Since 2011, the year that the Ukrainian government has opened the doors of the exclusion zone to tourism, about 15 thousand people per year crosses the border of radiation.
There are now dozens of tour operators from Kiev organizing the all-inclusive "Chernobyl tour", a day in the most significant places of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Tourists come from all over the world: US, Europe, Australia, Japan, South America, with the most different reasons: fans of abandoned places or tourists of extreme places, people interested in history or to see with their own eyes the consequences of a nuclear accident. Or just curious.
Despite the eternal dilemma whether it is right or not ethically that a place that surrounds one of the most catastrophic tragedies of the modern era could become a tourist attraction, today tourism in this new Pompeii has become crucial. It helps the local economy, 15 thousand people per year are not for a few in an abandoned and interdict place.