Cash-strapped Ukraine is generating foreign currency reserves by commercializing the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster as a tourist site.
In the evening of April 26, 1986, Reactor No. 4 exploded in the world's worst nuclear disaster, the Guardian reported Monday. Estimates of fatalities from the fallout reach as high as 15,000.
Eventually, Soviet authorities sent 1,200 buses to evacuate 48,000 of the nearby villagers and erected a makeshift cordon around the power plant complex.
Now, however, tourists can pay $250 per person for an all-inclusive, day long bus tour of the catastrophe, about 40 miles north of picturesque Kiev.
About 90 tons of radioactive waste lies under the vast concrete that now covers the destroyed reactor.
Paradoxically, much of the land around Chernobyl is lush: Most of it looks more like a nature sanctuary, with abundant forests, lush grass and herds of a rare species of wild horse.
The lack of human activity has allowed wolves, foxes, wild boar and myriad other species to flourish.
