The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will donate 368 million euros to the programme to build a new sarcophagus around the Chernobyl reactor where the world's worst nuclear accident took place, Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported Monday. It quoted Emergency Situations Minister Nestor Shufrych as telling a briefing in Kiev that an agreement would be signed with the EBRD on Tuesday.
On April 26 1986 reactor number 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, contaminating large parts of Europe but especially the then-Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Now, a huge concrete shield and small army of workers are all that stand between the deadly reactor and the outside world.
The sarcophagus stands over the ruins of the reactor and radioactive fuel in the heart of the 30-kilometer-radius (18.6-mile) exclusion zone, where the grey concrete buildings of the power plant emerge from a pine birch forest near the Pripyat river.
More than 25,000 so-called liquidators who worked to clean up the site and construct the sarcophagus have died, according to unofficial estimates.
Chernobyl's last functioning reactor was shut down in December 2000. The 3,500 people still working there for the most part concentrate on maintaining the sarcophagus that was erected in the immediate aftermath of the accident to confine the radioactive leaks.
Over the years they have installed huge steel girders and propped up the sarcophagus's foundations and outer walls.
The planned new construction 190 meters (623 feet) wide and 200 meters (656 feet) long will be in the shape of a half-cylinder and literally slide over the existing sarcophagus. The steel structure will weigh some 18,000 tons — more than twice the Eiffel tower.
Source: Agence France-Presse
