Travel question: How safe is a trip to Chernobyl?

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The exposure to radiation at Chernobyl is about as safe as a two-hour flight (Getty)

Q My husband has booked a tour of Chernobyl without properly researching how safe it is. I’m worried that tour companies are only interested in making money. How can we be reassured that we don’t get exposed to a high level of radiation? Or that we don’t bring it home with us?

Name withheld

A On 26 April 1986, after a sequence of human errors combined fatally with design flaws, Reactor No 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine exploded catastrophically. Radioactive material covered the surrounding area, with the wind carrying airborne contamination across Europe.