An exclusion zone is a geographic area in which specific activities are prohibited by an authority. The United States Department of Defense defines an exclusion zone as a territory where an authority prohibits specific activities in a specific geographic area (see military exclusion zone). These temporary or permanent zones are created for control of populations for safety, crowd control, or military purposes, or as a border zone.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation, also called the 30-Kilometre Zone or simply The Zone, was established shortly after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union.
Initially, Soviet authorities declared an exclusion zone spanning a 30-kilometre (19 mi) radius around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, designating the area for evacuations and placing it under military control. Its borders have since been altered to cover a larger area of Ukraine: it includes the northernmost part of Vyshhorod Raion in Kyiv Oblast, and also adjoins the Polesie State Radioecological Reserve in neighbouring Belarus. The Chernobyl exclusion zone is managed by an agency of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, while the power plant and its sarcophagus and the New Safe Confinement are administered separately.
A security clearance is a status granted to individuals allowing them access to classified information (state or organizational secrets) or to restricted areas, after completion of a thorough background check. The term "security clearance" is also sometimes used in private organizations that have a formal process to vet employees for access to sensitive information. A clearance by itself is normally not sufficient to gain access; the organization must also determine that the cleared individual needs to know specific information. No individual is supposed to be granted automatic access to classified information solely because of rank, position, or a security clearance.
Narmeln (Russian: Нармельн, Polish: Polski), alternatively known as Polski, is an abandoned village in Baltiysky District of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Vistula Spit, on the border with Poland, the westernmost point of Russia.
Narmeln is distinct as it is one of the few places in Kaliningrad Oblast whose German name was not officially changed when the territory was annexed to the Soviet Union following World War II, and is also the only part of historic Gdańsk Pomerania to be annexed by the Soviet Union by the Potsdam Agreement. Narmeln was depopulated after the war, and the Soviet side of the Vistula Spit was made into an exclusion zone, which remains in effect today.