Chernobyl HBO full-day tour − filming locations and real experience

Itinerary
This is a typical itinerary for this product

Stop At: Chernobyl Power Plant, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine

HBO’s Chernobyl miniseries came out in early May 2019 and in just a few weeks quietly became television's highest rated show ever beating even the Game of Thrones.

.

The difference is that Chernobyl is not a fiction, but a real location. And you have a chance to see everything that amazes and scares you in the series for yourself.

.

You can stand in Legasov and Scherbyna’s shoes, see the fourth power unit and stay where the first liquidators of the Chernobyl catastrophe stood. Walk through the streets of the ghost town of Pripyat, where 50,000 people had lived until 1986.

.

The important thing is that today the whole trip is completely secure as the fourth reactor is safely covered by the New Safe Confinement, and in areas open to the public, the radiation does not exceed 2 µSv (for comparison, cabin crew receives an exposure dose of up to 9 µSv during transatlantic flights).

.

Time and cleaning efforts made the total background radiation in the Zone safe for humans, and the only radiation that can lead to acute radiation sickness remains inside the Chernobyl sarcophagus.

.

During one day spent in the Chernobyl Zone you get the radiation dose that is 160 less than one X-ray fluorography and 3,600 times less than one whole-body computed tomography!

.

Excursion plan
• 07.30–11:00 Meeting, passport control and entrance to the Exclusion Zone on Dityatki checkpoint.
• 11:00–12:30 You`ll go to the town of Chernobyl: transfer through the city center to the memorial park “Sagebrush Star”. The alley of evacuated towns and villages, “The Third Angel” monument and others memorial places.
• 12:30–14:00 You'll enter to 10 kilometer Zone on Lelev checkpoint, see the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, cooling water pond , the very Reactor No.4 and the arch-shaped shelter over it.
• 14:30–15:30 You'll walk around the ghost town, abandoned buildings and take lots of pics!
• 15:30–17:00 You'll visit huge secret station (the Russian Woodpecker, or brain scorcher).
• 17:00–19:00 Radiological control and return to Kiev.


Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes

Stop At: Reactor No 4, Chernobyl Ukraine

In the HBO series, Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania starred as an exact replica of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant which is closed now.

You can see how the place where the disaster occurred in 1986 actually looks like.


Duration: 4 hours

Stop At: Duga Radar Russian Woodpecker, Chernobyl Ukraine

Soviet over-the-horizon radar (OTH) system used as part of the Soviet missile defense early-warning radar network. Was stopped on April 27 1986. Opened for public in 2012.

But You can’t freely enter the territory of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone today. You need to get a special permit and to be accompanied by experienced guides.

HBO was filming its series in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for only 2 days, but during that time the most important shots were made.

On our one-day tour, you’ll get to the other side of the screen into the world of the Chernobyl disaster.


Duration: 1 hour

Stop At: Pripyat Amusement Park, Pryp'yat', Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine

The abandoned city of Pripyat

Until April 26, 1986, Pripyat was the hometown for the firefighter Vasily Ignatenko and his wife Galina, Anatoly Dyatlov, Viktor Bryukhanov, Nikolay Fomin, Alexander Akimov and tens of thousands of other people who remained offscreen but became the first witnesses and liquidators of the Chernobyl disaster.

April 27, 4:30 p.m., the city got empty forever. The whole operation took just 2.5 hours.

The HBO series’ creators paid much attention to the details and props, so that everything on the screen would truthfully convey the Soviet era and the year 1986.

You will see real Soviet items, since in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, 1980s got conserved for future generations with their houses, yards, Soviet banners, and even a ferris wheel, which was supposed to put into operation on May 1, 1986.


Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes