PERSPECTIVE ON CHERNOBYL : Revisiting the Unthinkable : A surreal life goes on around the site of the worst nuclear accident, even as new disaster threatens to erupt.

Police thoroughly examine your special permit as you cross the border into the 20-mile forbidden zone around Chernobyl, the site of the greatest nuclear accident in history. All cars from the outside are left here to avoid radioactive contamination: Arriving from Kiev, Ukraine’s capital 65 miles from Chernobyl, you must change vehicles. Since the blast occurred April 26, 1986, only “dirty” cars operate inside the zone, and they will never leave.

One of them, a ZIL, a black limo, formerly belonged to Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Soviet prime minister who came to oversee the Chernobyl cleanup. The prime minister’s status demanded this very special car, once the pride of the Soviet auto industry. Now old and shaky, it still retains some of its chic, and visitors with hard currency may rent this historic limo, along with a driver and interpreter. In a former government canteen, you may also get a decent meal, and whoever’s not afraid of ghosts may stay in a special hotel. This unforgettable trip, the ZIL service included, may cost as little as $150. For people with strong nerves, no fear of radiation and a vivid imagination, Chernobyl may surpass all their former experiences.

I paid my first visit to Chernobyl with a group of journalists on March 1. We also stayed several hours in the new city of Slavutich, built after the explosion, where 25,000 power plant workers and engineers live. At the Slavutich Cultural Center, a concert, press conference and a lavish dinner were served up with the new propaganda message: It’s OK here.

But several days later, when Anthony Brooks from National Public Radio and I visited Chernobyl again--this time just two of us--we were met by no cheerleaders. Two leading nuclear physicists, Alexander Borovoi of Moscow and Edward Pazukhin of St. Petersburg, disclosed in explicit terms Chernobyl’s present dangers, including the possibility of a new blast.

I could not but admire their integrity, courage and sense of humor. After two weeks in the radioactive zone, they travel home for a two-week rest. They get some extra financial rewards too, a trifle compared to the risks they take.

Two Chernobyl reactors are still working. The notorious reactor No. 4 was completely ruined in 1986 while reactor No. 2 was closed after a fire in 1991. The two remaining blocks produce 5% of all electric energy consumed by Ukraine, and both provoke valid concerns. Instead of a full containment structure with solid concrete roof and walls, the Chernobyl blocks are covered only by glass walls.

Reactor No. 4 is the most problematic. The concrete sarcophagus built around it is cracked and does not fully contain the radiation emitted.

Each time Pazukhin visits this dangerous reactor site, he finds his way aided by flashlights. The levels of radiation inside are extremely high, but he leaves his personal radioactivity counter behind him. If the accumulated radiation registered by his dosimeter becomes too high, he may be taken off the job and lose his hazardous-duty bonus. So scientists have to cheat to get their full salaries, he adds with an ironic grin. Full of bravado, he says he can trace the radiation “by nose” and “by the taste on my lips.”

The problem is how to treat these 40,000 tons of highly radioactive waste, including more than 200 tons of reactor fuel and 700,000 cubic meters of radioactive rubble and debris that contaminate the air through innumerable cracks in the concrete. The rubble could explode, leading to an easy collapse of the 246-foot-high corroded sarcophagus over the reactor. This is only one possibility among other nuclear horrors, according to a list compiled by a group of European experts.

A century may be not enough to remove, treat and store or bury this contaminated waste. Ukraine has no money to pay for the cleanup. While visiting Chernobyl, I heard several officials say “Let them (the West) pay $4 billion and we’ll find the remaining half a billion.” The global issue of the Chernobyl cleanup and who should pay for it will be considered at an international meeting in June in Canada.

And Ukraine badly needs energy. If not for the remaining Chernobyl reactors still working, the capital city of Kiev would be left totally without electricity. Ukraine has announced its determination to shut down the plant after other ways are found to meet its energy needs.

About 116,000 people were evacuated from the 20-mile zone around Chernobyl, but some 700 of them have illegally returned to their abandoned farms to breed their radioactive chickens and milk their cows, to grow vegetables and fruit. Some may shudder at the thought that human beings voluntarily expose themselves to such high radiation. But these farmers told us, “We can’t detect it either by scent or color, so we don’t care.” They want to die where they were born, not in overcrowded flats far away from their beautiful land. For them, being buried at home is a privilege, and they will see each other off to graveyards, until the very last of them dies, with no one to say the last farewell when it happens.

The most extraordinary experience, however, was a visit to the abandoned city of Prypyat, just three miles from Chernobyl. There, dwellers were evacuated by troops two days after the blast. People were told it was just a practice drill and they would return very soon and not a single item could be taken from home. Uneaten food remained on tables or in refrigerators, a feast for myriad gigantic rats and cockroaches which have become even larger from the radiation. But nothing stopped marauders from looting the abandoned flats.

This model city of wide streets, flower beds, standard faceless apartment houses and “palaces of culture” remains a unique monument to Socialist Realism, complete with striking slogans on the walls, in huge letters--”Lenin’s Party Leads Us to the Triumph of Communism!” or “Implement Decisions of the Communist Party Congress!”--and an oversized Soviet coat of arms overlooking Prypyat like a Coca-Cola bottle on Times Square.

Prypyat is unnaturally real, or absolutely surreal, a complete world in itself ever since time stopped nine years ago, for good. I was told several times “It’s unsafe to step on the soil, remain on the pavement, please.” It’s not a Jurassic Park with dummy mammals, after all.

But the entire Chernobyl 20-mile death zone, with all its forsaken and sometimes torn-off towns and villages, looks like a communist park, starting with the huge bust of Lenin at the entrance to the power plant. “Why don’t you remove Lenin? Doesn’t this figure seem grotesque today? Or do you mean it’s Lenin who started the Chernobyl disaster?” I asked administrators who were giving journalists a tour. “We got so accustomed to Lenin that people stopped noticing him,” they explained unsmilingly. This plant bore Lenin’s name under communism while its prime goal was to produce uranium for nuclear bombs. Another good reason to convert this production line to a theme park.

Pointing to the Hotel Polissiya, our young limo driver joked, “This is the only hotel in Ukraine which has rooms available all year round.” With this sense of humor, not everything is lost even in Chernobyl, I thought.