Ukraine cannot guarantee safety of Chernobyl sarcophagus - station official

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Ukraine cannot guarantee safety of Chernobyl sarcophagus - station official

Source: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union - Political

Publication date: Mar 30, 2000

Excerpt from report by Ihor Osypchuk, entitled "Director of Shelter facility Valentyn Kupnyy: 'We cannot be sure of safety of all fuel inside the sarcophagus'", published in Ukrainian newspaper `Fakty i Kommentarii' on 30th March

Yesterday the Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution on closing down the Chernobyl nuclear power station by the end of this year. The government decided to stop the operation of the Chernobyl No 3 generating set by the end of this year, that is, earlier than it had been initially planned. Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported that the Fuel and Energy Ministry was given three months to develop the project of closing down the No 3 set and to submit it to the government. In six months it should develop a comprehensive programme for closing down the Chernobyl nuclear power station along with a programme of social protection for the personnel of the station and residents of the Slavutych town [satellite town near the Chernobyl power plant] In draft budgets for 2001 and following years the finance and economics ministries should allocate funds for financing the closure of the Chernobyl power plant and providing social protection for Slavutych residents.

Meanwhile, on the eve of serious works to reinforce the Chernobyl sarcophagus the question about several dozen tonnes of nuclear fuel [inside the facility] remains open. According to the director of the Chernobyl Shelter facility [sarcophagus], Valentyn Kupnyy, "it is impossible to guarantee its stable condition". In addition, there is no information about fuel-containing substances in the places which are inaccessible due to a high radiation level. For this reason, Kupnyy thinks, the Shelter facility poses a nuclear danger.

The process of increasing the destruction of radioactive lava and its transformation into dust saturated with radio nuclides is especially worrying. In 1998 alone, a total of 30 t of dust was produced. So far, no countermeasure for this process has been found, although there have been a lot of suggestions. Elimination of dust is increasingly important in connection with the beginning of the international Shelter Implementation Plan [SIP], which has been worked out to reinforce the sarcophagus. Donor countries have already allocated 400m dollars and are expected this summer to declare the allocation of another 300m dollars at their conference in Berlin. After that the bulk of funds for the SIP will be accumulated.

"The implementation of the SIP is under way. The most unreliable structures - a pipe next to the sarcophagus and the beams on which the roof of the sarcophagus rests - have been repaired, Kupnyy says, but this is still only several per cent of what was planned. In the next four years we have to do the rest of the work to ensure the complete safety of the sarcophagus. It is planned that about 2,000 people will be involved in the project. We have given up the idea of extracting and processing the radioactive lava - this is extremely dangerous. But another shelter should be erected over the sarcophagus in 10 years." [Passage omitted: earlier covered information about a malfunction of the No 4 generating set of Zaporizhzhya nuclear power station.]

Publication date: Mar 30, 2000 ) 2000, NewsReal, Inc.

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-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), March 31, 2000


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