Official News page 9

REAL LIFE NEWS: CHERNOBYL TO OPEN TO TOURISTS

by Hazed

From inhospitable places in space, to inhospitable places on Earth - talk about a tourist hot-spot...

Starting this year, it will be possible to tour the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. For those with short memories, this is the reactor in the Ukraine that exploded in 1986, spewing radiation over a large stretch of Northern Europe. It's been the center of a 30 mile wide exclusion zone containing severely contaminated land.

The whole area was evacuated and hundreds of thousands of people were resettled. All visits were prohibited.

Today, there are about 2,500 employees who maintain the remains of the closed nuclear plant. They work in shifts to minimize their exposure to radiation.

Now the Ukrainian government has set experts to the task of developing travel routes that will allow visitors into the site but keep them safe. The Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Yulia Yershova said, "There are things to see there if one follows the official route and doesn't stray away from the group."

She did not give a date when the tours could start.

Meanwhile, you can see pictures of the disaster zone here.

And a new report says that birds in the Chernobyl area have smaller brains as a result of the background radiation. Read about it here.

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