On April 26, 1986, a flawed experiment at the Chernobyl nuclear-power plant sent a radioactive cloud equivalent to over 500 Hiroshima-strength atomic bombs billowing over Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Western Europe.
Solemn ceremonies across Ukraine marked the 13th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident, rife with flowers, speeches and monument dedications.
But there were no indications that Ukraine, as promised through the Memorandum of Understanding it signed with the Group of 7 industrialized nations and the European Union in 1995, had any plans to shut down the aging plant’s last working reactor by next year.
The government maintains there are several problems with closing the plant. Enactment of the 1995 memorandum was conditional upon Ukraine’s receipt of Western aid in constructing alternative facilities, resolving social problems and building nuclear-fuel-waste-storage facilities. However, Ukrainian officials say that the promised funding for these projects has not materialized.
With half of the electricity generated in Ukraine produced by nuclear plants, the most pressing problem government officials cite is the generating capacity that will be lost when Chernobyl is closed, even though the plant accounts for only 3 percent of the electricity produced in Ukraine.
‘We cannot close Chernobyl and end up without the capacities needed by Ukraine right now,’ President Leonid Kuchma said on March 11. Although his words came on the heels of a European Commission statement insisting on the closure of the remaining reactor, the president said his statement was not a response to the declaration.
The facilities Ukraine has in mind to replace Chernobyl are new Soviet-designed reactors at Rivne and Khmelnytsky. Construction at both of these sites is almost 90 percent complete, but an estimated $1.2 billion is needed to finish the units. Mykola Dudchenko, head of Ukraine’s nuclear-power agency Energoatom, said on April 20 that the G7 and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have so far provided only $190 million of a promised $800 million.
‘I think there will be no financing by the European Bank,’ Dudchenko said. He maintained that Ukraine would complete the two reactors, but added that Chernobyl could not be closed by 2000.
Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko has described Chernobyl’s closing as ‘problematic.’ And on the anniversary of the explosion, Pustovoitenko said Ukraine needs $450 million to complete the two reactors. He reiterated that Ukraine would seek alternative funding for the work, including a possible project for a joint credit with France that would be repaid with electricity.
Despite pressure from the G7 to finance completion of Rivne and Khmelnytsky, the EBRD has been reluctant, saying the prospects for repayment are poor. It has also come under pressure from both West European and Ukrainian environmentalists who oppose the plants.
Outside the bank’s annual conference in London this year, anti-nuclear activists dressed as giant silver mutants protested the project as uneconomical and dangerous.
EBRD First Vice President Charles Frank defended plans to back construction with a $190 million loan, saying the bank had seen no evidence of broad Ukrainian opposition and maintained that completion of the Rivne and Khmelnytsky plants was the most cost-effective option.
Frank said the bank would ensure that the reactors complied with Western safety standards, and stressed that Chernobyl would have to be closed as soon as possible as part of the deal. ‘Chernobyl is an unsafe plant,’ he said.
The condition of the still-operating Reactor 3, the deterioration of the sarcophagus that covers the shell of the exploded Reactor 4, and the presence of 40 tons of radioactive dust and other inflammable materials at the site remain major international concerns.
Reactor 3 was restarted on March 6 after three months of repairs. It was scheduled to be restarted on Feb. 15, but workers found 273 cracked joint welds in the reactor’s cooling systems.
The Reactor 4 sarcophagus, hastily built in the months following the accident, is deteriorating rapidly. In January, the sarcophagus administration reached a deal with construction company Ukrenerhobud to begin reinforcing the sarcophagus’ support beams. There have been concerns that the deteriorating beams could collapse, which would cause the roof of the reactor to cave in, allowing a major radiation leak.
Ukrainian officials, however, continue to downplay the dangers.
At a March 23 press conference on the International Atomic Energy Association’s Year 2000 Mission to assist Chernobyl engineers in dealing with the Y2K problem, Yury Neretin, Chernobyl’s deputy operations engineer, insisted that the computer glitch would be solved before it creates any problems.
The effects of the catastrophe continue to be a major economic and social drain on Ukraine. Nearly 50,000 square kilometers in 12 regions were contaminated and more than 90,000 people had to be evacuated from a 30-kilometer radius surrounding the reactor. Even today the exclusion zone covers 2,400 square kilometers, and real-estate losses are estimated at almost $1.4 billion.
The official death toll was 31 people, but an April 26 Interfax report cites a figure of 4,229 people who are believed to have died from the direct consequences of the disaster. This figure includes 2,929 people assigned to clean up the site following the disaster. The Interfax report puts the number of people medically affected by the disaster at 3.2 million, including 1 million children.
The Health Ministry last week reported a substantial increase in thyroid cancer among Ukrainian children since the disaster. According to the report, there were no cases of the disease registered among children in 1981-’85, but in 1986-’99, 1,217 people who were children or adolescents at the time of the disaster had surgery for thyroid cancer.
On the economic side, Vasyl Durdynets, minister of Emergency Situations and the Consequences of Chernobyl, told parliament on April 13 that Ukraine has spent more than $11 million on the consequences of the disaster, according to the Unian news agency. Of this, nearly $4 billion was spent between 1992-’97, which he said was 5-7 percent of Ukraine’s budget.
And with the deepening economic crisis, finding money has become even harder. This year’s budget allocates only 29 percent, or Hr 1.746 billion, of the needed maintenance funds of Hr 6.015 billion, according to the study.
The government’s problems dealing with the disaster have not gone unnoticed. On the eve of the anniversary, nearly 4,000 survivors of the tragedy marched down Kyiv’s central Khreshchatyk street with black banners.
‘We built and worked at that cursed reactor … now I get a pension of Hr 160 and they want to take away our compensation and discounts,’ the widow of a Chernobyl victim told Reuters as she wiped away her tears.
