To prepare for boat tours as early as this year from Kyiv to Chornobyl, the Pripyat River was dredged last year by the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority.

To prepare for boat tours as early as this year from Kyiv to Chornobyl, the Pripyat River was dredged last year by the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority. To allow the passage of a boat with a maximum draft of 1.6 meters, the Authority dredged 130,000 cubic meters from the 64 km section of the river between the Kyiv Sea and the Belarus border. Environmentalists warned that dredging in the exclusion zone would stir up radioactive sediments from the 1986 nuclear plant fire. Environmental Protection Minister Roman Abramovsky responded last summer that radioactivity was monitored daily and that no river sediment was thrown ashore.