaugurations.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 08 2019, @02:43PM
Atom welcomes you into his warm embrace.
Seriously though, 40k times more radiation than background radiation is a lot of radiation. If you're getting 40k times the radiation and your visit lasted for one hour, you would be getting an extra dose of 40,000 normal radiation hours. I.E. the equivalent of 4.5 years worth of radiation in one hour. They are wearing protective gear, so they shouldn't be getting anywhere near that amount. Why risk it, though?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday October 08 2019, @07:54PM
I'd be more interested in the sort of health insurance the "regular" tour guides are getting after spending a year or two giving multiple tours a day inside the place.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday October 08 2019, @11:26AM (1 child)
Uhh... unless you're clad in enough alu to practically make you immobile, you're not going to get much help from that. For betas you need low-Z materials like HDPE, backed with lead to stop any gammas generated due to bremsstrahlung. In any case though you're not worried about beta but gamma, for which you need a lot of lead.
Or are you talking about alu foil headgear?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 08 2019, @02:19PM
Or skin. It has a pretty high hydrogen density too. And you don't need much of it to block beta rays.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 07 2019, @08:38PM (12 children)
So, in hindsight, was it worth it NOT to build an expensive containment building?
I hope this was a valuable lesson to other nuclear plant operators around the world.
I would have hoped that TMI (three mile island, Mar 28, 1979) would have been sufficient warning. I would have hoped the movie "The China Syndrome" would have been enough warning, but it was released Mar 16, only days before the TMI meltdown. As I seem to recall, that was also within months of the Islamic Revolution where the US embassy in Iran was overrun (Nov 4) and all the personnel were taken hostage for 444 days.
The Chernobyl disaster (April 26, 1986) was only a few months (January 28, 1986) after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 07 2019, @09:49PM (2 children)
Well... how much does TMI get in tourist revenue vs. Chernobyl? Save money up front on containment building, increase tourism profits post shutdown, sounds like a win-win.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 08 2019, @01:30PM (1 child)
I wonder how many on SN were not even established in their career in 1986?
33 years is a long time to wait for that tourist revenue.
Not to mention the human tragedy, the loss of a city, indeed a larger area around it. Decades of maintaining security around the exclusion zone.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 08 2019, @02:02PM
Oh, but it served as a valuable lesson to the world so future tragedies like Fukushima could be avoided.... ooops.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 08 2019, @02:20PM (8 children)
Given that there's been only one such accident of that level since, I think your hope has been rewarded.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 08 2019, @03:06PM (7 children)
The very fact that there was another one makes me believe that the first one was not a lesson.
Managers think short term. We can shoot ourselves in the foot and destroy the future of the business as long as as make this quarter's numbers! Managers are easily distracted by a Shiny. Especially if it twinkles.
Managers can say they are concerned about safety, but they'll still launch a shuttle in cold weather against the vocal concerns of engineers, because . . . politics.
Managers come and go. Faster than engineers, IMO. They don't remember. Some of them don't even learn things.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 08 2019, @09:12PM (6 children)
In what other field of endeavor is there a single lesson that need only be learned once?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 08 2019, @09:36PM (5 children)
I sure hope that anything nuclear (weapons, reactors) are an area where lessons only need to be learned once the hard way. Or better zero times by being prudent of what could foreseeably happen.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 08 2019, @09:39PM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 09 2019, @01:19PM (3 children)
Even though I would label myself generally a pessimist, I would channel Delenn and ask: is it required to have a reason to hope?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 10 2019, @05:13AM (2 children)
When it comes to nuclear power, absolutely! What's silly about this exercise that we actually have a remarkable safety record for nuclear power. It justifies your hope, it just can't meet your expectations of zero mistakes.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 10 2019, @01:38PM (1 child)
I don't have a problem with nuclear technology. I have a problem with human beings designing it, and operating it. If you can get rid of the latter, I don't have a problem with the former.
I think Zero Mistakes is a reasonable expectation. We're not talking about toasters that catch on fire. We're talking about nuclear meltdowns. The cost of a mistake can be so high that the low probability is irrelevant. You can't just multiply the low probability by the high cost and get a number that says it's all okay.
And yes, I understand there are newer reactor designs. But please forgive my skeptical hesitation to gleefully accept them too easily.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @11:45AM
Why? They've done a good job.
And I don't.
We've had several by now, and they just weren't that bad.
The great perversity of this sort of viewpoint is that because we consider meltdowns so bad, we're actually killing more people now than if we went for more nuclear power.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 07 2019, @09:39PM (3 children)
I see "HBO miniseries" and I assume soft-porn is involved... not that that's a bad thing, just that it might explain the wild popularity.
Instead of Chernobyl, I would find an accurate-as-possible multi hour recreation of the Goldsboro Crash [wikipedia.org] story much more interesting. Sure Chernobyl leaked some dust, but 7 megatons coming so close to detonating 50 miles from both Raleigh and Fayetteville NC...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @10:07PM
HBO sucks, this much shorter contemporary documentary [youtube.com] was much better.
(Score: 1) by jjr on Tuesday October 08 2019, @01:22PM (1 child)
If you want some bang, just vote for the Palomares crash, where two bombs detonated the conventional explosives, contaminating the whole area with plutonium (and it's still a restricted area with high levels of radioactive contamination).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash [wikipedia.org]
You can even see part of the history in the movie "Men of Honor", where Carl Brashear lost his leg after recovering the missing bomb.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203019/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1 [imdb.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 08 2019, @01:59PM
Niiiiice.
I still like the part in NC where one of the bombs embedded itself 180' underground in a swamp and they were unable to get it out. They bought a whopping 400 foot easement around the site - attitudes toward unexploded megaton munitions were a bit different, then.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday October 07 2019, @10:01PM
https://www.businessinsider.com/chernobyl-control-room-tours-radiation-still-high-2019-10 [businessinsider.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Funny) by Snotnose on Monday October 07 2019, @11:10PM
Think '90/91, took a 3 week trip on a boat from Leningrad (or St Petersburg, don't remember which is the current nomenclature) to Moscow. I loved it. Our riverboat would pull into a noname town and all the locals would come running to us. 3 things I remember:
1) Me and a couple friends went wandering at a stop in the middle of nowhere. Found a farm family maybe 1/2 mile from the boat. They insisted on feeding us, getting us drunk (trying to, I think that was their normal alcohol consumption). Very friendly people, I'd love to have them as neighbors anywhere.
2) Some dude tried to buy my jeans. Offered me something stupid like $80 for used $20 jeans. Went to my cabin, changed pants, went back to the guy. Turned out one of his friends had clued him in that only Levis were worth $80. Levis didn't fit fat asses like me, I had a lesser brand. Think I had Lee's bought at K-Mart. Oh well.
3) About 1/3 of the people on the trip had heard Russians couldn't buy American cigarettes. But the same law/treaty/whatever that let us take a river cruise also let in western cigs. You could buy a pack of Marlboro for about 1/3 what the American tourists with suitcases full of them paid. I found that hilarious, but hid it cuz I'd made friends with a lot of them.
Can I add a #4? Yeah?
Escalators in subways in Moscow are about 1/3 steeper than they are in the USA, are twice as fast, and twice as long. Going down an escalator 3 elderly women got to the bottom and stopped to talk. With an escalator full of people bearing down on them, they had no clue. I was maybe halfway down the escalator and I could hear people in front of me yelling "YO! MOVE YO ASSES", or somesuch, in Russian, English, and a couple dozen other languages. The result? Those 3 women got creamed. I don't think they hit the ground, but that was only due to what I can only assume were a bunch of Russians used to stupid tourists.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08 2019, @02:31AM
In future nuklear disaster may be only way keep wildlife safe
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/may/28/chernobyl-wildlife-haven-tour-belarus-created-nuclear-disaster-zone [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Wednesday October 09 2019, @12:55AM
Brozhko said you'd get the same amount of radiation exposure sitting at home... including a visit inside the entombed control room? Doesn't exactly make sense given the tomb built around it, but I hope it really is low for the sake of the regular tour guides. If you don't work around radiation, an early lesson in exposure: the risk is cumulative. You will get cancer with exposure and sooner with more exposure.