Ukraine-Russia Tension Hampers Chernobyl Cleanup

CHERNOBYL, UKRAINE —  The tensions between Russia and Ukraine have begun complicating the ongoing cleanup at the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.

In northern Ukraine, close to the border with Belarus, the world’s largest movable structure is being built.

When finished, the 250-meter-wide steel arch is to slide 200 meters to cover the sarcophagus hastily built after the 1986 explosion to entomb Chernobyl Reactor Number 4.

Driver Igor Bordnarch made more than 500 trips to the location, none lasting more than 15 minutes. His geiger counter shows the limited effectiveness of the old sarcophagus, which is in danger of collapse.

“This, actually for perimeter of the nuclear power plant, is a cleaned area. So the radiation does not go from the ground, from the soil. It goes directly through the sarcophagus,” explained Bordnarch.

Tons of radioactive material shot into the sky when the reactor exploded. The fallout blanketed Belarus and Ukraine in what was then the Soviet Union. But the Soviet government in Moscow did not raise a public alarm. It would be scientists in Sweden who told the world something ominous had occurred.

Farmer Ivan Semenyuk said if Soviet authorities had told villagers they would never be able to return home, there would have been panic and perhaps many of the 120,000 people in the area would have refused to leave.

“They lied to us. I took only 20 potatoes and a kettle. I fled in my broken-down car,” he said.

But Semenyuk and his wife have illegally returned home to tend to a small wheat field and raise some chickens and a pig, just 12 kilometers from the accident site.

Most of a 30-square-kilometer exclusion zone remains an eerie ghost town, off limits to all but cleanup workers and some officials who may spend no more than 15 days per month inside.

A top Ukrainian Communist official at the time, Leonid Kravchuk, who would become independent Ukraine’s first president, visited the site two days after the explosion.

“Of course the Ukrainian intelligentsia, Ukrainian scientists and those who were politically savvy saw that Moscow would never tell the truth to Ukraine. They knew that Moscow always wanted to see Ukraine under its thumb,” Kravchuk said.

Twenty-eight years later those initial Ukrainian suspicions are full-fledged animosities, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Ukrainian officials say Russia has abandoned its G-8 duties to lead fundraising for the sarcophagus cost overruns, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Now they [Russia] will leave us on our own to finish the construction of the new sarcophagus and it is hugely uncertain whether they will provide the portion of the funds that they took responsibility for,” said Ukrainian lawmaker Valerii Kalchenko.

An emergency meeting of concerned nations and the funding coordinator, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, is to be held April 4 in London to discuss the money shortfall for the sarcophagus.

There are warnings time is running out to avert a second Chernobyl catastrophe due to the precarious condition of the sarcophagus.

“This is why it is very important for us today not to lose time," said Kalchenko. "Perhaps we have three to four years left to finish the construction.”

But even when the new protective arch is slid into place, the dangerous work will not be finished.

Removing spent fuel and other highly radioactive materials will take decades and cost many more billions of dollars, a tremendous financial burden for Ukraine.