summary of the nuclear tourist

September 16, 2014

World Travel

The Nuclear Tourist

Visiting the site of the Chernobyl meltdown.

George Johnson National Geographic Oct 2014 10 min Permalink

Nuclear energy creates the most dangerous form of radioactive waste. Where does Peter Dutton plan to put it?

Adjunct Professor, James Cook University

Emeritus Professor, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University

Disclosure statement

Rosemary Hill is affiliated with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Commission on Economic, Environmental and Social Policy, and the World Commission on Protected Areas.

Ian Lowe was President of the Australian Conservation Foundation from 2004 to 2014. His doctoral research was funded by the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

James Cook University and Griffith University provide funding as members of The Conversation AU.

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Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s pledge to build seven nuclear energy plants, if elected, has triggered heated political debate – mostly about the costs and timetable of the plan. But the concept of nuclear energy in Australia must overcome an arguably even bigger hurdle: how to dispose of high-level nuclear waste.

Nuclear power is only a viable alternative to fossil fuel burning if there is somewhere to store the waste – and only if this can be done safely, without exorbitant cost and with community support.

A CSIRO analysis last month showed there is no economic argument for nuclear energy in Australia, even without considering the substantial cost of waste disposal and storage. Include waste in the maths, and the Coalition’s proposal looks a whole lot worse.

What’s more, nuclear power stations produce high-level radioactive waste. It is dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years — and so far, the world has failed to deliver a safe, permanent storage method. Is this a problem Australia really wants to take on?

What is high-level nuclear waste?

Nuclear reactors work by using fission, or the splitting of uranium atoms, to produce energy. Once the uranium has been used to produce energy it is considered “spent”. Spent fuel can either be disposed of or reprocessed to recover and reuse some of its contents, such as plutonium . Both spent and reprocessed nuclear fuel must eventually be disposed of.

Nuclear waste is classed according to how much radiation it emits – either low, intermediate or high. Nuclear power plants produce high-level waste, which is radioactive for a very long time.

Negative health effects in humans from exposure to high-level radiation include birth defects , impaired tissue and organ functioning, and increased risk of cancer .

Nuclear waste only becomes safe after it decays. For high-level waste, this can take hundreds of thousands of years . That means the waste must be disposed of and stored for a very, very long time.

How is high-level nuclear waste currently stored?

No permanent and safe storage for high-level nuclear waste is yet in operation.

The current temporary options are either “wet” or “dry” storage. Wet storage entails putting the waste in a pond and covering it with several metres of water to keep it cool. Dry storage involves putting the waste in containers made of concrete and steel.

These options are not a long-term solution. They are vulnerable to corrosion as well as natural disasters such as cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes, fires and floods.

There are also risks from human-induced hazards such as war, terrorist attack, arson and accidents. For example, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has threatened the safety of Ukrainian nuclear facilities such as the Zaporizhzhya plant , where spent nuclear fuel rods are reportedly kept in metal casks inside concrete containers in an open-air yard.

Can we put it underground?

Each reactor – even the small ones – will produce several tonnes of high-level waste each year – far more than the Coke can-sized amount of waste Dutton claims. The Coalition says it would find a permanent solution for storing nuclear waste from the plants. This is easier said than done.

The only permanent storage solution on the cards around the world is to place it in a “deep geological repository”. This involves encasing the waste and lowering it into a chamber drilled far underground. There are many challenges associated with this storage method. They include:

cost: the construction, decommissioning, closure and monitoring of such a facility in South Australia has been estimated at A$41 billion

siting: the location must be geologically stable, to prevent waste from escaping over many thousands of years

transport: the further waste has to be moved, the greater the safety risks. This is relevant to the Coalition’s plan, under which seven nuclear sites would be distributed around Australia

preventing corrosion and leakage: the waste container must be sufficiently robust to corrosion and the invasion of microbes. The shaft to the underground storage also needs to be sealed

social acceptance: in a democratic country such as Australia, communities must agree to host a nuclear waste site and be satisfied it is safe. This includes securing “ free, prior and informed consent ” from Traditional Owners.

Finland is the country closest to realising this storage method. It has selected a site for a deep geological repository 500 metres underground, and begun construction. But the project has taken decades and suffered numerous technical problems .

Scientists have also raised safety concerns , such as how the project will perform over the very long term, including during freezing of rocks in the next ice age.

Neither the United Kingdom nor the United States has moved beyond temporary storage of high-level nuclear waste.

The Coalition must come clean

Other nations have struggled to find long-term solutions for nuclear waste storage. There is every reason to expect Australia would face the same problems.

Importantly, Australia has for decades failed to find a suitable place for the long-term storage of small quantities of low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste from medical isotopes and the Lucas Heights research reactor. Even though these wastes are comparatively benign, every proposal has faced strong local opposition.

Ahead of the next federal election, the Coalition must explain to Australians how and where it intends to store radioactive waste from its nuclear plants. Without that detail, voters cannot fairly assess the plan.

• Nuclear waste
• Peter Dutton
• Coalition nuclear policy

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The Nuclear Tourist

An unforeseen legacy of the Chernobyl meltdown

They say that five sieverts of radiation is enough to kill you, so I was curious to see the reading on my Russian-made dosimeter as our tour van passed into the exclusion zone— the vast, quarantined wilderness that surrounds Chernobyl. Thick stands of pines and birches crowded the roadside as our guide reminded us of the ground rules: Don’t pick the mushrooms, which concentrate radionuclides, or risk letting the contaminants into your body by eating or smoking outdoors. A few minutes later we passed the first of the abandoned villages and pulled over to admire a small band of wild Przewalski’s horses.

Twenty-eight years after the explosion of a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, the zone, all but devoid of people, has been seized and occupied by wildlife. There are bison, boars, moose, wolves, beavers, falcons. In the ghost city of Pripyat, eagles roost atop deserted Soviet-era apartment blocks. The horses—a rare, endangered breed—were let loose here a decade after the accident, when the radiation was considered tolerable, giving them more than a thousand square miles to roam.

I glanced at my meter: 0.19 microsieverts per hour—a fraction of a millionth of a single sievert, a measure of radiation exposure. Nothing to worry about yet. The highest levels I had seen so far on my trip to Ukraine were on the transatlantic flight from Chicago—spikes of 3.5 microsieverts per hour as we flew 40,000 feet over Greenland, cosmic rays penetrating the plane and passengers. Scientists studying Chernobyl remain divided over the long-term effects of the radiation on the flora and fauna. So far they have been surprisingly subtle. More threatening to the animals are the poachers, who sneak into the zone with guns.

A few minutes later we reached Zalesye, an old farming village, and wandered among empty houses. Broken windows, peeling paint, crumbling plaster. On the floor of one home a discarded picture of Lenin—pointy beard, jutting chin—stared sternly at nothing, and hanging by a cord on a bedroom wall was a child’s doll. It had been suspended by the neck as if with an executioner’s noose. Outside, another doll sat next to the remains of a broken stroller. These were the first of the macabre tributes we saw during our two days in the zone. Dolls sprawling half dressed in cribs, gas masks hanging from trees—tableaux placed by visitors, here legally or otherwise, signifying a lost, quiet horror.

Farther down the road we were surprised by an inhabitant. Dressed in a scarf, a red sweater, and a winter vest, Rosalia is one of what officials call the “returnees”—stubborn old people, women mostly, who insist on living out their lives in the place they call home. She seemed happy for the company. Prompted by our guide, she told us of worse hardships. The lands around Chernobyl (or Chornobyl, as it is known in Ukraine) are part of the Pripyat Marshes on the eastern front, where the bloodiest battles of World War II were fought. She remembers the German soldiers and the hardships under Stalin.

“You can’t see radiation,” she said in Ukrainian. Anyway, she added, she is not planning to have children. She lives with five cats. Before we departed, she showed us her vegetable garden and said her biggest problem now is Colorado potato bugs.

Fuel their curiosity with your gift

There is something deeply rooted in the human soul that draws us to sites of unimaginable disaster. Pompeii, Antietam, Auschwitz, and Treblinka—all eerily quiet now. But in the 21st century we hold a special awe for the aftermath of nuclear destruction. The splitting of the atom almost a hundred years ago promised to be the most important human advance since the discovery of fire. Unleashing the forces bound inside atomic nuclei would bring the world nearly limitless energy. Inevitably it was first used in warfare, but after Hiroshima and Nagasaki a grand effort began to provide electricity “too cheap to meter,” freeing the world from its dependence on fossil fuels.

More than half a century later the swirling symbol of the atom, once the emblem of progress and the triumph of technology, has become a bewitching death’s-head, associated in people’s minds with destruction and Cold War fear. Every spring visitors head for Stallion Gate in southern New Mexico for an open house at Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated—a preview of what was to come when the bombers reached Japan. Monthly tours to the Nevada Test Site in the Mojave Desert, where more than a thousand nuclear weapons were exploded during the Cold War, are booked solid through 2014.

Then there is the specter of nuclear meltdown. In 2011, Chernobyl, site of the world’s worst catastrophe at a nuclear power plant, was officially declared a tourist attraction.

Nuclear tourism. Coming around the time of the Fukushima disaster, the idea seems absurd. And that is what drew me, along with the wonder of seeing towns and a whole city—almost 50,000 people lived in Pripyat—that had been abandoned in a rush, left to the devices of nature.

Sixty miles away in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital city, weeks of bloody demonstrations had led in February to the expulsion of the president and the installation of a new government. In response to the upheaval Russia had occupied Crimea, the peninsula that juts from southern Ukraine into the Black Sea. Russian troops were massing on Ukraine’s eastern border. In a crazy way, Chernobyl felt like the safest place to be.

The other diehards in the van had come for their own reasons. John, a young man from London, was into “extreme tourism.” For his next adventure he had booked a tour of North Korea and was looking into options for bungee jumping from a helicopter. Gavin from Australia and Georg from Vienna were working together on a performance piece about the phenomenon of quarantine. We are used to thinking of sick people quarantined from the general population. Here it was the land itself that was contagious.

Of all my fellow travelers, the most striking was Anna, a quiet young woman from Moscow. She was dressed all in black with fur-lined boots, her long dark hair streaked with a flash of magenta. It reminded me of radioactivity. This was her third time at Chernobyl, and she had just signed up for another five-day tour later in the year.

“I’m drawn to abandoned places that have fallen apart and decayed,” she said. Mostly she loved the silence and the wildlife—this accidental wilderness. On her T-shirt was a picture of a wolf.

“ ‘Radioactive Wolves’?” I asked. It was the name of a documentary I’d seen on PBS’s Nature about Chernobyl. “It’s my favorite film,” she said.

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In the early hours of April 26, 1986, during a scheduled shutdown for routine maintenance, the night shift at Chernobyl’s reactor number four was left to carry out an important test of the safety systems—one delayed from the day before, when a full, more experienced staff had been on hand.

Within 40 seconds a power surge severely overheated the reactor, rupturing some of the fuel assemblies and quickly setting off two explosions. The asphalt roof of the plant began burning, and, much more threatening, so did the graphite blocks that made up the reactor’s core. A plume of smoke and radioactive debris rose high into the atmosphere and began bearing north toward Belarus and Scandinavia. Within days the fallout had spread across most of Europe.

Throughout the night firefighters and rescue crews confronted the immediate dangers—flames, smoke, burning chunks of graphite. What they couldn’t see or feel—until hours or days later when the sickness set in—were the invisible poisons. Isotopes of cesium, iodine, strontium, plutonium. The exposures they received totaled as much as 16 sieverts—not micro or milli but whole sieverts, vastly more radiation than a body can bear. From the high-rises of Pripyat, less than two miles away, Chernobyl workers and their families stood on balconies and watched the glow.

In the morning—it was the weekend before May Day—they went about their routines of shopping, Saturday morning classes, picnics in the park. It was not until 36 hours after the accident that the evacuation began. The residents were told to bring enough supplies for three to five days and to leave their pets behind. The implication was that after a quick cleanup they would return home. That didn’t happen. Crews of liquidators quickly moved in and began bulldozing buildings and burying topsoil. Packs of dogs were shot on sight. Nearly 200 villages were evacuated.

The immediate death toll was surprisingly small. Three workers died during the explosion, and 28 within a year from radiation poisoning. But most of the effects were slow in unfolding. So far, some 6,000 people who were exposed as children to irradiated milk and other food have had thyroid cancer. Based on data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the overall mortality rate from cancer may rise by a few percent among the 600,000 workers and residents who received the highest doses, possibly resulting in thousands of premature deaths.

After the accident a concrete and steel structure—the sarcophagus—was hastily erected to contain the damaged reactor. As the sarcophagus crumbled and leaked, work began on what has been optimistically named the New Safe Confinement, a 32,000-ton arch, built on tracks so it can be slid into place when fully assembled. Latest estimate: 2017. Meanwhile the cleanup continues. According to plans by the Ukrainian government, the reactors will be dismantled and the site cleared by 2065. Everything about this place seems like science fiction. Will there even be a Ukraine?

What I remember most about the hours we spent in Pripyat is the sound and feel of walking on broken glass. Through the dilapidated hospital wards with the empty beds and cribs and the junk-strewn operating rooms. Through the school hallways, treading across mounds of broken-back books. Mounted over the door of an old science class was an educational poster illustrating the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. Heat to visible light to x-rays and gamma rays—the kind that break molecular bonds and mutate DNA. How abstract that must have seemed to the schoolkids before the evacuation began.

In another room gas masks hung from the ceiling and were piled in heaps on the floor. They were probably left there, our guides told us, by “stalkers”—surreptitious visitors who sneak into the zone. At first they came to scavenge, later for the thrill. They drink from the Pripyat River and swim in Pripyat bay, daring the radiation and the guards to get them. A stalker I met later in Kiev said he’d been to Chernobyl a hundred times. “I imagined the zone to be a vast, burnt-out place—empty, horrible,” he told me. Instead he found forests and rivers, all this contaminated beauty.

Our tour group walked along the edge of a bone-dry public swimming pool, its high dive and racing clock still intact, and across the rotting floor of a gymnasium. Building after building, all decomposing. We visited the ruins of the Palace of Culture, imagining it alive with music and laughter, and the small amusement park with its big yellow Ferris wheel. Walking up 16 flights of steps—more glass crunching underfoot—we reached the top of one of the highest apartment buildings. The metal handrails had been stripped away for salvage. Jimmied doors opened onto gaping elevator shafts. I kept thinking how unlikely a tour like this would be in the United States. It was refreshing really. We were not even wearing hard hats.

From the rooftop we looked out at what had once been grand, landscaped avenues and parks—all overgrown now. Pripyat, once hailed as a model Soviet city, a worker’s paradise, is slowly being reabsorbed by the earth.

We spent the night in the town of Chernobyl. Eight centuries older than Pripyat, it now has the look of a Cold War military base, the center for the endless containment operation. My hotel room with its stark accommodations was like a set piece in a museum of life in Soviet times. One of the guides later told me that the vintage furnishings were salvaged from Pripyat. I wasn’t able to confirm that officially. The radiation levels in my room were no greater than what I’ve measured back home.

In a postapocalyptic video game called “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl,” virtual visitors to the radioactive wonderland can identify the hot spots by their blue-white glow. As you travel around the exclusion zone, the radiation counter for your avatar steadily increases. You can reduce your accumulation and avoid getting radiation sickness by drinking virtual Russian vodka.

If only it were so easy. By the next morning we were becoming almost cavalier about the exposure risk. Standing beneath the remains of a cooling tower, our guide, hurrying us along, exclaimed, “Oh, over here is a high-radiation spot! Let’s go see!” as casually as if she were pointing us toward a new exhibit in a wax museum. She pulled up a board covering the hot spot, and we stooped down holding our meters—they were frantically beeping—in a friendly competition to see who could detect the highest amount. My device read 112 microsieverts per hour—30 times as high as I had measured on the flight. We stayed for only a minute.

The hottest spot we measured that day was on the blade of a rusting earthmover that had been used to plow under the radioactive topsoil: 186 microsieverts per hour—too high to linger but nothing compared with what those poor firemen and liquidators got.

On the drive back to Kiev our guide tallied up our accumulated count—ten microsieverts during the entire weekend visit.

I’d probably receive more than that on the flight back home.

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• Chernobyl Victims
• The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
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• The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

National Geographic Magazine Publishes “The Nuclear Tourist”

September 24, 2014

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE PUBLISHES “THE NUCLEAR TOURIST” SEPTEMBER // 2014

After the publication of his 20-year retrospective “The Long Shadow of Chernobyl” Gerd Ludwig continues to explore the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear disaster to date. In a story titled “THE NUCLEAR TOURIST,” the October issue of National Geographic Magazine USA and several of the foreign language editions of NG published Gerd’s images of tourism in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (text by George Johnson). For more information and to see the images: Click here

In addition, the German language edition of National Geographic ran a 2-page interview with Gerd about the power of photography and what makes working for National Geographic special. To read the interview: Click here

To order a signed copy of the book: Click here

Comments on this entry are closed.

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Casks of high-level nuclear waste sit on an independent spent fuel storage installation at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Vernon.

DOE officials give 2046 as their goal of moving spent nuclear fuel

• By Susan Smallheer, Vermont News & Media
• Jun 26, 2024

VERNON — U.S. Department of Energy officials gave Vermont officials an optimistic target date for when they expect the spent nuclear fuel currently stored at the Vermont Yankee nuclear site will be moved elsewhere.

But where is elsewhere?

John Schultz, the DOE waste program manager, told members of the nuclear waste police committee of the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel last Monday that the federal government really has no idea where that waste facility will be.

Schultz said that the Department of Energy was working toward a 2046 date of getting all spent nuclear fuel from the country's closed nuclear reactors moved from their original host communities.

Schultz repeatedly told the committee, which met in person and virtually, that he was an engineer "and built things," but that he wasn't involved in the planning process of locating a replacement for the original depository, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where the federal government had long planned on storing the highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. The location has been rejected on political and geological reasons.

Schultz said the focus for his team is now getting ready to move the highly radioactive nuclear waste from the 20 commercial reactors which had already shut down — including Vermont Yankee, which closed in late December 2014.

After the meeting, Lissa Weinmann, the chairwoman of the Nuclear Waste Policy Committee, said she's skeptical of the DOE time frame.

"DOE's track record makes me highly skeptical that this date is realistic. DOE told us this new round of 'consent based siting' will take seven years (2031) to yield a community willing and able to host a massive 'consolidated interim' storage site capable, as DOE reps indicated at the meeting, of handling 6,000 casks," Weinmann said in a follow-up interview, referring to the total number of casks in the country. There are 58 casks at Vermont Yankee in Vernon.

Under current nuclear waste planning, the high-level radioactive waste will first be moved to an interim facility, likely in Texas or New Mexico, before it finds a permanent home — wherever that might be.

Other DOE officials on the call said that federal law would have to be changed to allow for some of their plans to be ultimately adopted.

"Ongoing Congressional dysfunction will make it difficult to overhaul current law which actually prohibits funding such a site, absent DOE progress on one or more 'permanent' geologic disposal sites," Weinmann said after the meeting. "The facility must then be constructed and massive rail infrastructure improvements must occur that will allow such unusual shipments to occur. One need only look at the rail lines coming out of the Brattleboro area to know what a hurdle that will be."

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Schultz said the DOE had already paid out $10 billion to companies currently storing the waste, and he estimated it would cost another $34 to $41 billion to move the fuel, and out of companies' hands.

He said much of the cost was attributed to transportation costs, putting that figure at 43 percent.

Weinmann, who recently returned to Vermont after attending a national nuclear waste conference in Kentucky, said that Schultz's cost estimates seems low.

"In 2013, the DOE lost a case that ultimately suspended collection of the 'nuclear waste tax' levied on nuclear producers meant to fund a permanent geologic disposal facility. No tax has been collected for 10 years now," she said.

She said the federal courts in the District of Columbia found the DOE's estimate of costs of such a facility to be “'absolutely useless as an analytical technique'” and called it “'razzle dazzle.'”

"This date strikes me the same way. DOE has little credibility on the nuclear waste management front. But it's not because the people there aren't smart and trying their best. The problem reflects the general public's deep skepticism of big government and its big nuclear ambitions and a pattern of gigantic cost overruns," she said.

Weinmann said she had asked Vermont's Congressional delegation to request a long-term cost/benefit analysis of nuclear energy, from initial mining to long-term storage," in order to assess how it compares economically with other renewable energy systems and efficiency technology.

"Such an assessment is necessary if we are going to make smart energy choices and is long overdue," she said.

Schultz said the DOE now has a specially designed rail car, called the Atlas, to move the spent fuel, which is currently stored in steel cannisters, inside a large concrete sleeve.

Under the DOE plan, the concrete container would be left behind after the fuel transfer.

He said the concrete cannisters would either be considered low-level radioactive waste, or not, likely depending on the age of the cannisters and how long they had been exposed to the radioactive waste.

Contact Susan Smallheer at [email protected] .

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Nuclear tourism

• 1 Get ready
• 2.1 Bombed cities
• 2.2 Weapon test sites
• 2.3 Peaceful use of nuclear explosions
• 3.1 Accidents in nuclear power plants or nuclear materials production sites
• 3.2 Accidents of nuclear weapon carrying aircraft
• 4 Manhattan Project-related sites
• 5 Atomic museums
• 6.1 Operating reactors
• 6.2 Decommissioned reactors
• 7.1 Nuclear power plant building sites never finished
• 7.2 Sites related to German nuclear bomb project
• 7.3 Nuclear bunkers
• 7.4 Nuclear weapon sites
• 7.5 Nuclear waste related sites
• 7.6 Non-categorized
• 8 Stay safe

Nuclear tourism is travel to places connected with nuclear history, nuclear science, and nuclear technology. This can include historical sites of nuclear detonations or places related to peaceful or wartime use of nuclear energy.

Sites of interest to the nuclear tourist may include:

• Sites of nuclear detonations (bombed cities, nuclear weapons tests, sites related to peaceful uses of nuclear explosives).
• Sites of nuclear accidents and accidents of aircraft carrying nuclear weapons.
• Museums of nuclear history, nuclear science, or nuclear technology.
• Former nuclear missile silos and nuclear fallout shelters.
• Other sites relating to nuclear history, nuclear science, and nuclear technology (for example, nuclear particle accelerators and sites of nuclear physics research).

See Golden Age of Modern Physics for the discoveries that led up to the atomic age.

Although in many of the nuclear tourism sites only background radiation can be detected, in some other visitors are confronted with higher levels. These include mainly sites related to nuclear accidents and weapons testing. When visiting places with increased radiation, it is reasonable to be equipped with a radiation monitor in order to have control over radiation exposure. The most common devices in a reasonable price range usually contain a Geiger-Müller counter. They are suitable for detection of gamma, x-ray, alpha and beta radiation, typically expressed as counts per second. In other devices the registered gamma radiation is converted in units of dose rate or absorbed dose. These basic counters can not provide information about individual isotopes, natural or man-made, but simply sum up all registered radiation.

In order to be able to use the radiation monitor it is essential to get familiar with the units and ranges of the measured values to evaluate the information obtained from the counter. Additionally, one has to be aware of a strong variation of natural background radiation, which depends mainly on local geology.

Sites of nuclear explosions

Bombed cities.

34.395 132.455 1 Hiroshima , Japan, was a target of the first nuclear attack ever on 6 August 1945. Nowadays the event with 90,000–166,000 civilian victims is commemorated at the Atomic Bomb Memorial Museum and in Peace Memorial Park, including the iconic A-Bomb Dome and Children's Peace Monument covered by colorful paper cranes for bomb victim, Sadako Sasaki. Ground Zero is slightly outside of the park not far from the Atomic Bomb Dome.

Another nuclear bomb was dropped three days later on the industrial town of 32.773 129.864 2 Nagasaki , Japan, with more than 100,000 victims. Visitors can learn about the tragic piece of history in the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum or the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, both near ground zero.

The aircraft that dropped nuclear weapons on Japanese civilians are in US museums. Enola Gay (the plane which bombed Hiroshima) is displayed at the Udvar-Hazy Center (part of Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum) in Chantilly , Virginia ; Bockscar (which bombed Nagasaki) is on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton , Ohio.

See the Pacific War article for the events leading up to the bombs.

Weapon test sites

Eight countries have carried out confirmed nuclear weapon tests to determine the capability of their weapons, mostly in their own respective territories. The United States conducted the first and the most numerous tests, mostly in Nevada . Others carrying out tests included Russia (then the Soviet Union ), the UK, India, France, and China. Pakistan, followed by North Korea, conducted the last nuclear weapon tests. Sites where weapon tests were conducted can be visited in these countries for adventure.

• 50.12 78.72 5 Semipalatinsk test site . can be visited from city of Semey by own means (taxi). The National Nuclear Center in nearby Kurchatov organizes official tours to the test area.  
• Atolls 11.6981 165.2731 6 Bikini and 11.552565 162.347241 7 Enewetak are former US test sites at Marshall Islands . They are in the middle of the Pacific, far away from any mainland, so they are difficult to visit. Bikini Atoll is open for tourism from late April to November and welcomes divers participating in organized tours . These tours that start at Kwajalein Atoll are only available to experienced divers and the main attraction is the U.S. fleet sunk by the nuclear tests at Bikini. In the 1970s the U.S. Army performed a clean-up of contamination at Enewetak. As a result, radioactive materials from Enewetak and other contaminated atolls were dumped into the Cactus test crater at a tiny island Runit within the Enewetak Atoll and covered by a concrete structure, known as Cactus dome.

Peaceful use of nuclear explosions

In the USA, 27 peaceful nuclear explosions were conducted within Operation Plowshare to test the use of nuclear explosions for various civilian purposes, such as excavating channels or harbors and stimulating natural gas production from sediment layers. Most of the shots were performed at the Nevada test site; however, some of the test sites in Colorado and New Mexico are accessible for the public.

• 39.793 -107.948528 14 Rio Blanco test site ( 50 mi NW of Rifle , USA, the last couple of miles via unpaved Rio Blanco County Route 29, but still easily accessible for non-4x4 vehicles ). This was the final test in the Plowshare program, with three devices being detonated underground in order to stimulate natural gas production in 1973. While the production increased slightly, the gas was too radioactive to be used. A small monument was erected at the surface ground zero. ( updated Aug 2015 )

Sites of nuclear accidents

Some might find it unethical or at least controversial for tourists to visit sites where many people suffered following an accident, especially if local guides are repeatedly exposed to radiation when leading tour groups through exclusion zones too "hot" for residents to return.

Conversely, some welcome tourism as an alternative means to support local economies.

Accidents in nuclear power plants or nuclear materials production sites

• 54.4205 -3.4975 16 Sellafield , United Kingdom, has been the site of a number of accidents, including the 1957 fire of the original Windscale former nuclear reactor. During those accidents some radioactive waste ended up in the Irish Sea, near Whitehaven . Also, during the reactor fire radioactivity was released through the chimney. However the major portion was contained by the high-capacity filters mounted on the chimney (known as "Cockcroft's Folly" after the Nobel prize winning physicist Sir John Cockcroft, who insisted on having them mounted at great expense, although they hadn't been included in the original design. Their shape contributed to the iconic silhouette of the nuclear complex. However, in 2014 the second of two chimneys was decommissioned and is no longer part of the Sellafield skyline.)
• 40.15269 -76.717409 17 Three Mile Island , near Harrisburg , Pennsylvania , USA, was the worst commercial nuclear power plant accident in the USA on 28 March 1979. During the reactor core meltdown, radioactivity, mainly in the form of radioiodine and noble gases, was released to the surrounding environment. There is no visitors' center commemorating the event, only a historic marker (at the given coordinates in Middletown ) with a fine view across the Susquehanna river towards the power station.
• 37.4214 141.0325 18 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan was seriously damaged by a tsunami following a magnitude 9 earthquake on March 11, 2011. Large areas of Fukushima prefecture coast are being decontaminated, while some 80,000 inhabitants had to be resettled. Tours are offered to the visitors to get first-hand impressions from areas affected by the great Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident. The participants can experience how local people and businesses are coping with the recovery from the disasters.

Accidents of nuclear weapon carrying aircraft

During the Cold War there were several accidents involving thermonuclear weapons, and some of them led to local environment contamination. These are a few of them.

• In 35.493041 -77.859262 19 Faro near Goldsboro (North Carolina) , USA, a B-52 crash dropped a hydrogen bomb which failed to detonate in 1961. The event is commemorated by a historical road marker in the town of Eureka, 3 miles (4.8 km) north of the crash site.
• A 34.205556 -79.655278 20 crater about 23 m wide and 11 m deep was left after another accident, in which a B-47 "Stratojet" crew mistakenly released a Mark 6 bomb while flying over Mars Bluff , South Carolina , USA, on March 11, 1958 afternoon. The bomb went off by a conventional explosion at the property of local family Gregg and injured several family members. The crater can be visited from SC Highway 76 (East Palmetto Street) via a marked trail. There is an informational board and mock up of the bomb's size at the site. Nearby 34.19563 -79.76632 21 museum in Florence has the story to tell including some historical artifacts connected to the event.
• In 1966 after an unsuccessful inflight refueling operation an US bomber B-52 carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed in 37.247 -1.797 22 Palomares between Almería and Cartagena , Spain. Now, after cleanup operations, the area is used extensively for agricultural production. Two of the "hot areas" are closed to the public by a fence.
• Another accident occurred in 1968, when B-52 "Stratofortress" with four hydrogen bombs on board crashed onto the sea ice near the 76.527778 -69.281944 23 Thule Air Base , Greenland. The nearest civilian settlement is Qaanaaq , 100 km to the north.

Manhattan Project-related sites

"Manhattan Project", named for the Manhattan Engineering District of the US Army Corps of Engineers, is a cover name for a war-time US military effort to develop an atomic weapon. Geographically, the project was spread over about 30 sites across the United States (and Canada). The best known are the secret laboratory in Los Alamos and factories to supply the fissile materials by enriching uranium and producing plutonium in reactors in Oak Ridge , Tennessee, and Hanford site near Richland , Washington. These three sites are also formally recognized as Manhattan Project National Historical Park .

Atomic museums

• 43.51132 -113.0064 36 Experimental Breeder Reactor I , Arco , Idaho, USA - the first nuclear reactor to produce electrical power, first breeder reactor, and first reactor to use plutonium as fuel
• 31.902663 -110.999576 38 Titan Missile Museum , 1580 W Duval Mine Rd, Sahuarita, Green Valley , Arizona, USA ( 30 minutes south of Tucson ), ☏ +1 520-625-7736 . Daily 8:45AM-5PM . Site south of Tucson preserves a Cold-War-era underground silo housing an unarmed Titan-II ICBM, the only remaining Titan Missile silo in the US. Part of a larger field of such silos, this was one of the places from which nuclear war on the Soviet Union would have been waged. Visitors can take a tour of the underground facilities where USAF crews spent decades living underground waiting for the launch order which never came. $9.50 (adults) .  

Research reactors

Several sites operate nuclear reactors for either nuclear reactor safety training or for nuclear science experiments using them as neutron sources. Neutron scattering is an effective ways to obtain information on the structure and the dynamics of condensed matter. These days accelerators like the Spallation Neutron Source based in Oakridge allow more intense neutron beams. Nevertheless several reactors are in on-going operations. Fundamental and solid state physics, chemistry, materials science, biology, medicine and environmental science pose scientific questions that are investigated with neutrons.

In contrast to nuclear fission, where unstable atoms decay into smaller atoms, there exists also an attempt of nuclear fusion, where energy would be gained by processes similarly to what happens in the core of stars by the fusion of two light elements in a heavier one. ITER is an international nuclear research and engineering project to build the first the world's largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor.

Operating reactors

• 46.52 6.565 39 [dead link] CROCUS , École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland . A light-water, zero-power nuclear reactor for research and teaching at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.  
• 48.266 11.676 40 Forschungsreaktor München II ( FRM II ), Lichtenbergstraße 1, Garching bei München, Germany (   U6   to Garching-Forschungszentrum ), ☏ +49 89 289 12147 , [email protected] . The reactor is an optimised neutron source. Almost 50% of experiments are performed using cold neutrons. The compact construction of the fuel element means that more than 70% of the neutrons leave the uranium zone and build up to a maximum thermal neutron flux density at a distance of 12cm from the surface of the fuel element. From where they are distributed to the experiments. Please register early in advance your visit either by email or phone. The visitor needs to be older than 16 years, not pregnant and no phones or cameras are allowed inside.  
• 48.197003 16.412999 41 Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics ( Atominstitut ), Stadionallee 2, Vienna, Austria ( Vienna/Inner East ), ☏ +43 1 588 01 141391 , [email protected] . The 250 kW TRIGA Mark II reactor in the Viennese Prater started operation in 1962. The reactor is a training ground for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and neighbouring countries. The Atominstitut offers guided tours for groups upon previous registration. €4/person . ( updated Apr 2015 )
• 43.704956 5.769194 42 ITER ( International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or "the way" (Latin) ), Route de Vinon-sur-Verdon, St. Paul-lez-Durance, France ( CPA bus line 150 ( Aix-en-Provence --St Paul lez Durance) ), ☏ +33 4 42 17 66 25 , [email protected] . The ITER project aims to make the transition from experimental studies of plasma physics to an electricity-producing fusion power plants. ITER is designed to produce 500 megawatts of output power. Visitors are welcome year round on the first Friday of every month at the ITER site. General public visits include a stop at the Visitor's Centre for a presentation of the project followed by guided tour of the ITER platform where the ITER scientific facilities are under construction. Visit requests should be made at least four weeks in advance via on-line tool. Free of charge, groups larger than 8 must book a bus . ( updated Apr 2015 )
• 54.07295 13.425 43 Wendelstein 7-X fusion device ( Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik ), Wendelsteinstraße 1, Greifswald , Germany , ☏ +49 3834 88-1203 , +49 3834 88-1800 , [email protected] . In Greifswald the large Wendelstein 7-X fusion reactor (stellarator) is under construction. The device as well as technology and workshops can be toured upon previous booking.  
• 52.41 13.129444 44 Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Germany . The 10 MW research reactor BER II delivers neutron beams for a wide range of scientific investigations. On open house day, interested visitors are allowed to take guided tours through the experimental halls around the research reactor. Scientists and reactor experts will be there on these days to answer questions about the facility and the safety measures.  
• 47.538554 8.229899 45 Swiss Spallation Neutron Source ( SINQ ), Paul Scherrer Institut bldg. WHGA/147, Villigen PSI, Switzerland ( about 10 km north of Brugg ). SINQ is designed as a neutron source mainly for research with extracted beams of thermal and cold neutrons, but hosts also facilities for isotope production and neutron activation analysis.  
• 33.640495 -117.844296 46 TRIGA Mark I ( at the University of California, Irvine, in Irvine, California , USA ). The original prototype for the TRIGA (Training Research Isotopes General Atomic) reactor, one of the safest reactor designs. 66 such reactors are or have been operational worldwide, mostly at universities for educational use. The reactor has been declared a nuclear historical landmark. ( updated Aug 2015 )
• 55.796111 37.478611 47 [dead link] F-1 ( Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, Russia ). The first functioning nuclear reactor in Europe (Dec 1946) is still running. ( updated Aug 2015 )

Decommissioned reactors

• 55.604564 26.560546 49 The Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant ( IAE ) ( in Visaginas municipality, Lithuania ). It had two reactors - the first one was in operation from 1983 and was decommissioned in 2004, the second from 1987 until 2009. INPP will be fully dismantled in 2038. INPP offero excursions to its controlled INPP zone, home to the plant’s reactor room, turbine room, and block control panel. These excursions have become popular following the broadcast of the HBO miniseries Chernobyl , much of which was filmed on the site of the first reactor at INPP. ( updated Jun 2019 )

Nuclear power plant building sites never finished

Some nuclear power plants never had a nuclear fission reaction happening on their site, as they were not turned on.

• Ruins of the 45.3914 35.8023 54 Crimean Atomic Energy Station , Russia

Sites related to German nuclear bomb project

Germany, which had had some leading nuclear scientists before the war (some of whom fled the country after the Nazi takeover due to being Jewish, opposed to the regime or both), developed a much more modest and less advanced nuclear program than the Allies. It received less funding and was hampered by Nazi ideology which rejected some of Albert Einstein's findings as "Jewish Physics", but its speculated existence during the war was one of the driving factors for the Manhattan project.

• 59.871111 8.491389 57 Vemork , Norway .   : Heavy water production site and location of war-time heavy water sabotage. Heavy water is an important component in certain nuclear applications and was seen as critically necessary for the development of a nuclear bomb during World War II. Despite the German occupation of Norway, Norwegian underground fighters ultimately managed to keep the heavy water out of the hand of the Nazis, thereby delaying the nuclear program of Nazi Germany which failed.

Nuclear bunkers

Nuclear bunkers were meant to protect in the case of nuclear weapon explosions. During the cold war this threat was considered imminent, hence many key figures would need access to such bunkers. While nothing was likely to withstand a direct hit, bunkers were built far underground to survive a nuclear strike which landed as close as 1 mile (1.6 km) away.

Fallout shelters were intended to shelter populations in areas far from the targets of a nuclear strike; these communities were likely to be spared direct blast damage but still become dangerously radioactive in the initial days or weeks after an attack. Often, civil defence authorities would make provision for a posted fallout shelter in the basement of a library, post office, school or other large public building. In some countries building regulations even pushed for bunkers in the cellars of small domestic buildings.

Nuclear weapon sites

Nuclear waste related sites

Nuclear waste is a big headache in all nuclear applications as it remains dangerous for timespans humans cannot generally oversee. There are various philosophies as to what to do with the waste, including putting it into abandoned salt mines as salt has high stability to waste heat (nuclear waste produces a lot of heat) and salt tends to naturally seal cavities. However, salt is vulnerable to water entering and there is the danger of that water connecting to groundwater, as has happened at several salt mines.

Non-categorized

• 53.55903 10.01975 75 A Memorial to the X-ray martyrs of the world in Hamburg , Germany ( Ehrenmal der Radiologie ) ( Garden of St. Georg hospital ). This monument is devoted to researchers, physicians, physicists, radiographers, laboratory technicians and nurses who died from injuries or illnesses caused by prolonged exposure to radiation used in medicine. On the list of about 360 names of radiologists from 23 countries perhaps the best known are Marie Sklodowska-Curie and her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie.  

One obvious concern in touring nuclear sites is radiation . In fact, good news is that most of the sites listed above are safe from this point of view. Where obvious danger exists, you should be usually stopped by fence and other security measures.

In case you happen to find yourself in a less safe situation or unknown suspicious area, you will hopefully be equipped with a radiation monitor and good knowledge of how to use it. It's important to know how to interpret the readings and/or convert the units. Although officially there is nothing like a safe level or radiation, there are some levels that can help to put the numbers into context. These are some examples:

• The typical yearly dose from purely natural background, consisting mainly of radon gas we breathe, building materials surrounding us, radionuclides in food we eat and from the cosmic radiation that keeps bombarding us. This value is 2.4 thousandths of Sievert (mSv) on average, with a large range between 1–13 mSv depending mainly on the geological background of the place you live.
• Additionally to natural sources, artificial radiation contributes to radiation exposure of some of us. The main contributor here is medical diagnosis and treatment using radiation or radionuclides. Here the exposition varies widely based on number and type of such measures. Globally, an average person receives 0.6 mSv/yr, while in countries with well developed medical systems the numbers are higher, for example 3.14 mSv in the USA, which relies heavily on testing like CT scans and X-rays. One bone scintigraphy scan with the use of medial isotope Tc-99m results in a one-time dose of about 5 mSv. A chest CT scan can give a dose of 5–10 mSv, which is much higher than a simple chest x-ray of 0.2 mSv.
• Members of flight crews receive some 1.5 mSv annual dose due to increased cosmic radiation in high altitudes.
• The limit for members of the public in the Fukushima exclusion zone was set as 20 mSv/yr.
• Occupational limits for radiation workers are usually at 50 mSv/yr.

The way to protect yourself against external radiation exposure (like radiation coming from soil polluted with radioactive fallout) is to limit the time spent in the polluted area and keep your distance from the source (hot spots).

During your exploration you certainly want to avoid internal contamination , that means ingesting radionuclides by eating or drinking contaminated food, or inhaling radioactive particles. Some easy protective measures are therefore avoiding eating and drinking and wearing a respirator. If there may be radioactive dust or water, you also want to avoid carrying that out from the area in your clothes or hair. Be sure to get clean before touching any food or anything that you will regard clean.

Another kind of more general risks can arise from exploration of abandoned or off-limits urban locations. These include injuries or possible legal consequences. For more details check the Urbex article.

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