Lol, they’re not moving the reactor, they are covering it up!
The new building is a fascinating bit of kit in itself:
The size of the arch is breathtaking, its 270m across. Its being assembled 180m away from the reactor, and will be slid over the whole reactor without touching it. This is to reduce exposure to the people putting it together.
It’s no longer a long lost pipe dream either, the rails are in, the first arch is up. When the arch is complete it will be pulled (not pushed) into place. They were going to push it with hydraulic jacks, but they would need to be repositioned every time they get to their full extension. Whereas steel cables are long enough for it to be pulled in one go. It will be all be done in just one day.
9,000 tonnes of equipment will be hung inside the massive arches. This includes two beams which will have cranes on. These will be fully remote controlled and have different attachments – From Jack hammers, to cutting discs to vacuum cleaners! Where possible the waste (especially the low level stuff) will be extracted and disposed of a couple of miles away. I was lucky enough to see the concrete disposal racks in July, very impressive.
One crane attachment will have a pod (a bit like the London eye) but in thick lead.Yes it will be used to occasionally take people in. I’m not sure what the implications of a tourist going in would be, but it’d be well into the five figures.
Sorry, went adrift there. Back to your question.
*
If you Google it there are hundreds of tour companies. Essentially they are middlemen for the 11 Licenced government officials, so it doesn’t matter who you book with. The two most popular are Lupine Travel and SoloEast.
I can’t give you my word on either of them though as I always book directly through my government escort.
Beware of the tour companies making false promises tho - Both of the above state clearly, and in bold on their home pages that you cannot go inside buildings.*
Lupine:
Soloeast:
Although I have just noticed that Lupine is promising Duga 3 (Big radar aerial thingy) access, which I know is off limits at the moment, so do be weary of ones that promise things like this, they may not necessarily come to fruition when you’re there!
I was recently speaking with my escort about some of the problematic tour companies he said
“They don’t care, they tell people what they want, they’re not here when I have to disappoint the tourists”
He told me of an incident recently where a large group were promised they could roam free around Pripyat. You cant. They started to wander off against the guides will, and military action was bought in, and all of the wanderers were arrested!
The 4 hour day trips are now well cheap, and even after all this time I’d still pay it just to wander round the city - I only done around 7 hours on my Bday, but I’ve now spent over 100 hours happily exploring the buildings in Pripyat