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- <text id=91TT0331>
- <title>
- Feb. 18, 1991: World Notes:Soviet Union
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Feb. 18, 1991 The War Comes Home
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 53
- World Notes
- SOVIET UNION
- Risking Radiation
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Soviet enterprise has taken a macabre turn: vacation trips
- to the radioactive ruins of Chernobyl. Kievturist, a Ukrainian
- tour operator, is organizing excursions to the forbidden zone
- surrounding the entombed remains of the world's worst nuclear
- accident. Truly adventurous visitors can tour the massive
- concrete mound where the wreckage of the reactor is buried, a
- town built for the workers who cleaned up after the accident
- and a nuclear-waste dump.
- </p>
- <p> "We want to show people what can happen if they are not
- careful about the ecology," says Gennadi Blinov, Kievturist's
- director general. The $4-a-day price tag includes optional
- radiation scans for tourists who are worried. Income from the
- tours will be used to help victims of the April 1986 disaster.
- </p>
- <p> Soviet scientists are conducting tests to be sure visitors
- will not suffer any ill effects. Thousands of residents are
- still being moved out of contaminated zones nearby. The tours
- will begin in about a month, after the area has been declared
- safe for travel. But some former residents are apparently not
- waiting for the government's verdict. Tired of their cramped
- existence as refugees in Kiev, farm folk have been seen
- trickling back to reclaim their homesteads, despite the risk
- of radiation.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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