New rules for traveling to the exclusion zone of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant have been introduced on Dec. 2, 2011.
A relevant instruction was published in the Official Bulletin of Ukraine on Friday.
Head of the Ukrainian State Agency for Management of the Exclusion Zone Volodymyr Kholosha earlier said that tourists would not be allowed to visit the zone.
In February 2011, the Emergencies Ministry of Ukraine approved the rules for traveling to the zone using the services of tour operators.
But the District Administrative Court of Kyiv satisfied a lawsuit of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine and declared the instruction unlawful.
The Emergencies Ministry developed new rules for traveling to the exclusion zone, considering propositions of law enforcement agencies.
The Emergencies Ministry approved the rules with all of the concerned state structures and registered the document in the Justice Ministry of Ukraine.
Earlier Kholosha said that "there will be no tourists in the exclusion zone, there will be only visitors, and the new rights were drafted to secure the rights of Ukrainian and foreign citizens to information and for visiting the area."
Ukrainian citizens have the right to visit the exclusion zone and the area of compulsory resettlement. In connection with this, educational trips to the zone would not be cancelled.
According to Kholosha, this also refers to foreign citizens, as many projects in Chornobyl are funded by foreign states.
Under the new rules, for traveling to the exclusion zone, a written request has to be submitted to the Ukrainian State Agency for Management of the Exclusion Zone within ten days before the trip.
The request has to contain the person’s contact information, citizenship, aim and terms of the trip, a description of the information that a visitor of the Chornobyl zone would like to receive during the trip, as well as written confirmation that the person has no legal bans on traveling to the exclusion zone.
Applicants for traveling to the exclusion zone may receive a refusal to make the trip if they are below 18 years old, if the written request is filled in improperly, if repairs or research activities are being carried out in the area indicated in the request, due to bad weather conditions in the exclusion zone, or if law enforcement agencies report that the person has involved in terrorist activity.
A person can visit the exclusion zone for five days.
Kholosha informed that the town of Prypiat would be closed for traveling on days of commemoration of the victims of the Chornobyl disaster.
