Premium Content

abandoned toys in a room in Pripyat, Ukraine

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.

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.

You May Also Like

the nuclear tourist pdf

Radioactive dogs? What we can learn from Chernobyl's strays

the nuclear tourist pdf

Japan releases nuclear wastewater into the Pacific. How worried should we be?

the nuclear tourist pdf

This pill could protect us from radiation after a nuclear meltdown

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.

Related Topics

  • NUCLEAR ENERGY

the nuclear tourist pdf

What to do if you’re caught in a disaster while travelling

the nuclear tourist pdf

U.S. nuclear testing's devastating legacy lingers, 30 years after moratorium

the nuclear tourist pdf

Nuclear fusion powers stars. Could it one day electrify Earth?

the nuclear tourist pdf

Japan's Nuclear Refugees

the nuclear tourist pdf

This ship was supposed to usher in an age of nuclear-powered travel

  • Environment

History & Culture

  • History & Culture
  • History Magazine
  • Mind, Body, Wonder
  • Paid Content
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Your US State Privacy Rights
  • Children's Online Privacy Policy
  • Interest-Based Ads
  • About Nielsen Measurement
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Nat Geo Home
  • Attend a Live Event
  • Book a Trip
  • Inspire Your Kids
  • Shop Nat Geo
  • Visit the D.C. Museum
  • Learn About Our Impact
  • Support Our Mission
  • Advertise With Us
  • Customer Service
  • Renew Subscription
  • Manage Your Subscription
  • Work at Nat Geo
  • Sign Up for Our Newsletters
  • Contribute to Protect the Planet

Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society Copyright © 2015-2024 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

  • We're Hiring!
  • Help Center

paper cover thumbnail

Consuming destruction: The Nuclear Tourist

Profile image of Yuri Lau

Related Papers

Conny Bogaard

Since the end of the Cold War atomic tourism has seen a renaissance that continues today. Yet, motivations to travel to atomic tourist sites have changed dramatically of late. The ongoing nuclear arms race as well as near or real disasters with nuclear reactors have revealed a shift in interest from Cold War nostalgia to a concern with imagining the real. At the same time, atomic tourist sites have been criticized for failing in presenting the real. In this paper I will argue that whereas representations of the real tend to fail due to their political rhetoric, art can open up a space that no other language is able to fill. Atomic tourist sites therefore could engage their visitors more effectively through art. Art has the power to take the viewer to a higher level of consciousness and show what has become “unrepresentable” about our world.

the nuclear tourist pdf

Ran Zwigenberg

In a 1951 photo by Sasaki Yūichirō, a group of American GIs is shown strolling through the rubble of Hiroshima’s A-bomb Dome. With their hands in their pockets, haughty yet casual, violating what was already a sacred site for Hiroshima residents, the soldiers’ exercise in “A-bomb tourism” was reminiscent of colonial sightseeing, and the historically familiar exercise of Westerners’ power and privilege over conquered and colonized Asians. Such attitudes often dovetailed with triumphant narratives about the bomb’s power. In contrast, other GIs reacted with shock and were quite sympathetic to Hiroshima’s plight. Hiroshima city and occupation officials, however, generally sought to present military tourism as an exercise in reconciliation and transformation. Indeed, Hiroshima’s huge symbolic importance made narrating the site an imperative for both local elites and the occupation authorities, which sought to regulate and benefit from tourism. The emerging tourism industry in Hiroshima, this paper argues, played an important role in a joint US-Japanese campaign to reinterpret Hiroshima’s tragedy along lines acceptable to the emerging American Cold War agenda. Such narrative disregarded and masked the reality of radiation disease, which affected Japanese and US serviceman alike, as well as lingering bitterness towards the US. Though rarely consistent and often at odds with the uneven power relationship between Japanese and their occupiers, tourism, which already was highly politicized in Hiroshima and Japan before the war, played an important role in furthering US-Japan relations. Tourist narratives and experiences, thus, reveal the ambiguities inherent in A-bomb tourism and Hiroshima’s place in the postwar order.

Asian Business & Management

Noureddine Selmi

mira Engler

Dr. Philip Stone

museum and society

Robin C Gerster

This article examines the commemorative role played by museums of nuclear technology in the United States, particularly those supported by the government agency responsible for the nation’s nuclear weapons and reactor programs, the Department of Energy. The management of public perceptions of America’s nuclear history in these museums reflects national defence and security imperatives in the post 9/11 era. The legacy of American nuclearism is complex and contradictory, and presents a daunting challenge to curators in museums sanctioned by vested interests. The many beneficial civilian applications of nuclear technology have be balanced by the recognition of the dire destructiveness of nuclear weapons; the compulsion to celebrate American technological achievement has to be checked by the acknowledgement of the damage wrought by the military use of nuclear energy both at home and abroad. A comparison with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum suggests that nuclear ‘victory’ is more pro...

Luli van der Does

Since the Atomic-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the A-Bomb Survivors (hibakusha) have struggled through a myriad of trials and tribulations beyond our imagination. Overcoming their anger and animosity, they have chosen to shoulder the responsibility of advocating for a nuclear-free world, germinating a worldwide movement in the pursuit of universal peace. Their population, however, is fast declining, and the urgency of preserving and passing on the hibakushas’ Atomic-bomb Experience has been keenly felt in recent decades. Yet no holistic discussion has taken place as to what we can inherit and what we should pass on to future generations as the Atomicbomb Experience. This empirical study first examines the annual Peace Declarations from 1947 to 2017 to determine when the local government of Hiroshima began to raise this issue. Second, using a large database of nationwide hibakusha surveys, their authentic discourse is extensively analyzed to determine what comprises the A-bomb ...

Talgat Muldagaliev

Kiichi Fujiwara

RELATED PAPERS

F1000 - Post-publication peer review of the biomedical literature

L'Actualité économique

Allan Moscovitch

New Light on Galaxy Evolution

Sonya Delisle

Alejandro Jiménez Martín

Detlef Goller

Rym BenHalima

Karim BENMILOUD

Produsen rak bunga Bekasitimurr

Heikki Mikola

Frontiers in psychology

Daphna Oyserman

The Annals of Thoracic Surgery

chara tzavara

Indian Journal of Anaesthesia

Osbaldo Turpo Gebera

Journal of Wildlife Diseases

Carlos Machain-Williams

angel vallejo

Rolando P . Pelliccia

International Journal of Economic Practice and Policy

Nataša Papić-Blagojević

Hejab Al Fawareh

david kyaddondo

Proceedings of International Conference on Multidiciplinary Research

Nyak Mutia Ismail, S.Pd, M.Pd

Journal of Cleaner Production

JOÃO FRANCISCO SEVERO SANTOS

Photodiagnosis and Photodynamic Therapy

kenan yigit

Springer eBooks

Mady Ibrahim Kante

Education in the 21st Century

Marina Galstyan

Acta Republicana

Alexandr Stephan

See More Documents Like This

RELATED TOPICS

  •   We're Hiring!
  •   Help Center
  • Find new research papers in:
  • Health Sciences
  • Earth Sciences
  • Cognitive Science
  • Mathematics
  • Computer Science
  • Academia ©2024
  • Chernobyl Victims
  • The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
  • The Abandoned City of Pripyat
  • 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.

Previous post: Chernobyl Museum & Meeting with Klitschko

Next post: THE LONG SHADOW OF CHERNOBYL NAMED THE POYi PHOTO BOOK OF THE YEAR

The Long Shadow of Chernobyl Photo Book Now Available

Sponsorship supports The Photo Society

Gerd Ludwig Photography Institute for Artist Management Kickstarter Page Facebook Page Twitter Instagram Edition Lammerhuber Lightbox Press

Powered by Wordpress and the Thesis WordPress Theme from DIYthemes.

© Gerd Ludwig 2014. All Rights Reserved. Contact Us

Multilingual WordPress by ICanLocalize

Title: Learning the Nuclear: Educational Tourism in (Post)Industrial Sites

Preview Citation

Export citation.

Reference Manager

Learning the Nuclear: Educational Tourism in (Post)Industrial Sites

  • eBook   Free Download! (PDF)   Free Download! (ePUB)   Free Download! (MOBI)
  • Hardcover for 72.75 € Shipping in approx. 10 working days national, international shipping possible

Table Of Contents

  • About the editor
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Table of Contents
  • List of Abbreviations
  • Introduction. Nuclear Tourism as an Emerging Area of Learning about Nuclear Energy (Natalija Mažeikienė)
  • Revisiting Educational Potential of the Industrial Heritage Tourism: Ruhr Area in Germany and Ignalina Power Plant Region in Lithuania (Ilona Tandzegolskienė)
  • Introduction
  • Theory Part 1: Spatial and Social Changes of Industrial Heritage and (Post)-Industrial Landscape
  • Changes in the Conception of Heritage in the Industrialisation Period
  • The Use of Scar Metaphor in Defining the Relevance of Heritage
  • The Trends of Urban Change Dependent on Industrial Heritage Objects or Post-Industrial Landscape
  • Theory Part 2: The Possibility of Transformative-Experiential Learning Developed within Educational Tourism When Interacting with the Objects of Industrialisation Process
  • Methodology Part 3: Presentation of the Research Method of Case Study
  • Part 4. Presentation of the Research: The Case of the Ruhr Area Transformation in Germany
  • Presentation of Landschaftspark DuisburgNord in Duisburg
  • Presentation of Zollern Colliery in Dortmund
  • Presentation of the World Heritage Site Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex in Essen
  • Presentation of German Mining Museum in Bochum
  • The Industrial Heritage in the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant Region and Visaginas City
  • Generalisation
  • The Pedagogy of Dissonant Heritage: Soviet Industry in Museums and Textbooks (Linara Dovydaitytė)
  • A (Double) Dissonance in Industrial Heritage
  • Industrial Heritage: What and Whose Stories?
  • Industrial Heritage and Nostalgia
  • What’s Industrial in Industrial Museums?
  • The Narration of Soviet Industry in History Textbooks
  • Conclusions
  • Place and Language Transformations in a Post-Soviet Landscape: A Case Study of the Atomic City Visaginas (Ineta Dabašinskienė)
  • Visaginas: From the Planned Soviet Past to the No-Where Future?
  • Theoretical Approach and Methodological Remarks
  • Language Policies, Attitudes and a Sense of Belonging
  • Language, Authenticity and Commodification
  • Energy Tourism at Nuclear Power Plants: Between Educational Mission and Retention of “Safety Myth” (Eglė GerulaitienėandNatalija Mažeikienė)
  • Methodology
  • Conceptualizing Nuclear Tourism as a Specific Form of Energy and Industrial Tourism
  • A Shift from Special Interest Groups’ Tourism to Attracting Families and Children to Nuclear Power Plants
  • Energy Tourism as a Part of Corporate Branding. Creating a “Safety Myth” at the Visitor Centres of Nuclear Power Plants
  • Nuclear Power Plants as Objects of Cultural and Historical Heritage
  • Torness Nuclear Power Station as an Educational Site and Energy Tourism Attraction
  • Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant: Exploring Education and Tourist Facilities at the Enterprise Under Decommissioning
  • Visit to Ignalina NPP Closed Territory – “Security Theatre” and the Masquerade
  • Exploring Narratives of INPP at Information Centre
  • Chernobyl Museum as an Educational Site: Transforming “Dark Tourists” Into Responsible Citizens and Knowledgeable Learners (Natalija MažeikienėandEglė Gerulaitienė)
  • The Cultural Construction of Disaster in Tourism Destinations
  • Methodology of the Research
  • Chernobyl Museum as a Disaster and Dark Tourism Destination
  • Construction of the Nuclear Nation and Nuclear Belonging at the Chernobyl Museum
  • Epic Heroic Narrative in Commemorating Heroes – Clean-up Workers (Liquidators)
  • Comparing Heroic Narratives of the Chernobyl Museum with Non-heroic Representations in Other Texts: An Intertextual Reading
  • Structural Approach to the Chernobyl Disaster: Learning How the “Soviet System” Worked
  • Learning about Radiation in the Contaminated Nuclear Landscape
  • Existential Conceptualisation of Time at the Chernobyl Museum: Multiple Temporalities in the Interplay Between Chronos and Kairos
  • Kairos in the Symbolic, Philosophical and Religious Narrative on the Disaster
  • Fun in the Power Plant. Edutainment in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Tourism (Magdalena Banaszkiewicz)
  • Tourism in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Numbers and in Tourism Studies
  • Education and Entertainment in Tourism
  • Educational Nuclear Tourism in the CEZ
  • Summary and Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • What We Find Outdoors: Discovering Nuclear Tourism Through Educational Pathways (Lina Kaminskienė)
  • Pedagogical Approaches in Implementing Outdoor Education
  • Pedagogies of place: natural history
  • Landscape analysis
  • School journeys (excursions)
  • Field studies
  • Outdoor adventure activities
  • Action research
  • Cultural journalism
  • Outdoor education and problem-based learning
  • Impact of Outdoor Education: Cognitive, Affective, Social/Interpersonal and Physical/Behavioural
  • Outdoor Education and Educational Tourism
  • Outdoor Education in Different Educational Levels and Contexts
  • Outdoor education in kindergarten
  • Outdoor education in primary, lower and upper secondary schools
  • Implementation challenges
  • Outdoor Education in the Context of Developing Educational Tourism in Visaginas and Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant
  • Innovative Technological Solutions in Virtual Nuclear Education (Judita Kasperiūnienė)
  • Dominating Topics of Virtual Nuclear Education Empirical Research
  • Educational Gaming to Explore and Analyze Real-Life Issues
  • Virtually Enhanced Touring to Engage and Interact with New Knowledge
  • Geolocation Technologies of Virtual Tours Development
  • Discussion and Conclusions
  • Limitations
  • Energy Literacy in Geography Curriculum: Redefining the Role of Nuclear Power in Changing Energy Landscapes (Odeta NorkutėandNatalija Mažeikienė)
  • A New Role of Geography in Teaching and Learning Energy Literacy and Promoting Education for Sustainability
  • Energy Geography in the Curriculum of the Future and Survival
  • The Changing Energy Landscape as the Main Concept of Energy Geography
  • A New Pedagogy and Active Methods in Addressing Pedagogical Challenges and Overcoming Difficulties in Teaching Energy Geographies
  • Teaching About Nuclear Energy: Enhancing Energy Literacy and Scientific Literacy
  • Energy Literacy and Energy Issues in the National Curriculum of Geography in Lithuania
  • The Concept of Nuclear Energy in Lithuanian Textbooks on Geography
  • The Concept of Nuclear Energy in Forms 9–10
  • Identification of the Significance of Nuclear Industry
  • Revealing the Role of Nuclear Energy in the World
  • Revealing the Threats of Nuclear Energy
  • Review of the Situation of Nuclear Energy in Lithuania
  • The Concept of Nuclear Energy in Forms 11–12
  • Social and Urban Aspects of Nuclear Energy
  • Militaristic Aspects of the Use of Nuclear Energy
  • Scientific and Technological Progress and Nuclear Energy
  • Generalisation on the Explanation of Nuclear Energy in the Textbooks for Forms 10–12
  • List of Figures
  • List of Tables
  • About the Authors
  • Series index

Natalija Mažeikienė

Introduction. nuclear tourism as an emerging area of learning about nuclear energy.

Sites of nuclear energy research, development and testing of nuclear weapons, atomic energy reactors or places of nuclear disasters are becoming attractive tourist destinations. The authors of this book discuss the educational potential of nuclear tourism and learning about nuclear power in informal and non-formal learning settings. This monograph is an outcome of a research project EDUATOM devoted to the elaboration of the virtual nuclear tourism route in Ignalina Power Plant region in Lithuania 1 .

On the one hand, the popularity of nuclear tourism is related to the development of energy tourism, which has long been a niche and expert-based tourism, attracting engineers, scientists, high school students studying nuclear physics, chemistry, engineering, and recently has been undergoing a transformation by opening up to new groups of tourists – students of all ages and citizens of different groups. On the other hand, the rise of nuclear tourism has been related to the cultural processes of heritagization when the history of nuclear energy research and the atomic energy industry have become an issue of atomic heritage that serves for the identity building of nations and communities. Such heritagization of the atomic past in the U.S. is exemplified by exhibitions and museums established in atomic cities, at nuclear weapons complexes, and other venues to construct the memory on the era of the atomic bomb development under the Manhattan Project during the Cold War period (Mollela, 2003 ).

A positive approach towards atomic heritage referring to atomic energy industry represents an idea of scientific achievements and promises of the atomic era. On the contrary, atomic heritage related to nuclear disasters (The Chernobyl Museum, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, etc.) and disastrous use of nuclear weapons (Hiroshima Peace Memoria in Japan, the Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site in the Marshall Islands, Kakadu National Park in Australia) represents ←12 | 13→ a dystopian account by representing the dark and difficult pasts (Storm et al., 2019 ). Both utopian and dystopian visions of the use of the atom created at these heritage sites appeal to a broader public imaginary of nuclear and radioactive dangers and disasters (Ibid.).

Heritagization of the atomic past and development of tourism at nuclear power plants is incorporated into the broader process of creating value of industrial heritage, when the memory of the industrial past in post-industrial society begins to be nurtured and industrial landscapes, buildings, and artifacts start to be treated as valuable cultural objects that must be preserved. In this process, nuclear power plants with closed reactors and damaged landscapes become objects of industrial heritage (Storm, 2014 ).

In the chapter Revisiting Educational Potential of the Industrial Heritage Tourism: Ruhr Area in Germany and Ignalina Power Plant Region in Lithuania , the co-author of this book , Ilona Tandzegolskienė discusses how educational industrial tourism in the (post)-industrial landscapes becomes a transformative experience, preserves memory, promotes urban development, and identity building. Narrative practices in educational tourism, art projects, and entertainment activities connect landscape and industrial facilities with memory and human experience of local community and tourists. These practices of interpretation of the past and present become a means of constructing a new post-industrial identity of the community. However, this process of remembrance and creating a heritage has a contradictory nature since the industrial past and industrialization are associated in many cases with negative painful processes of the obstructive and devastating impact on the landscape, natural environment, social development, and local identity. Scholars use the metaphor of wound and scar to express this negative element in the nature of industrial heritage (Storm, 2014 ). Authors analysing the industrial past in Lithuania (Drėmaitė, 2002 , 2012 ) reveal negative meanings ascribed to industrialization which is associated with Soviet legacy. Industrialization falls into the category of dissonant heritage, inconvenient, and unwanted past.

The co-author of this book, Linara Dovydaitytė, dedicates the chapter The Pedagogy of Dissonant Heritage: Soviet Industry in Museums and Textbooks to heritagization of the nuclear industry in Lithuania and reveals features of the memory work on the nuclear past. In the post-Soviet politics of memory (including public pedagogy and educational discourse), the Soviet industry is treated as a difficult legacy since it is associated not only with modernization but also related with Soviet occupation, environmental issues, and negative impact on the social and cultural identity of citizens. INPP and nuclear industry in Lithuania are considered in the public political discourse as a Soviet nuclear ←13 | 14→ project, and in this sense, the past of the nuclear industry does not fall into the category of valuable heritage. At the same time, conflictual interpretation of the Soviet industrial past leads to problematic development of the identity of post-industrial society since the work and life of former industrial communities are not being interpreted as valuable and memorable. That is why the contradictory nature of heritagization of the industrial past poses challenges for tourism and public pedagogy (museums and other educational sites). The authors of this book emphasize the importance of combining the critical thinking approach with empathy to local communities and formal workers of the industry.

In this regard, Ineta Dabašinskienė, the author of the chapter Place and Language Transformations in a Post-Soviet Landscape: A Case study of the Atomic City Visaginas , poses a question how after the closure of the INPP the unique multilingual and multicultural profile of the atomic town Visaginas can become a valuable resource for the education and tourism which would contribute to producing an economic value and building a new positively affirmed post-nuclear identity.

Nuclear tourism is analysed in the book as a specific case of energy tourism. On the one hand, excursions and activities of the Visitor Centres are aimed at developing STEM, energy literacy and environmental skills; on the other hand, loyalty of energy companies’ consumers has been formed. Furthermore, energy companies conduct corporate branding and public relations through tourism, seek to shape positive attitudes of energy consumers and citizens towards energy sources and energy companies. The co-authors of this book, Eglė Gerulaitienė and Natalija Mažeikienė, present a critical assessment of nuclear tourism in the chapter Energy Tourism at Nuclear Power Plants: Between Educational Mission and Retention of the “Safety Myth” , discussing the features of nuclear tourism at atomic reactors. Visitors to nuclear power plants participate in the educational process by gaining knowledge in various fields about the operation of nuclear power plants, participating in STEM education, and improving energy literacy. Alongside all this education, pronuclear indoctrination takes place, when nuclear tourism becomes a means of persuasion and purposeful communication of the nuclear industry, to form pro-nuclear attitudes and positive opinion about the nuclear energy industry and specific companies. Nuclear power plants use tourism to demonstrate security practices and procedures, strengthening the image of a reliable and safe industry. Another important development in nuclear tourism is the transition from expert-based to experience-based tourism, whereas nuclear reactors, like other industrial and energy tourism objects, attract tourists due to their specific physical qualities – exceptional grandeur, unusual appearance, ←14 | 15→ and shape. When visiting large-scale industrial facilities, tourists experience special strong feelings – admiration for the majesty of industrial ‘cathedrals’. The experience of tourists in nuclear reactors is twofold – on the one hand, visitors are aware of the dangers posed by radiation, and this causes a special thrill. On the other hand, the safety procedures organized at nuclear power plants involve tourists in ‘security theatre’ performances, which also create special feelings and experiences for visitors and explains the attractiveness of this tourist destination.

In addition to excursions organized by energy companies and nuclear power plants, other nuclear tourism destinations also attract tourists’ attention. Natalija Mažeikienė and Eglė Gerulaitienė, co-authors of the chapter Chernobyl Museum as an Educational Site: Transforming ‘Dark Tourists’ into Responsible Citizens and Knowledgeable Learners , analyse the educational potential of the Chernobyl Museum as a cultural interpretation of nuclear disaster. Whereas expositions of nuclear power plants reflect an optimistic narrative presenting the nuclear energy as a future technology, antinuclear critical discourse on the unsafety of atomic industry and nuclear accidents (50 Miles, Chernobyl, Fukushima) is represented by museums, art projects, and tourist facilities which are not connected to the atomic industry. These sites raise questions about the real costs of nuclear energy – how much it ‘costs’ in terms of human health and life, evaluating its impact on the environment and future generations.

These ‘dark’ sites of nuclear energy disasters are memorials of the unsafety of nuclear energy, the danger to humanity and nature. Nuclear disaster-related museums and tourist destinations are a unique way to culturally construct a nuclear disaster, and it becomes a result of collective imagination and memory work. Nuclear disaster sites, museums, and memorials as a variety of dark tourism present people’s suffering and victimhood.

In this sense, a narrative on the mentioned objects differs from the optimistic story told by power plants, which radiates safety and reliability. Such places as the Chernobyl Museum has become a valuable spot to learn – it introduces the visitor to a structural approach to disaster, tells a story of how organizations and communities mobilized response efforts to disasters. That is why it has turned into a precious source for civic education and studying history. The Museum constructs and depicts the nuclear community, covers themes of nuclear geography, represents a critical historical approach to Soviet-regulated nuclear science and nuclear energy, which led to the disaster. In addition to the educational potential, the nuclear disaster expositions are designed to awaken the visitors’ existential experiences – to feel sublime – the ungraspable ←15 | 16→ existential feeling of horror. The artistic installations at the Chernobyl Museum evoke deep philosophical and religious thoughts, contemplations, and feelings.

Nuclear disaster tourism combines an educational impact, which embraces rich knowledge from history, geography, sociology, nuclear energy, biology, and the environmental sciences. At the same time, the cultural construction of the Chernobyl catastrophe appeals to a broader area of nuclear imaginary dealing with dystopian post-apocalyptic images of nuclear disasters that were created in cinematography, literature, artworks (i.e. Andrei Tarkovsky’s movie ‘Stalker’, Svetlana Alexievich’s famous book on Chernobyl). It constructs prerequisites to establish stronger ties between non-formal learning in museums and tourist destinations and formal learning by using the intertextuality approach – by combining resources in outdoor education with school curriculum texts and using fiction, documentary and feature films.

Magdalena Banaszkiewicz, while discussing intensive touristification of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in the chapter Fun in the Power Plant. Edutainment in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Tourism reveals how entertainment is created by appealing to the nuclear tourism imaginary stimulated by the global popular culture (i.e. video game ‘S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’, HBO series Chernobyl ). Nuclear tourism in the Chernobyl Zone seeks to create visitors’ specific experience, which becomes a mixture of thrill, sense of risk, and excitement. Magdalena Banaszkiewicz describes new approaches in tourism when tourism based on principles of pleasure and relaxation 3S (sun, sea, sand) gives up position to 3E (entertainment, education, excitement) and 3F (fun, friends, feedback). Combining entertainment with education, tours to The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, can be turned from the ethically controversial endeavour of dark and toxic tourism to activities which ‘can provide a strong educational experience, raising awareness about the current environmental issues and the polluted environmental conditions around us’ (Di Chiro (2000), cit. by Yankowska and Hannam, 2014, p. 937).

The authors of this book discuss how cooperation between educators in the tourism sector and those in formal education can take place. In the chapter What We Find Outdoors: Discovering Nuclear Tourism Through Educational Pathways , Lina Kaminskienė analyses the concept of outdoor education, deliberating the possibilities of using educational resources outside the school. Educational nuclear tourism includes a specific form of non-formal education which creates an educational potential for visitors when links with formal education are strengthened through the implementation of contextual learning, place-based education, and region-focused curriculum. The concept of outdoor education is applied in the sites of nuclear tourism through school ←16 | 17→ journeys, field trips, and other events and educational activities. According to Kaminskienė, outdoor education in nuclear tourism sites could be organized through place-based education which incorporates concepts of experiential education, community-based education, and education for sustainability.

Biographical notes

Natalija Mažeikienė (Volume editor)

Natalija Mažeikiene˙ is a Full Professor at Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania. Her areas of interest include critical theory, educational innovations, innovative teaching and learning strategies, curriculum development. She is a leading researcher in the project ‘The Didactical Technology for the Development of Nuclear Educational Tourism in the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) Region (EDUATOM)’.

Key Subject Areas

  • English Studies
  • German Studies
  • History & Political Science
  • Law, Economics & Management
  • Linguistics
  • Media & Communication
  • Romance Studies
  • Science, Society and Culture
  • Slavic Studies
  • Theology & Philosophy
  • Peter Lang Classics

IMAGES

  1. Amazon.co.jp: The Nuclear Tourist (English Edition) eBook : Ferguson

    the nuclear tourist pdf

  2. Nuclear Tourism: When atomic tests were a tourist attraction in Las

    the nuclear tourist pdf

  3. The Nuclear Tourist An unforeseen legacy of the Chernobyl meltdown

    the nuclear tourist pdf

  4. (PDF) Consuming destruction: The Nuclear Tourist

    the nuclear tourist pdf

  5. Nuclear Tourism: When atomic tests were a tourist attraction in Las

    the nuclear tourist pdf

  6. The Nuclear Tourist by Jess Rizzo on Prezi Next

    the nuclear tourist pdf

VIDEO

  1. Submarine TK 208 Dmitry Donskoy

  2. Nuclear Countries 🚀

  3. Russia Threatens Nuclear Action, The US and UK Don’t Believe Them, Canada And Poland Respond

  4. What Kind of Nuclear Expert is This?

  5. Real Facts About North Korea You Didn't Know

  6. A Russian Tourist's Journey into North Korea : Unraveling the Enigma

COMMENTS

  1. PDF The Nuclear Tourist

    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.

  2. The Nuclear Tourist

    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 ...

  3. The Nuclear Tourist

    The Nuclear Tourist - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. Scribd is the world's largest social reading and publishing site.

  4. The Nuclear Tourist by Nicola Ferguson

    In the brutal confines of The Facility, the most brilliant minds in history are resurrected and cloned. Isolated and approaching breaking point, at just seventeen Dane is one of their rising stars. Sent to Chernobyl to investigate a series of inexplicable deaths, linked only by the presence of a rare nuclear isotope, an accident propels Dane ...

  5. PDF Nuclear Tourism and the Manhattan Project

    Abstract. Upon the opening of the nuclear age, the public has become enthralled in everything atomic. From fears to fascinations, the sheer power of nuclear weapons has drastically altered the world we live in. Films and books on the topic have traditionally served as cultural indicators of the importance of this scientific and technological ...

  6. (PDF) Consuming destruction: The Nuclear Tourist

    See Full PDFDownload PDF. Yuri Lau (0210161) Literature Across Cultures Consuming destruction: The Nuclear Tourist Introduction A lot has changed since July 16th 1945, when the first atomic explosion ever was witnessed by scientists and other spectators near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The 'Trinity Test' inaugurated the nuclear-era, which has ...

  7. PDF current

    Current or recent nuclear power related topics of interest to the general public include: Industry Consolidation. Design Basis Reconstruction. License Renewal. Recent Terrorism Events. Recent Events at Nuclear Plants. Department of Energy and Private Spent Fuel Storage Facilities. Privatization of the US Nuclear Fuel Enrichment and Use of ...

  8. National Geographic Magazine Publishes "The Nuclear Tourist"

    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 ...

  9. PDF Wichita USD 259

    Wichita USD 259 is the official website of the Wichita Public Schools, the largest school district in Kansas. The website provides various resources and information for students, parents, staff, and community members. One of the resources is a PDF file that contains the 9th grade English Language Arts curriculum for week 6, which covers topics such as argumentative writing, vocabulary, and ...

  10. Nuclear Tourism: Journal for Cultural Research: Vol 8 , No 1

    Nuclear Tourism. This essay describes a new post‐war pilgrim—the nuclear tourist who visits the sites where the first nuclear bombs were created and tested. Some such pilgrims are history enthusiasts, some are impelled by diffusely patriotic impulses, and others go to protest nuclear weapons. All go to "imagine the real"—or at least ...

  11. PDF Nuclear Tourist

    Nuclear Tourist

  12. Pages 742-757 George Johnson's The Nuclear Tourist, A

    McGee of 303 and Learnstrong.net lectures from the Freshman edition of the MyPerspectives text: Pages 742-757: George Johnson's The Nuclear Tourist, A

  13. Nuclear Tourism

    This essay describes a new post‐war pilgrim—the nuclear tourist who visits the sites where the first nuclear bombs were created and tested. Some such pilgrims are history enthusiasts, some are impelled by diffusely patriotic impulses, and others go to protest nuclear weapons. All go to "imagine the real"—or at least their insufficient version of it. The 50th anniversary of the first ...

  14. The Nuclear Tourist Flashcards

    The Nuclear Tourist author. George Johnson. basic plot. The story is set after the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Point in Pripyat, Ukraine. The story is about the new tourism that has began 28 years after the explosion because people are interested in the affects of the disaster and the "ghost town".

  15. PDF ELA

    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.

  16. The Virtual Nuclear Tourist

    The Virtual Nuclear Tourist - Questions about Nuclear Power !!!! A revision to the site is in progress to eliminate broken links and update the site about new reactor trends and designs. My intent is to make more use of PDF pages and combine pages, where appropriate. Due toa a request from some who use the website for online courses, I will ...

  17. PDF EDUCATIONAL ASPECTS OF NUCLEAR TOURISM: SITES, OBJECTS ...

    Nuclear tourism can be considered as a specific form of energy tourism. This specific area of tourism is characterized by the tourism attractiveness of industrial sites in the country, new ...

  18. Learning the Nuclear: Educational Tourism in (Post)Industrial Sites

    Summary. This book illuminates the educational potential of nuclear tourism and learning about nuclear power in informal and non-formal learning settings. The authors present a case of elaboration of the educational virtual nuclear route in the Ignalina Power Plant Region, Lithuania. Nuclear tourism takes its shape at the junction of several ...

  19. PDF Reactor Protection & Engineered Safety Feature Systems

    damage to the vehicle, the reactor operator has indications. Important ones are discussed below. Multiple different techniques of sensing abnormal conditions - this is referred to as diversity Devices with pre-set static or variable setpoints Circuits that sense coincidence of several channels/trains reaching or exceeding the same setpoint. This practice is used to prevent false actuation.

  20. (PDF) EDUCATIONAL ASPECTS OF NUCLEAR TOURISM: SITES ...

    PDF | On Jul 1, 2018, Natalija Mažeikienė and others published EDUCATIONAL ASPECTS OF NUCLEAR TOURISM: SITES, OBJECTS AND MUSEUMS | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

  21. Negotiating post-nuclear identities through tourism development in the

    ABSTRACT. This article considers how, by applying participatory approaches and involving stakeholders in tourism development as a process of interpretation of the nuclear past, present, and post-nuclear future, variant forms of tourism (energy, nuclear, Soviet industrial heritage, recreational) promoting different narratives might stimulate change and negotiation around local identity in the ...

  22. PDF Copyright © 1996-2008. The Virtual Nuclear Tourist. All rights reserved

    Turkey Point Nuclear Plant, Units 3 and 4, Supplement 1 NUREG-1800 Standard Review Plan for Review of License Renewal Applications for Nuclear Power Plants NUREG-1803 Safety Evaluation Report Related to the License Renewal of the Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Plant, Units 1 and 2

  23. PDF FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NEWS RELEASE March 5, 2024

    pesticides, lead, asbestos, certain paints, nuclear weapons, x-rays, and more. We want to bring all of these Veterans to VA for the care they've earned and deserve." FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 5, 2024. VA Manchester Healthcare System . C ontact: Lori Flynn, Public A ffairs Officer (603) 624- 4366 x 6 7 7 9 . Lori.Flynn @va.gov. NEWS RELEASE

  24. PDF Copyright © 1996-2008. The Virtual Nuclear Tourist. All rights reserved

    Vacuum Building The Vacuum Building System is used in the CANDU plant design. Typically, a single Vacuum Building is used for each site. Bruce 1-4, Bruce 5-8, Pickering 1-8, Point Lepreau, and Gentilly each have one.