End Of The Line For Chernobyl
The site of the world's worst nuclear accident, it came to symbolize the potential dangers of atomic energy. Now, after years of limping along in defiance of international criticism, the Chernobyl atomic power plant is about to be shut down for good.
Ukraine restarted Chernobyl's only working reactor one last time on Thursday, planning to let it run for a day before Friday's shutdown. Technically the final shutdown will be a very small step - three of the four reactors have been closed for years and the fourth was only operating at 1 percent capacity Thursday morning, the state-run Energoatom company said. But for many here it carries great import.
"It is very symbolic that the world will enter the next millennium without the Chernobyl plant," Ukraine presidential spokesman Oleksandr Martynenko said.
 Reuters Workers at Chernobyl holding a banner reading "We shall fulfill the government's goal" pose for a picture just seven months after the 1986 accident. |
The Chernobyl tragedy began on April 26, 1986, when reactor No. 4 exploded and caught fire, contaminating vast areas of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus and spewing a radioactive cloud over Europe. Thousands of people who took part in the cleanup died. A 1,040 square mile area around Chernobyl that was once home to 120,000 people became a no man's land.
And Chernobyl's troubles did not stop with the accident. The plant's No. 2 reactor caught fire and was shut down in 1991, and reactor No. 1 was halted in 1996.
The one remaining working reactor, No. 3, has experienced numerous unplanned shutdowns and malfunctions. Yet energy-strapped Ukraine refused to close it before securing Western aid to build two new nuclear reactors.
On December 7, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development approved a $215 million loan to the Ukraine to finance two new nuclear plants to replace Chernobyl.
It's the bank's largest loan ever, and is being made over the objections of several countries on the bank's board.
The bank said it had attached tough safety and regulatory conditions to the loan, but environmentalists insist the plants are the wrong power option for the country which suffered the world's worst civil nuclear accident and vowed to fight against the projects. Greenpeace called the bank's decision "a slap in the faces of thousands of victims of the Chernobyl catastrophe."
Even after they are shut down, Chernobyl's reactors will not be considered saf until all nuclear fuel is removed, a process expected to be completed in 2008.
It will take years to make the leaky concrete and steel sarcophagus that encases the ruined reactor No. 4 environmentally safe. And the government still appears to have no clear program of assistance for Chernobyl's nearly 6,000 workers and their families. Few of them, if any, will rejoice Friday.
"The decision is taken and we'll close down here," says Chernobyl spokesman Stanislav Shekstelo. "But it will be a sad day for us."
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