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Tourism is New Hampshire’s second-largest industry–if you combine the state’s smart manufacturing and high technology sectors (SMHT). It’s also a clear point of intersection between government and industry, with the state maintaining a number of parks, campgrounds, and historical sites, and nearby businesses in turn catering to visitors’ needs. Given this close relationship, the state provides funding to market New Hampshire to potential tourists. Some of the heaviest marketing efforts are concentrated in Boston, Philadelphia and New York City. Canadian tourists, especially Quebeçois, also make up a sizable number of New Hampshire’s visitors. From the business perspective, “tourism” is a broad term. It encompasses hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail, and arts and entertainment, among other things. So while statewide reports may indicate overall restaurant or retail sales are up or down, the story might be very different in New Hampshire’s main tourism communities. For these places, weather, gas prices, currency exchange rates, and whether they draw visitors for outdoor activities, site-seeing, or shopping could all be factors.Summary provided by StateImpact NH
You can read George Johnson's full article and see more photos from his trip at this link: The Nuclear Tourist and also in the October print issue of National Geographic. On April 26th, 1986, shortly after 1am, Reactor Four at the Chernobyl nuclear power complex experienced a sudden, and catastrophic, power surge. The accident set off a series of explosions, a fire, and released massive amounts of radioactive material into the environment. Within months of the meltdown, twenty eight workers died from radiation and more than 350,000 people were relocated. Over the ensuing years, related deaths have been harder to pin down, with estimates ranging from 4,000 to over 200,000. 28 years later, it is a tourist destination. George Johnson recently visited Chernobyl, and its surrounding villages, he spoke with Virginia about his trip. You can listen to the segment below. The following is an excerpt from The Nuclear Tourist from the October issue of National Geographic magazine: "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. "
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While television audiences watch the nightly news of the unfolding nuclear tragedy in Japan, others are experiencing the aftermath of nuclear disaster firsthand. They are traveling to the Chernobyl Exclusion zone – as tourists.
Until now, few groups have had the chance to visit Chernobyl and its contaminated surroundings. But on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the world worst nuclear accident to date, the Ukrainian government legalized such tours and hopes for one million visitors to the zone in 2012. The first tours are already underway. Visitors’ paperwork gets inspected at the Dityatki checkpoint before moving on to the Monument to the Firefighters in Chernobyl, erected to honor those killed by the nuclear disaster. Two plant workers died immediately in the blast and another 28 workers and firemen soon succumbed to radiation poisoning, and thousands more have died of cancer. Geiger counters sound an eerie concert when tours continue to the failed reactor where radiation is still so high that guides ask visitors to stay on the paved paths “as radiation is substantially higher on the grassy ground”. The most arresting attraction, however, is the ghost town of Pripyat less than 3km from the failed reactor. In 1970 it was constructed for the plant’s personal. Once a beautiful town, its 50,000 inhabitants were evacuated 36 hours after the accident. Visitors get to wander through the debris-strewn corridors and empty classrooms of one of its biggest schools. Hundreds of discarded gas masks litter the floor of the canteen. In a kindergarten children’s cots are littered with shreds of mattresses and pillows and in a gymnasium floors rot and paint peels. But during the 25 years following the accident, scavengers have removed many items that were of any use. And now tourism is leaving its own mark: Pripyat less and less bears witness to the hasty departure of the former residents. Instead, there are many signs of the visitors’ need to simplify the message, – most noticeably the doll, neatly arranged next to a gas mask has become the standard motif.
Map of Nuclear tourism Nuclear tourism is travel to places connected with nuclear research and technology, places where there have been atomic explosions, or places related to peaceful or wartime use of nuclear energy. They include:
Get ready[edit]
Although in many of the nuclear tourism sites only background radiation can be detected, in some other visitors are confronted with higher levels. These include mainly sites related to nuclear accidents and weapons testing. When visiting places with increased radiation, it is reasonable to be equipped with a radiation monitor in order to have control over radiation exposure. The most common devices in a reasonable price range usually contain a Geiger-Müller counter. They are suitable for detection of gamma, x-ray, alpha and beta radiation, typically expressed as counts per second. In other devices the registered gamma radiation is converted in units of dose rate or absorbed dose. These basic counters can not provide information about individual isotopes, natural or man-made, but simply sum up all registered radiation. In order to be able to use the radiation monitor it is essential to get familiar with the units and ranges of the measured values to evaluate the information obtained from the counter. Additionally, one has to be aware of a strong variation of natural background radiation, which depends mainly on local geology. Sites of nuclear explosions[edit]Bombed cities[edit]1 Hiroshima, Japan, was a target of the first nuclear attack ever on 6 August 1945. Nowadays the event with 90,000–166,000 civilian victims is commemorated at the Atomic Bomb Memorial Museum and in Peace Memorial Park, including the iconic A-Bomb Dome and Children's Peace Monument covered by colorful paper cranes for bomb victim, Sadako Sasaki. Ground Zero is slightly outside of the park not far from the Atomic Bomb Dome. Another nuclear bomb was dropped three days later on the industrial town of 2 Nagasaki, Japan, with more than 100,000 victims. Visitors can learn about the tragic piece of history in the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum or the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, both near ground zero. The aircraft that dropped nuclear weapons on Japanese civilians are in US museums. Enola Gay (the plane which bombed Hiroshima) is displayed at the Udvar-Hazy Center (part of Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum) in Chantilly, Virginia ; Bockscar (which bombed Nagasaki) is on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio. See the Pacific War article for the events leading up to the bombs. Weapon test sites[edit]Eight countries have carried out confirmed nuclear weapon tests to determine the capability of their weapons, mostly in their own respective territories. The United States conducted the first and the most numerous tests, mostly in Nevada. Others carrying out tests included Russia (then the Soviet Union), the UK, India, France, and China. Pakistan, followed by North Korea, conducted the last nuclear weapon tests. Sites where weapon tests were conducted can be visited in these countries for adventure.
Peaceful use of nuclear explosions[edit]In the USA, 27 peaceful nuclear explosions were conducted within Operation Plowshare to test the use of nuclear explosions for various civilian purposes, such as excavating channels or harbors and stimulating natural gas production from sediment layers. Most of the shots were performed at the Nevada test site; however, some of the test sites in Colorado and New Mexico are accessible for the public.
Sites of nuclear accidents[edit]Some might find it unethical or at least controversial for tourists to visit sites where many people suffered following an accident, especially if local guides are repeatedly exposed to radiation when leading tour groups through exclusion zones too "hot" for residents to return. Conversely, some welcome tourism as an alternative means to support local economies. Accidents in nuclear power plants or nuclear materials production sites[edit]
Accidents of nuclear weapon carrying aircraft[edit]During the Cold War there were several accidents involving thermonuclear weapons, and some of them led to local environment contamination. These are a few of them.
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"Manhattan Project", named for the Manhattan Engineering District of the US Army Corps of Engineers, is a cover name for a war-time US military effort to develop an atomic weapon. Geographically, the project was spread over about 30 sites across the United States (and Canada). The best known are the secret laboratory in Los Alamos and factories to supply the fissile materials by enriching uranium and producing plutonium in reactors in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford site near Richland, Washington. These three sites are also formally recognized as Manhattan Project National Historical Park.
Atomic museums[edit]
Research reactors[edit]Several sites operate nuclear reactors for either nuclear reactor safety training or for nuclear science experiments using them as neutron sources. Neutron scattering is an effective ways to obtain information on the structure and the dynamics of condensed matter. These days accelerators like the Spallation Neutron Source based in Oakridge allow more intense neutron beams. Nevertheless several reactors are in on-going operations. Fundamental and solid state physics, chemistry, materials science, biology, medicine and environmental science pose scientific questions that are investigated with neutrons. In contrast to nuclear fission, where unstable atoms decay into smaller atoms, there exists also an attempt of nuclear fusion, where energy would be gained by processes similarly to what happens in the core of stars by the fusion of two light elements in a heavier one. ITER is an international nuclear research and engineering project to build the first the world's largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor. Operating reactors[edit]
Decommissioned reactors[edit]
Other[edit]Nuclear power plant building sites never finished[edit]Some nuclear power plants never had a nuclear fission reaction happening on their site, as they were not turned on.
[edit]Germany, which had had some leading nuclear scientists before the war (some of whom fled the country after the Nazi takeover due to being Jewish, opposed to the regime or both), developed a much more modest and less advanced nuclear program than the Allies. It received less funding and was hampered by Nazi ideology which rejected some of Albert Einstein's findings as "Jewish Physics", but its speculated existence during the war was one of the driving factors for the Manhattan project.
Nuclear bunkers[edit]Nuclear bunkers were meant to protect in the case of nuclear weapon explosions. During the cold war this threat was considered imminent, hence many key figures would need access to such bunkers. While nothing was likely to withstand a direct hit, bunkers were built far underground to survive a nuclear strike which landed as close as 1 mile (1.6 km) away. Fallout shelters were intended to shelter populations in areas far from the targets of a nuclear strike; these communities were likely to be spared direct blast damage but still become dangerously radioactive in the initial days or weeks after an attack. Often, civil defence authorities would make provision for a posted fallout shelter in the basement of a library, post office, school or other large public building. In some countries building regulations even pushed for bunkers in the cellars of small domestic buildings.
Nuclear weapon sites[edit]
[edit]Nuclear waste is a big headache in all nuclear applications as it remains dangerous for timespans humans cannot generally oversee. There are various philosophies as to what to do with the waste, including putting it into abandoned salt mines as salt has high stability to waste heat (nuclear waste produces a lot of heat) and salt tends to naturally seal cavities. However, salt is vulnerable to water entering and there is the danger of that water connecting to groundwater, as has happened at several salt mines.
Non-categorized[edit]
Stay safe[edit]One obvious concern in touring nuclear sites is radiation. In fact, good news is that most of the sites listed above are safe from this point of view. Where obvious danger exists, you should be usually stopped by fence and other security measures. In case you happen to find yourself in a less safe situation or unknown suspicious area, you will hopefully be equipped with a radiation monitor and good knowledge of how to use it. It's important to know how to interpret the readings and/or convert the units. Although officially there is nothing like a safe level or radiation, there are some levels that can help to put the numbers into context. These are some examples:
The way to protect yourself against external radiation exposure (like radiation coming from soil polluted with radioactive fallout) is to limit the time spent in the polluted area and keep your distance from the source (hot spots). During your exploration you certainly want to avoid internal contamination, that means ingesting radionuclides by eating or drinking contaminated food, or inhaling radioactive particles. Some easy protective measures are therefore avoiding eating and drinking and wearing a respirator. If there may be radioactive dust or water, you also want to avoid carrying that out from the area in your clothes or hair. Be sure to get clean before touching any food or anything that you will regard clean. Another kind of more general risks can arise from exploration of abandoned or off-limits urban locations. These include injuries or possible legal consequences. For more details check the Urbex article. See also[edit]
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