Safely covering the ruined remains of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant has been the mission since April 26, 1986, when the fourth reactor exploded, creating a deadly fallout that is still being calculated today in lives and environmental damage.
Today, more than 30 years later, the latest stage of the mission will be to position the New Safe Confinement — a massive, arched, steel structure — over the crumbling concrete sarcophagus. This will hopefully entomb the doomed reactor — and its lingering radiation – for at least a century.
The 165-meter-long and 110-meter-high cover, which weighs more than 36,000 tons, which was made by the French construction consortium Novarka. It is hailed as the biggest moveable land-based structure ever built.
The cost of the structure was $1.5 billion, according to Anton Usov, a European Bank for Reconstruction and Development senior adviser in Ukraine.
Donors from more than 40 countries helped create the engineering marvel.
“The start of the arch covering process is the end of our more than 30-year fight for a better environment in the Chornobyl Zone and in the world,” Ostap Semerak, the ecology minister of Ukraine, said on Nov. 14.
The arch, as the structure that will cover the fourth reactor is known, is the most important stage of the New Safe Confinement project, which aims to protect humanity from Chornobyl’s poisonous radioactive legacy for several generations, said Vitaliy Petruk, the head of the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management in a press release on Nov. 14.
“The confinement for the exclusion zone is a new breath, and the possibility for positive transformations in future,” said Petruk.
Experts said the Chornobyl Zone — a 30-kilometer radius around the plant — has a chance for a better future after 30 years as a radioactive wasteland. It was a highly protected area, but it turned out to be a breeding ground for corruption as well.
The hopes now are that it could become a scientific platform for change, including a testing place for renewable energy, Vitaliy Demianiuk, a supervisory board member at the Chornobyl Research and Development Institute, told the zn.ua news website.
The arch
It will take a few days for the arch to move into place over the reactor, as it is slowly maneuvered by a system of 224 hydraulic jacks that push the structure 60 centimeters forward each stroke, according to the EBRD. The construction of the arch was financed through a special fund and the EBRD.
The arch was built by more than 2,500 constructors and engineers from France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Poland, Ukraine and the Philippines in an area adjacent to the reactor.
It will be moved 327 meters into place over the reactor. Construction began in 2012.
One of those monitoring the process closely is journalist Anatoliy Artemenko, who has researched the level of radiation in sub-surface water in the Chornobyl Zone, and who was involved in the making of the “Children of Chornobyl” documentary film, which was broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1991.
According to him, the shelter was supposed to cover the reactor and limit the radiation for 25 years. But it was only in 2012 that work on building its replacement, the arch, actually started.
“They’ve only finished the arch,” said Artemenko. “The whole complex, which will turn the shelter object into an environmentally friendly system in the future, still has to be completed. Now we only have the cover, which will limit the radiation impact on the environment for a hundred years.”
The arch will fully enclose the destroyed reactor on Nov. 29, and then the next stage of the work will start – the dismantling of the old shelter construction, and the recycling of materials from it.
However, Artemenko said there is no infrastructure – and no money – to carry out this next stage.
“No one in the whole world has managed to turn the territory of a nuclear power plant into a green glade yet,” Artemenko said.
Zone of the sun
Still, plans have been laid to transform the abandoned lands of the Chornobyl Zone, and put them to productive use.
The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, on July 14 adopted a bill to amend the regulations on exploiting the Chornobyl Zone that will allow the land (2,600 square kilometers in area) to be used to build solar power plants and other renewable energy centers.
Furthermore, the bill simplifies the procedures for gaining permission to conduct scientific research in the zone.
“Ukraine wants there to be reasonable new uses of land that was lost for agricultural use because of the radiation,” the State Agency on Energy Efficiency press service told the Kyiv Post.
“The construction of solar and wind energy farms will bring the Chornobyl Zone lands back to society.”
In April, Semerak presented the Chornobyl Solar project – a solar panel farm planned to be constructed on an area of 2,500 hectares, some 10 kilometers south of the Chornobyl plant.
The new solar power plant could generate about 1,500 GW of electricity a year – all that is needed is an investor.
Artemenko said ambitious plans such as these are realistic.
The Organizational Department of the Exclusion Zone now manages more than 2,000 square kilometers of land, with 94 villages in the Chornobylskiy, Polisskiy, Narodnychskiy and Ovruchskiy districts of Kyiv Oblast, which fall within the exclusion zone.
“Unfortunately, this business in Ukraine was almost completely seized by ActiveSolar, a firm that belonged to Andriy and Serhiy Klyuyev, (allies of the ousted former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, both now on the SBU wanted list),” said Artemenko.
After Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, ActiveSolar lost its biggest solar plants there, and the Chinese corporation CNBM became the biggest player on Ukraine’s renewable energy market.
CNBM could in future construct solar energy farms in the Chornobyl zone, because from January 2017 they will obtain eco-tariff benefits from the state, Artemenko said.
Jacky Chen, CNBM’s spokesperson in China, confirmed to the Kyiv Post that the Chinese company could expand into the zone.
“CNBM is interested in this solar project. And we’re discussing further investment in this area,” Chen said via e-mail.
Semerak wrote on Facebook on Oct. 25 that solar power in Chornobyl is seen by international donors as the most logical and realistic energy project Ukraine has presented to the world.
“I’ve met with representatives of the Chinese investments companies CCEC and GCL, which are leaders in the international renewable energy market. And their representatives are already working in the zone, exploring the possibilities (for restoring) our energy network (there),” wrote the minister.
Semerak added that Chinese companies are ready to invest about $ 1 billion in the development of the Chornobyl Solar project.
Corruption
However, this sunny future for the zone could be clouded over by corruption, which is rampant in the zone. Over 30 years, the area has become a breeding ground for the smuggling of radioactive fish, metal and wood.
The Chornobyl state agency website reported on Nov. 11 that a joint unit of the Chornobyl Zone Police and border guards of Kyiv Oblast’s Ivankiv District, detained a group of illegal fishermen in a boat on the Prypyat River, with about 200 kilograms of freshly caught fish on board. The fishermen had no permits and had violated the radiation zone’s safety rules, read the message.
In April 2015, Kyiv Oblast police detained a man who was attempting to smuggle 300 kilograms of radioactive scrap metal out of the exclusion zone.
Such cases are common.
The Ukrainska Pravda news website reported in November that the National Police of Ukraine has already been investigating the smuggling of radioactive scrap metal from the zone for six months. The investigation was opened in the wake of an incident on the Ukrainian-Polish border in May, when police detained a truck with 20 tons of pipes that set off customs’ radiation detectors.
In July, the National Police of Kyiv Oblast asked for a warrant from Pechersk District Court in Kyiv to arrest property from the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Police said that the property was confiscated as part of an investigation into embezzlement and corruption among nuclear power plant staff. (http://reyestr.court.gov.ua/Review/58400823)
“National police investigators have reported that in 2015-2016, the Chornobyl nuclear plant was getting financial aid from many countries to buy constructional materials and metal parts.
But the management of the plant embezzled part of the money and transferred it, with the use of foreign companies,” the court documents on the case read.
The management of the zone was making business deals through shady tenders and was involved in transferring more than Hr 17 billion ($680,000) to bogus companies, according to an investigation into the case by Nashi Hroshi, a Ukrainian television program that investigates cases of corruption.
The head of the Chornobyl plant, Ihor Hramotkin, refused to comment on this story and the Chornobyl plant press service could not be reached for comment.
Artemenko said almost all the available scrap metal has already been taken away from the zone.
Radioactive contaminated trucks which took part in rescue operation after Chernobyl nuclear disaster are parked “Rassoha” dump in Chernobyl’s zone 27 February 2006. Chernobyl’s number-four reactor, in what was then the Soviet Union and is now Ukraine, exploded 26 April 1986, sending a radioactive cloud across Europe and becoming the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster. AFP PHOTO/ SERGEI SUPINSKY / AFP PHOTO / SERGEI SUPINSKY
