Chernobyl to become an official tourist attraction, but is it safe?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky no longer wants the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to be a dark-tourism destination.

Last week, he announced that he wants it to become a legitimate tourist attraction, saying, “Chernobyl has been a negative part of Ukraine’s brand. The time has come to change this,” according to the BBC and Lonely Planet.

Interest in Chernobyl and the surrounding ghost town of Pripyat, located near Ukraine’s northern border with Belarus, has spiked 30 percent since April, when HBO aired its popular, five-part miniseries about the explosion and the Soviet Union’s handling of its aftermath. Tour operators forecast the number of tourists visiting Chernobyl may double this year, reaching 150,000 visitors.

But is Chernobyl ready for the spotlight?

Zelensky said his government plans to implement an electronic ticketing system and checkpoints for visitors in an effort to regulate access. He also said the government will relax restrictions on filming inside the exclusion zone (the HBO miniseries was shot in the former Soviet republic of Lithuania), boost mobile phone reception in the area and build walking trails for the influx of tourists.

That boost in tourism has been made safer by completion of the New Safe Confinement dome. The structure, which took nearly a decade to build, replaced a leaky steel-and-concrete sarcophagus rushed into place after Reactor 4 exploded just before 1:30 a.m. on April 26, 1986.

During an overnight test of the reactor’s emergency water cooling system, steam built up and blew through the reactor’s 1,000-ton lid, exposing the core to oxygen, which caused the graphite rods used to control reactions to catch fire and, eventually, it sparked a second explosion. The contamination traveled fast on the wind: within two days, radiation from Chernobyl was detected at Swedish nuclear power plant.

ERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

The initial disaster killed at least 28 people – including plant workers and first responders – but it sickened thousands more through radiation-related conditions such as cancer, compromised immune systems and birth defects in the ensuing three decades.

The new dome was designed to last up to 100 years, allowing time for the eventual dismantling of the reactor while keeping radioactive contaminants in and water out.

It also makes the area safer for the growing number of tourists expressing interest in visiting the 20-mile ”exclusion zone” around the nuclear power plant, which scientists predicted at the time would not be fully safe for human habitation for another 20,000 years.

Today, University of Sheffield researcher Claire Corkhill tells Business Insider that tourists are likely to be exposed to more radiation on the transatlantic flight to Ukraine than during their visit. Still, precautions should be taken.

Tourists are already required to wear long-sleeves, pants and closed shoes inside the exclusion zone and their clothing is tested at radiation checkpoints, at which point contaminated items are either washed or confiscated. But Corkhill cautions visitors not to roll up their sleeves, touch anything, sit down, set their cameras or bags down or pet the stray animals that loiter around Chernobyl and to shower after returning to their hotel rooms.

Radiation isn’t the only danger

Pripyat, the town built to house Chernobyl plant employees, was abandoned overnight thanks to mandatory evacuations.

After all the people left, Pripyat for years was a snapshot of a planned Soviet town frozen in time. Looters have since stripped it bare of all the Soviet memorabilia. There’s also broken glass, rusty nails, unsupported floors and roofs that will probably fall down “soon.”

Corkhill told Business Insider: ”The major hazard to safety is not from the radioactivity. It’s from entering the buildings themselves.” She also cautioned visitors to watch for holes in the ground, left behind after scrap-metal merchants absconded with manhole covers.

AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

Nature reborn but not necessarily safe

In the 33 years since humans were evacuated, plants and wildlife have reclaimed the town once home to 50,000 humans, a sentiment Zelensky promoted with his remarks.

”Chernobyl is a unique place on the planet where nature has been reborn after a huge man-made disaster,” Zelensky said. ”We have to show this place to the world: to scientists, ecologists, historians and tourists.”

However, just because wildlife is returning in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone decades after the nuclear disaster does not mean it is thriving.

Timothy Mousseau, a a professor of biological sciences at the University of South Carolina-Columbia who makes regular research trips to Chernobyl, shared his findings with USA TODAY in 2016.

“It became clear that for the species with relatively small territories, there were significantly fewer animals in the more radioactive areas,” he said. “This was an unexpected finding and went against the prevailing wisdom at the time, which was that Chernobyl’s plants and animals were thriving because of the lack of human activity, and that by implication, the radiation effects must be low to none.”

Mousseau worries about the the effect government’s newly-announced tourism plans will have on the area.

“The more traffic there is, the most dust there is, and the dust here is contaminated,” he told The Washington Post.

For those tourists eager to experience Pripyat and the exclusion zone for themselves, “Chernobyl” writer/producer Craig Maizin has a simple request: be respectful.

”It’s wonderful that #ChernobylHBO has inspired a wave of tourism to the Zone of Exclusion. But yes, I’ve seen the photos going around,” he tweeted after a wave of Chernobyl selfies started popping up on Instagram after the miniseries.

”If you visit, please remember that a terrible tragedy occurred there. Comport yourselves with respect for all who suffered and sacrificed.”

Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY

Read more at usatoday.com.