Vacation Spot? Are you kidding?

On Our Radar: Chernobyl to Open to Tourists

Ukraine will open the sealed zone around the doomed Chernobyl nuclear reactor to visitors beginning next year, the country’s Emergency Situations Ministry declared. The nuclear reactor exploded nearly 25 years ago, killing dozens and spreading radioactivity across Europe. A spokeswoman for the Ukrainian agency says the tour will be medically safe and will be “positive in conveying very important messages.” [Associated Press]


A new highway from Moscow to St. Petersburg will be built through an ancient oak forest, despite strong opposition from conservationists, a top official states. This year, President Demetri A. Medvedev of Russia ordered a halt to construction, leading environmentalists to believe they had won a rare victory in the country. The latest announcement appears to put the highway back on track, however. [The Guardian]

Sure there is an interest in seeing the effects and devastation experienced there. But I really want to glow with a nice tan rather than radiation burns. No vacation plans to Chernobyl for me.

Nuke Loans? WTF!

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Next in Line for a Bailout: The Nuclear Industry?

The Obama Administration has been pretty upfront about its support for an energy policy that promotes both clean energy technologies and renewed investment in old technologies such as nuclear, coal and offshore drilling. "I think that on energy there should be a bipartisan agreement that we have to take a both/and approach rather than an either/or approach," the President said just last week.


Friends of the Earth released a statement this weekend criticizing the Obama Administration's reported decision to provide loan guarantees for the construction of two nuclear reactors in Georgia. The reactors would be part of the first new nuclear power plant to be built in the US in almost 30 years.


President Obama has presented his support for nuclear power, so-called "clean coal" projects and offshore drilling as both a gesture to Republicans and a pragmatic approach to supplying America's future energy needs, arguing that "we can't overnight convert to an all-solar or an all-wind economy."

How abour bailout loans for those suffering from cancer clustered near nuke plants? How about bailouts for those whose lives are ruined by mining "clean coal?"