I went on a daytrip to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
It was extremely interesting and educational. The disaster was hell on earth and the people who died or got health problems because of their work to contain the disaster, should never be forgotten.
I didn't know they were fighting to prevent a second explosion at reactor 4. An explosion that could have rendered all of Europe dangerously radioactive. Scary. Just really, really scary.
I recommend watching the documentary "The Battle for Chernobyl ([ Ссылка ]) and read Svetlana Aleksijevitj "Voices from Chernobyl". It will break your heart, but you need to know. I also recommend to watch the documentary of how they built the new safety confinement over reactor 4 ([ Ссылка ]). It is an engineering masterpiece that took 18 years to plan and 7 years to build. It was an international project, with workers and funding from all over the world.

188 towns and villages in Belarus and Ukraine were permanently evacuated in April 1986. For more than 30 years nature has taken over this area. The biggest city evacuated was Prypiat with 50 000 inhabitants. The city was established in 1970 and was a showcase for USSR's urban development. It's surreal to drive down the main avenue now. It's a thick forest. You can barely make out the apartment buildings on either side of the road.

Two zones: 30 km radius zone and the 10 km zone. Inside 10k workers only stay for short periods. They sleep in Chernobyl town in the 30k zone. Maximum 15 days at a time. There are 4000 workers there now. 10 000 at the time of the construction of the new confinement (2000 -2017).

There are several check points along the way- my passport was checked twice. On the way out we went through two scintillation counters to check if we were contaminated with any radioactive particles. Thankfully we were not.

The radiation you get exposed to on a daytrip inside the exclusion zone is approximately the same as for one x-ray (if you follow the rules and instructions given). Geiger counters were worn at all times.

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