Ukraine will close the accident-plagued Chernobyl nuclear station by the year 2000 and replace it with a gas-fired power station, a visiting delegation of Western officials announced Thursday.
"The new millennium will begin with a closed Chernobyl station," said a delighted Michel Barnier, France's environment minister, after hashing out the agreement in a meeting with Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma and representatives of the European Union and the Group of Seven industrialized nations, known as G-7.
Barnier applauded Ukraine's decision as "courageous and important" while noting that decommissioning the plant would be a complicated process.
"But now that Ukraine has given a definite date for closing the plant, we can decide these issues in solidarity," he said, adding that a schedule for closing Chernobyl's reactors will be ready next month.
The West had been annoyed by Ukraine's earlier determination to keep operating the Chernobyl station, site of the world's worst nuclear disaster nine years ago. An estimated 8,000 people have died from radiation-related disease since one of the four Chernobyl reactors melted down April 26, 1986. Half a million more suffered potentially dangerous exposure.
Friction has been especially intense between Ukraine and the rest of Europe, which was showered with radioactive fallout from Chernobyl and fears a repeat.
Ukraine has invested $300 million in improvements that it believes has made the plant one of the safest in the country. Ukraine had insisted it would close Chernobyl only if the West was willing to pay for the "comprehensive solution" that Kuchma had advocated.
That meant not just flipping the "off" switch, which Kuchma said would make the plant even more dangerous, but also finding new sources of electricity, procuring jobs for Chernobyl's 5,000 workers and ensuring the safety of the concrete "sarcophagus" covering the destroyed reactor.
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