Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times

A theater prop room in Pripyat, Ukraine. Pripyat was abandoned after the 1986 nuclear explosion in nearby Chernobyl.

THE tour guide smiled as he repeated a gesture he had made many times before. Surrounded by a busload of tourists, he pulled out a cellphone-sized radiation reader.

A gray smokestack building loomed several hundred yards away.

In the guides hand, the devices numbers spiraled up. Tourists snapped photographs, with the digital screen positioned low in their frames. The numbers, approaching 400, formed a subtitle for the building.

The crumbling edifice just past a barbed-wire fence is Reactor No. 4 known to most of the world by the name of a nearby village, Chernobyl. More than a quarter century after the horrific explosion and fire there on April 26, 1986, it still emits radiation. Even after the meltdown at Fukushima, Japan, this place still bears the distinction of being the site of the worlds worst nuclear power plant disaster.

Since Ukraine opened the area more broadly to tours last year, it has also become an unusual attraction. Last October I found myself on a bus, one of many group tours that depart from Kiev. (Securing a ticket for a one- or two-day trip can take weeks; you must submit your passport, or in my case, a copy, to the tour operator beforehand.) After the ride from the city to the reactor, we met our guide, who was stationed there.

Unlike other sites associated with horrific events the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam or ground zero in Manhattan there was little context, just a tiny memorial, a sparse landscape and the grim theater of the guide.

Some fellow travelers asked him about the radiation levels where we stood. About the same as what you get flying on an airplane from the United States to Europe, he answered. How hot is it inside? The lingering reaction is at about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Is it dangerous? We wont stay long.

The dilapidated exterior is a shell of steel and concrete, originally designed to contain the radiation. In Chernobyl-speak, its a sarcophagus. The actual reactor building is inside. Thirty kilometers (almost 19 miles) around this site is a so-called exclusion zone, where the government restricts travel and curtails the stay of the 5,000 workers still cleaning up. It is a region of wide rivers, beautiful trees and abandoned homes.

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Heads Up: Near Chernobyl, Touring a Disaster