I have been on the waiting for two years for a depth permit to tour Pripyat and Chernobyl. They offer limited tours (busload type), but then there are depth tours where it is just you and a escort with a radiation meter for 3 days (not inside the area, you overnight the safe zone). But they fill up quick and I have been waiting (hoping) for a future cancellation that will get me in faster.
You can see a lot of images, details, etc.. at the site
http://kiddofspeed.com/
Although there is/has been controversy over the site and the girl for lifting pics that belong to other people and sources, you still get a good idea what the area is like and what happened there.
This is from another site may want to read this before you go
I can't claim past or current participation - or even participation envy - regarding most of the stuff you ground pounders discuss, but on this one I may be one of our only members who can literally say, in this case, BTDT. Based on that, there's no way you or anyone is dragging me back to that place, even with a trackhoe and anchor chain. I'd say no way in hell, except that place is about as close to hell as I've ever been. I'd say no way on God's green earth, but that doesn't really apply there, either.
However, if you insist on going, here are a few tourist tips:
1. Don't drink the water.
2. Don't even touch the water.
3. Don't touch anything that has moss, ivy, or lichen growing on it.
4. Don't touch anything that lives in/on or eats moss, ivy, or lichen.
5. If you messed up with items 1 though 4, wash with luke warm water and soap, not using any of the local water.
6. Bring your own bottled water and liquid hand soap.
7. The big game hunting for bear, elk, and boar may be fun, but you don't want to eat anything that lives there.
8. Beware of the wild boars. Seriously. They are not scared of you, they will eat almost anything including your carcass, they don't mind making you into an edible carcass, and they are uniformly radioactive to mind-boggling levels so that just getting nuzzled by a friendly one (if they exist) is still very bad.
9. Stay far away from the giant field full of hundreds of abandoned trucks and helicopters. The one eyed snaggle toothed thieves there are even more dangerous than the radiationthere , and that's saying something.
10. Beware of anyone you meet in the dead zone away from the power plant, regardless of whether they have a uniform. If possible, go armed.
11. The hospitality of the elderly locals may be genuine, but it may also require you to touch or consume things you shouldn't.
12. The hospitality of the not so elderly locals should always set off your danger alarm. They didn't bother building cell phone towers there, and there is nobody to hear you scream.
13. Everybody wants to go to Pripyat and have their picture taken at the old amusement park. Watch out for stupid discarded crap there, like dirty needles and used condoms. If it looks like a cool spot for a picture, a thousand scumbags have preceded you there. Again, beware of moss, ivy, and inside the buildings especially watch out for mold.
14. Stay away from rusty metal if you can because it is more likely to be radioactive. Nevermind, you can't. It's all rusty.
15. Bring a few of bottles of vodka. It might as well be legal tender when dealing with the local security people. For best results offer to share the bottle with them instead of just handing it over, which might actually offend them.
If for some stupid reason you must actually visit the powerplant:
16. Unit 3 looks just like Unit 4 did, except backwards. Go there for the "before" look. If possible, leave then, quickly.
17. Do not go into Unit 4 if you can avoid it. In fact, don't go there unless you are being actively chased by a radioactive wild boar.
18. If you managed to screw up #17, stay away from anything that looks like a chunk of concrete with rebar sticking out.
19. If you managed to screw up #18, kick what looks like concrete. If it doesn't move easily, resume breathing. If it does move easily, it is actually radioactive graphite from the core, and you might as well go ahead and start making those final arrangements. The concrete and graphite chunks are both in great abundance and they look very similar in poor lighting.
20. About that poor lighting - bring multiple sources of light. You don't want to be there in the dark, and it will always be dark in the one spot where you need to see.
21. Disregard anything resembling maps of the inside of the building. The original building plans went out the window with the explosion, which relocated walls, stairs, rooms, plumbing, etc. The maps made since then are highly undependable and were in some cases made by people sitting outside in a nice warm truck with a pencil, the back of a C ration box, and an active imagination.
22. Don't let anything drip on you. It will happen anyway, but try to minimize it. For that reason, be sure to have at least one layer of disposable clothing on the outside of whatever else you are wearing. Something waterproof would be best, along with waterproof boots you won't mind throwing away.
23. Don't get sucked into the coolness of visiting the elephant's foot. Remember that part about radiation being colorless, odorless, and tasteless? Well, it's different way down there. You can smell the ozone in the air, like before a lightning storm. It's caused by the gamma rays ionizing the atmosphere, which causes a cascade of beta rays from the air. You can even taste the radioactive air on your tongue, sort of like sucking on a penny. If you can smell and taste the ionized air, you can run away, but you may have already been there too long. If you want to see the elephant's foot, do a Google image search, but for pete's sake don't go down there.
24. In the turbine hall, stay off the catwalks, away from anyplace with ceiling leakage, and out of the lower levels. That's more of a safety issue than a radiation issue, but any twisted ankle that slows you down leaves you in the radiation field longer.
25. If you managed to screw up #24, have a good first aid kit with you. Again, there is no 9-1-1 and nobody to hear you scream. Nobody, that is, that you want to hear you scream.
26. Photographic film might get exposed inside its canister by the radiation, so you are better off with a digital camera. However, in the nastier places (such as the elephant's foot) the fields are intense enough to screw up microchips, so don't take anything electronic unless it is military grade EMP resistant. For the same reason, anything with a magnetic bar code on it (like perhaps your American drivers license) shouldn't go into those areas, so ensure that you have some other means of corpse identification on you.
Happy hunting, boys and girls! I'll await your after action report on the elk you shot there, how beautiful its rack was, the condition of its teeth, and how many tumors you found inside what you had hoped to eat.
