[Image]

     PART II: How Safe is Chernobyl Today?

     By Charles Recknagel

     Prague, April 18 (RFE/RL) -- In the rush to seal off the radiation flow
     from Chernobyl's destroyed fourth reactor, construction crews built a
     300,000 ton concrete-and-metal enclosure, or sarcophagus, around it in
     just seven months.

     A decade later, engineers say, the results of that urgent construction
     effort are starting to show. The sarcophagus was built as a temporary
     structure with a thirty-year life, but the difficult conditions under
     which it was constructed make it unlikely it will last that long.

     During recent years, cracks have begun to appear in the roof of the
     temporary structure and rain has seeped inside. Yuri Kostenko, Ukraine's
     environmental minister, says that over time the moisture could mix with
     some of the radioactive material remaining on the reactor floor and create
     problems.

     Kostenko said: "If the radioactive moisture were to leech its way (through
     the floor) and into the groundwater, it would create a frightening picture
     for Ukraine...the radiation would migrate to the Dnepr (and) the Dnepr is
     the main water artery of the Ukraine, two-thirds of our population gets
     its water from the Dnepr."

     There are other dangers, too. The sarcophagus was built upon some of the
     original reactor walls that survived the explosion which destroyed its
     roofs, and the damaged original walls are unstable. In an earthquake, the
     sarcophagus could collapse.

     But analysts say that whatever happens to the sarcophagus, Chernbobyl's
     reactor four will never produce another massive release of radiation like
     that in 1986.

     Anselm Schaefer is a nuclear power expert who advises the International
     Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, an international nuclear regulatory
     body. He says that the nuclear chain reaction which produced the radiation
     during the accident has stopped. The reaction was brought to a halt
     immediately afterward by repair crews which damped it under quantities of
     barium before the sarcophagus was built.

     Today, Schaefer says, the radioactive material inside the reactor is in
     the form of tons of dust on the building floor and is too heavy to scatter
     widely even if the protective sarcophagus somehow cracked open.

     Schaefer says: "In the worst case, if the sarcophagus were to collapse,
     naturally that would be a major problem at the (reactor) site but it would
     not be a far-reaching problem like the Chernobyl accident...the
     consequences would be limited to a range, I don't know, of 20 to 30
     kilometers around the site."

     But while reactor four cannot repeat the 1986 disaster, the highly
     radioactive material inside will remain hazardous for decades to come.
     Nuclear engineers and Ukrainian authorities face the problem of either
     building a new sarcophagus to protect the dust far into the future, or
     moving the material to another storage site.

     Schaefer says that experts favor maintaining and repairing the current
     sarcophagus for another five years while they try to determine the best
     final solution.

     He says the time is needed because the costs associated with protecting
     the site are too expensive for any new temporary solution. He estimates
     that building a new sarcopahgus could cost up to several thousand million
     dollars, while treating the material at Chernobyl before extracting it and
     depositing it elsewhere would also require large financial resources.

     The experts also must decide what to do with large quantities of
     radioactive wastes and contaminated equpment which are currently stored in
     about 800 sites within a 30 kilometer no-man's land around the reactor.
     The waste is partly in containers and partly buried in trenches, while
     contaminated equipment, like bulldozers, is still parked in the open air.

     Meanwhile, Ukraine and the international community plan to shut down the
     two remaining operating reactors at the Chernobyl station by the year
     2000.

     Schaefer says that after the accident, the then-Soviet Union made a series
     of technical corrections at the Chernobyl site, as well as at other
     reactors of the same design, to "correct the essential causes of the
     disaster."

     He says the safety status of the two operating Chernobyl reactors today is
     comparable with other such reactors in operation elsewhere in Ukraine,
     Russia, and Lithuania.

     But Schaefer says that nuclear experts are eager to close the site to make
     way for a final clean up. He says that the radioactive contamination at
     Chernobyl, plus links between one of the good reactors and the destroyed
     reactor four, makes operating the site difficult.

     The international public also wants to close the site. Schaefer says the
     reasons are as much emotional as rational. After the trauma of the
     Chernobyl disaster, he says, people everywhere want to feel that the
     incident has come to a final conclusion."

     --------------------------------------------------------------------------

      News | Features | Analyses | Press Reviews | Special Reports | Broadcast
                                Desks | Search | HOME

                   © 1996 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
                                All Rights Reserved.