Overview of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
Tourism to the Ukraine exclusion zone has been allowed for about 20 years and has turned CEZ into a “Disney Land” in recent years. As popularity increased so have the restrictions though luckily Ukraine is still a million miles away from the UK’s OTT health & safety rules. Visiting previously was not hard though I imagine in the last two years it has drastically reduced or at times stopped totally.
For those of you who know me, I am known for visiting odd places. Think: poor, underground, WW1/WW2/communist/Soviet, rough and less democratic places. Ukraine and Chernobyl ticks some of those boxes. In 2015 I did a one-day group tour. 2020 a private tour to the other exclusion zone - think north of Ukraine. 2021 a two day very pricey tour including inside the powerplant complex. New Year’s Eve 2021 a group tour again. Yes, 4x!
Back in 2015 was somewhat the best since you could enter any building you fancied without cameras, trip alarms, guards or the tour guide moaning. Jump forward a few years and you cannot enter most buildings due to “health & safety”. This is sad in some ways and health & safety is still little compared to the boring UK. That said it is still very cool and the other exclusion zone had zero rules (and likely zero visitors) in 2020. In 2024 Polesie State Radioecological Reserve appears to still be running state run tours upon request.
How do you book a tour? Simple, a licensed tour guide or company and there are (or were) plenty of them in Kyiv. You just need to be legal in Ukraine, be over 18 years old, have a passport (derh!) and ideally be in Kyiv. Even back in the day, 1-2 days before you could book a tour by paying a deposit and giving a scan of your passport over to the private tourism company. They then register you with the CEZ administration and you get a pass once at the checkpoint.
What is there to see? The one-day group/private tours are pretty much the same and include:
- Pickup from the centre - Maidan Sq. area
- Dytiatky checkpoint
- Chernobyl town
- Kopachi village
- View out of outside powerplant & cooling river (monster catfish present)
- Pripyat town
- Duga-1 radar
- Vehicle graveyard
- Robot graveyard
- Fire station
- Inner checkpoint
- Chernobyl sign
- Pripyat sign
- Maybe a lunch stop
What about inside CNPP? Be prepared to spend hundreds of dollars extra for this incredible extra tour and book well over two weeks in advance. The general tour guide does not conduct this tour and it is usually conducted by the govt. administration’s interpreter. Firstly, they put you in a caesium chair which reads your radiation levels, give you another meter, go through security screening, you change clothes and start the tour ending with lunch nearby. Seriously cool and worth the high spend. Weekdays only if it even still runs. What the CNPP tour includes:
- Golden Corridor
- Circulation pumps
- Control room no. 2 + no. 4
- Reactor hall no. 3
- Soviet computers
- Current day used bunker
- Active control rooms
- Memorial plaque