Ukraine struggles with deadly Chernobyl legacy 15 years later



Ukraine struggles with deadly Chernobyl legacy 15 years later

April 26, 2001

Web posted at: 6:50 PM EDT (2250 GMT)

KIEV, Ukraine -- The ghosts of Chernobyl linger in Ukraine, 15 years after the nuclear reactor’s meltdown sent shock waves and a cloud of radioactive dust through much of Europe.

Officials held a wreath laying ceremony at the Chernobyl victims’ monument in Kiev on Wednesday, remembering April 26, 1986, the day of a catastrophic explosion and fire. Even with the reactor’s permanent shutdown in December 2000, Ukraine is still struggling to contain the fallout from the event.

The government’s Chernobyl problems are three-fold: economic, health and power-related. The former Eastern Bloc country, in which the average citizen earns $50 a month, finds itself grasping for ways to provide economically for victims of both the meltdown and shutdown.

"Everyone here is thinking: ‘What can we do?’" chief Chernobyl spokesman Stanislav Shekstelo said when Kiev shut down the plant. "There is a government social program, but people worry about whether that provides any real financial security."

Embattled Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, meanwhile, is waging his own international battle to receive hundreds of millions in international aid – money, he says, was promised to Ukraine to safely close Chernobyl and build new nuclear power plants to make up for the lost energy source.

Tremendous health impact

Government officials decided to close the plant, located 125 kilometers (70 miles) north of Kiev, despite considerable opposition by local politicians and plant employees. But the move earned strong approval from the international community, with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and Pope John Paul II sending letters of congratulation to Kuchma.

The intense international pressure to close the plant was rooted in Chernobyl’s notorious history.

The spring 1986 meltdown sent a large radiation cloud over much of Europe and contaminated large areas of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus – at the time, all republics of the Soviet Union.

More than 4,000 people who subdued the plant fire and took part in the hasty clean-up have died, according to Kiev’s estimates, and more than 70,000 Ukrainians were left fully disabled.

Altogether, Ukraine’s health ministry estimates that one in 16 members of the country’s population of 49 million suffers from grave health disorders linked to the disaster. Thyroid cancers, in particular, remain on the rise -- with Belarus, Ukraine’s northern neighbor, having similar problems.

And Kiev says Chernobyl, itself, isn’t totally safe, even after its shutdown. A $785 million internationally-funded project aims to make the visibly rusting concrete and steel reactor safe in coming years.

"When you shut down the last block, the nuclear danger doesn’t go away," Kuchma told CNN in December. "It is a fact that there is a huge amount of nuclear fuel still there."

Kiev struggling to pay disabled, unemployed

Not surprisingly, the health problems have put a major burden on the sick – and the Ukrainian government. Kiev says 400,000 adults and 1.1 million children are currently entitled to state aid.

But that doesn’t mean all are receiving such support. Several thousand of those affected gathered in the nation’s capital last weekend to protest slow to non-existent payments.

"Chernobyl victims are now owed 737 million hryvna ($316 million) and the debt grows by up to 40 million hryvna every month," said Yuriy Andreev, who heads a victims’ union.

The fallout is even more severe in and around the reactor itself. Some 6,000 workers face unemployment and a sparse job market in the poisoned pocket of Ukraine. The town of Slavutych, home to many of the workers, is also in desperate need of assistance.

Once again, those affected don’t know how, where or when the money, and jobs, will come.

"The 2001 budget did not provide for the social needs and for works related to the plant’s closure," said Chernobyl Director Vitaly Tolstonohov. "We had to do much work in resolving the questions of financing, and have partially solved them."

Power crunch expected

Kuchma agreed early last year to close Chernobyl, which supplied roughly 5 percent of Ukraine’s power since its meltdown, in return for Western financial aid to finish building Soviet-era nuclear reactors at Khmelnitsky and Rivine in western Ukraine. Kiev has said it needs the reactors to compensate for the loss of Chernobyl’s electricity.

The European Union approved a $585 million loan to help construct the two reactors, also known as K2R4, following a $215 million commitment from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

But Kiev has expressed growing frustration much of the money has not materialized, with the European Bank raising new conditions for loans.

"I consider this as unwillingness to fund construction of the reactors," Kuchma said.

"Why do we go with our hand outstretched, and they always beat us on our hands by various conditions? Didn’t we know that it would be so when we were closing down Chernobyl?"

|WHAT DOES IT MEAN? |

|  |

|radioactive: |the property/state caused by or inherent to some elements, such as uranium, to send out |

| |particles randomly by the disintergration of their nuclei, or center; radioactive particles, |

| |in large and uncontrolled doses, can be harmful to humans and other living species |

|  |

|radiation: |transmission of rays; the spread and/or existence of radioactive particles, rays, substances, |

| |gases, etc., as would happen when a radioactive or nuclear weapon explodes |

|  |

|contaminated: |made unfit by adding unwanted elements |

|  |

|European Union: |a group of 15 independent states joined to enhance political, economic and social cooperation |

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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