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An open question on the closed Chornobyl power plant
By Viktoria HERASYMCHUK, The Day
On
Dec. 13 the Ukrainian parliament questioned government ministers about
problems connected to the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which was shut
down exactly five years ago. Unlike the plant itself, the question of
radioactive waste disposal remains open. Another
reason for broaching the Chornobyl topic was a statement that President
Yushchenko made during his recent visit to the power plant. The
president shared his plans to approve a plan to store other countries’
nuclear waste in the Chornobyl area. Chornobyl is already contaminated
and separated from the “mainland” by four zones of alienation, says the
president, declaring that there is probably no safer dumping ground in
the world than Chornobyl. Beset with the problem of nuclear waste,
civilized countries would pay generously to dispose of it, while
Ukraine could use the revenue for current repairs to the power plant’s
“sarcophagus” and completing the construction of a reactor shelter and
a nuclear waste storage facility. President Yushchenko promised,
however, that this decision will not be adopted unless the public
approves. The latter didn’t waste any time demonstrating its attitude
to the project: last Tuesday angry statements started flying from every
direction, and the Green Party of Ukraine launched a permanent protest
action under the slogan, “Let’s Stop Ukraine from Becoming Europe’s
Nuclear Dump.” The first stage of this action was a rally in front of
the Presidential Secretariat. “We
have to think very carefully about whether this is a rational
decision,” Professor Dmytro Hrodzynsky, secretary of the General
Biology Department of the National Academy of Sciences, told The Day.
“We still do not know how to dispose of the radioactive wastes that are
left from the Chornobyl explosion. Experts say that there are about a
thousand ‘makeshift’ radioactive waste storage facilities in Ukraine.
Only 468 of them are known. We know nothing about the whereabouts of
the rest. It would be wrong to contemplate importing new waste under
these chaotic circumstances. The entire world is trying to figure out
what to do with nuclear waste. There are designs for global storage
facilities in such remote places as the Novaya Zemlya archipelago or
northeastern China — but even they have been rejected. But to build
such a facility in the heart of Europe, in a densely-populated country
without a desert or tundra? This is not rational.” Experts
say that Ukraine should first think about constructing a reliable
storage facility for its own wastes and dismantling the fourth damaged
reactor — the radioactive materials still have not been removed. This
requires the use of robots because this kind of work has a lethal
effect on people. We must also locate and rebury the waste from those
1,000 small waste storage facilities. All this will cost money. Where
will we get it? It is clear that we won’t earn anything by “importing”
European waste because there can be no question of new waste before a
reliable storage facility is built. But even after that Ukrainians will
hardly approve setting up an international nuclear dump in this
country. Another Chornobyl-related
public outcry was caused by the cancellation of benefits for Chornobyl
cleanup veterans. On Dec. 13 the Chornobyl Union of Ukraine staged a
rally in front of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in order to draw the
MPs’ attention to the social problems of the Chornobyl liquidators.
Approximately 2.9 million people in Ukraine were affected by the
Chornobyl disaster. The rally was attended by about a hundred people.
Next year’s budget abolishes benefits for the liquidators, individuals
who suffered from the explosion, and their relatives. But Vice-Prime
Minister for Humanitarian Matters Viacheslav Kyrylenko has promised to
increase pensions by three or four times for Chornobyl cleanup veterans
(1st and 2nd class), disabled veterans who took part in the cleanup
operations in 1986-1990, and some other categories of people. INCIDENTALLY “One
must always see a real person behind financial and technical problems.
This will be the principle of work guiding the cabinet, the ministry
for emergencies, and other agencies related to the Chornobyl cleanup
and shutdown,” said Minister for Emergencies, Viktor Baloha, last
Tuesday during the parliamentary question period. He noted that the
decisions that were passed by the president, cabinet, and Verkhovna
Rada about decommissioning the Chornobyl nuclear power plant are not
being fully implemented owing to budgetary under-funding. He said that
this year work was completed to stabilize the structure of the Shelter
and to design and install a comprehensive system for radiation and
seismic monitoring of stable structures.
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