Nuclear Tourism: Still Hot, and Getting Hotter?

We’ve written before about the steady trickle of visitors to the infamous Chernobyl site, and to lesser-known, functioning nuclear power plants in Japan and the United States. Now we can add Sweden to our list of “hot” nuclear tourism destinations. A staggering one-third of Swedes have visited a nuclear plant in the country over the past 35 years, writes Barbara Lewis in a Reuters story. And they’re still going to Forsmark, one of the three main plants on Sweden’s Baltic coast, even after a safety scare in July 2006.

It may be a search for an “adrenalin punch” that drives some visitors, but for the nuclear power companies involved, the point is to promote the safety of the plants, and to chip away at nuclear power’s risky reputation. Visitors “see it’s a large industrial complex, but nothing else—and the people who work there are ordinary, not greenish,” a representative of the Forsmark ownership group told Lewis. Nils Sundquist, a regular visitor to Forsmark, added: “I think [by visiting] we learn that nuclear is not so dangerous.”

The next nuclear tourism hotspot? Iran, where officials are considering opening the country’s plants to the public in order to prove the innocence of their nuclear intentions.

Related on World Hum:
* Power Trip
* Nuclear Tourism: It’s Hot!

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