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Asked by anon-361425 on 27 Mar 2023.
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Vicky Fawcett answered on 27 Mar 2023:
Personally I would not, because there is still a massive amount of radiation surrounding the reactor that is very deadly!
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Fergus McKiddie answered on 27 Mar 2023:
I would love to visit as I’ve been studying outcomes from the accident all through my career. Now the shield is finished around the main reactor core the radiation levels are quite reasonable and certainly very safe for short visits of a few days. They are actually lower than they are in quite a few naturally occurring sites on earth such as at Oklo in Gabon, try Googling it!
Before I started there my department also used some of the imaging systems to scan sheep to see how much radioactive caesium they ate from the rain falling on the grass after the accident
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Lucien Heurtier answered on 27 Mar 2023:
I have never visited this dramatically famous place.
On a scientific note: Areas with a lot of radioactivity (like Chernobyl, but also active nuclear powerplants) are interesting for particle physics are they are a natural source of neutrinos. Neutrinos are tiny particles, that have a very small mass (so small that we don’t know exactly how much). These particles can basically cross the Earth without any problem because they interact very weekly with matter! That’s why if you want to detect one neutrino from time to time, then you need to have a source that produces a lot of them!
Radioactivity naturally produces neutrinos, so Chernobyl certainly does… The sun also does, because stars have a lot of radioactivity inside them. Detecting neutrinos and studying them better is one of the biggest challenges of particle physics these days!
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Yannick Verbelen answered on 29 Mar 2023:
Hi Charlotte and Imogen, that’s a very interesting question because I’ve already visited Chernobyl 4 times over the past 5 years, and spent about a month and a half in total in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for various experiments. I’ve also had the chance to do research in the power plant itself, including testing of radiation detection instruments. I’ve been to the control room of reactor 4 that was destroyed by the accident in 1986, and also wandered on top of the pile cap of reactor 3 which is an exact copy right next door of reactor 4 that somehow survived the explosion undamaged and is still reasonably safe to visit 37 years later! I really enjoy working there because there are a lot of challenges involved in doing science and engineering in a nuclear exclusion zone with limited resources, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a holiday destination 😉
What’s fascinates you the most about Chernobyl? Have you been inspired by the TV documentary that aired a few years ago?
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