Nuclear Tourism: Still Hot, and Getting Hotter?
Travel Blog • Eva Holland • 11.06.07 | 8:27 AM ET
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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Kathy Ryan 11.06.07 | 3:25 PM ET
Things do “look” ordinary (although a bit creepy) in the exclusion zone area around Chernobyl (which is indeed open to tourism. This tale has been told well in the various photo essays circulating around the Internet.
The far more interesting story is the areas that received less radioactive contamination damage, and yet still have people living there. Everything looks absolutely ordinary on the surface and the people are warm and welcoming. I would never discourage a visit or holiday.
But, we have to remember that for people who live there are ingesting various levels of radiation year after year after year. And Chernobyl’s legacy is economic as well. You can learn more about this at http://chernobyl.typepad.com
As a tourist, I would heartily recommend a two night stay in Belarus. Day one, the extraordinary museum of the Great Patriotic War, and perhaps the monument of the Afghan war. Next day, travel through the beautiful birch tree forests to one of the small towns, and either spend the night or come back to Minsk to fly out the next day.