World Notes

Soviet enterprise has taken a macabre turn: vacation trips to the radioactive ruins of Chernobyl. Kievturist, a Ukrainian tour operator, is organizing excursions to the forbidden zone surrounding the entombed remains of the world's worst nuclear accident. Truly adventurous visitors can tour the massive concrete mound where the wreckage of the reactor is buried, a town built for the workers who cleaned up after the accident and a nuclear-waste dump.

"We want to show people what can happen if they are not careful about the ecology," says Gennadi Blinov, Kievturist's director general. The $4-a-day price tag includes optional radiation scans for tourists who are worried. Income from the tours will be used to help victims of the April 1986 disaster.

Soviet scientists are conducting tests to be sure visitors will not suffer any ill effects. Thousands of residents are still being moved out of contaminated zones nearby. The tours will begin in about a month, after the area has been declared safe for travel. But some former residents are apparently not waiting for the government's verdict. Tired of their cramped existence as refugees in Kiev, farm folk have been seen trickling back to reclaim their homesteads, despite the risk of radiation.