I have done the same tour, but did not get medical insurance from the government, no I got a waiver that after entering the 30 km exclusion zone if something goes wrong only I am to blame.
The tour is quite worth it, but it still is very much disaster tourism, and the educational value is very much 'oh ah wow', and has little to do with really understanding anything of the situation. The only thing it really taught me, and I find that a valuable lesson is that actually trying to comprehend what has happened and why is not easily done. For example, the official death toll is something like 30 for the Chernobyl disaster itself, but it is impossible to actually calculate all the deaths that are a result of the disaster on the long term.
The same thing goes for what is happening with the metal that has been scrapped from the sight (shitloads of cars/vehicles have been removed in the past years that have been used to 'clean' the sight). The tour guide said that the cars are sent to china to become recycled metal.
Not sure if its true, but it made me understand that for a lot of things when it comes to Chernobyl there is not one definite answer.
The tour is quite worth it, but it still is very much disaster tourism, and the educational value is very much 'oh ah wow', and has little to do with really understanding anything of the situation. The only thing it really taught me, and I find that a valuable lesson is that actually trying to comprehend what has happened and why is not easily done. For example, the official death toll is something like 30 for the Chernobyl disaster itself, but it is impossible to actually calculate all the deaths that are a result of the disaster on the long term.
The same thing goes for what is happening with the metal that has been scrapped from the sight (shitloads of cars/vehicles have been removed in the past years that have been used to 'clean' the sight). The tour guide said that the cars are sent to china to become recycled metal.
Not sure if its true, but it made me understand that for a lot of things when it comes to Chernobyl there is not one definite answer.