- A certified state guide
- Full insurance
- A GPS tracker and dosimeter
- A canteen lunch
- Comfortable bus with Wi-Fi and TV
- Transfers from Kiev and back again
One-day Tour
Take a once-in-a-lifetime trip into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, accompanied by a certified guide from the State Chernobyl Zone Information Agency. This trip is perfect for anyone looking to learn more about the world’s most disastrous nuclear accident. Over the course of the day you’ll get to see the ill-fated reactor close up, as well as exploring the ghost towns left in the wake of its devastation. Throughout the trip you can expect full comfort and extensive historical accounts.
This package includes:
March 2017
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Payment Information
Attention! Only confirmed via e-mail prepayment allows you to participate in the chosen tour!
For scheduled tours: after submitting the application for the tour you must make an advance payment, equal to €27/$31. On boarding the bus you must have the exact amount of the rest of your payment.
With the cancellation of the tour, an advance payment of €27/$31 is not refunded, these funds go to the registration of all permits for entry into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
Additional information
Your tour of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone will be led by professional guides who have completed hundreds of successful trips already. Provided you follow all the rules, you’ll be able to enjoy a perfectly safe experience – just like the 60,000 visitors who explored the Zone safely in 2018.
Radiation levels will be closely monitored throughout, using state-of-the-art dosimetric equipment. Meanwhile personal radiation scans (at lunch, various checkpoints and on exiting the Zone) will ensure that your clothing, boots and bags are free from any radioactive dust.
Remember: your State-certified guide has completed hundreds of trouble-free trips already, so you’ll always be in safe hands.
On 25-26 April 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant – then on the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic – was the site of the world’s worst-ever nuclear disaster. The workers’ city of Pripyat (population: 42,000) was located just 3km from the nuclear reactor, and had to be completely evacuated in the days that followed. Today Pripyat is a ghost city: its citizens never returned, leaving hundreds of abandoned apartment blocks in addition to schools, a hospital, shops, playgrounds and cafés. The surrounding landscape (a territory of more than 2000 square kilometers) was contaminated, and some areas will remain unsafe for many thousands of years. Today, this area is known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
From 2006 onwards, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone was opened to tourists. It has received international support in creating a safe, educational experience for those who want to learn more about the worst nuclear disaster in history – as well as the legacy it left behind in Ukraine. It might not look how you expect though. With humans largely absent for 30 years, nature has taken control of this place. Trees grow through city streets, while animal populations (including foxes, deer, moose and wolves) have reclaimed dominance.
No matter whether you are interested in nuclear science, Soviet history, abandoned architecture, or nature and ecology – your visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone will be a truly unique and memorable experience.
Tour Sightseeing Highlights
Chernobyl Town
Today Chernobyl Town is the administrative center of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – featuring admin buildings, a police station, fire station, several hotels and restaurants, plus grocery stores. We’ll stop to visit the Third Angel monument, a memorial complex incorporating a map of the Exclusion Zone along with nameplates of all the abandoned villages from the region.
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
We will take in a panoramic view of the whole Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant complex: including Reactors 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6; the cooling tower and cooling channel; the New Safety Arch (or Sarcophagus) over Reactor 4; and the New Storage Facility created for the safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel from all Ukrainian nuclear power plants. Near the main entrance to the Chernobyl Power Plant we’ll visit the Prometheus memorial; and then near Reactor 4 we will look at the Sarcophagus, and the aptly titled ‘Memorial to the People Who Saved the World.’
Red Forest
We make a stop near the famous Pripyat sign to look out across the Red Forest: the most contaminated part of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. In 1986, 8 tons of radioactive plutonium rained down on this 20 square kilometer territory. Now it’s buried roughly 1 meter underground. We’ll stand back at a safe distance and be able to measure the extremely high radioactivity readings of the forest.
Pripyat City
We stop on the main city square in Pripyat, before taking a roughly 2-hour walk through the empty streets of this ‘ghost city.’
Along the way we’ll see the partially collapsed School No. 1, the highly radioactive hospital, the river port and the famous Pripyat Café; the Prometheus Cinema, the football stadium and the unused Ferris wheel, the swimming pool, and Hotel Polissya: which served as a base for the Soviet nuclear physicists sent in to examine the Zone after the accident. Abandoned since the disaster in 1986, in Pripyat you’ll get to experience the feeling of walking through a real Soviet city frozen in time.
Duga Radar Station
The military base known as Chernobyl-2 was a top-secret facility built around the massive Duga-1 Radar Antenna: a transmitter measuring 150 meters high, and 1 km in length. Designed to detect incoming ballistic missiles, the object was nicknamed the ‘Russian Woodpecker’ due to the tapping noise it transmitted across radio frequencies. Today it remains as one of the most impressive Cold War artifacts anywhere in Ukraine.
Throughout the day you can expect to hear plenty of interesting – and often surprising – stories from your guide, in addition to a comprehensive history of the Chernobyl accident, and clear instructions on how to ensure your trip to Chernobyl remains 100% safe at all times. (We don’t want to be telling the next group stories about you!)