Eleven years after Chornobyl shook the world questions remain about nuclear fuel, contamination (04/27/97)

Eleven years after Chornobyl shook the world questions remain about nuclear fuel, contamination

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Eleven years after Chornobyl blew skyward irradiating major portions of Ukraine and Belarus, the world still is trying to figure out how to remove the nuclear fuel buried below ruined reactor No. 4 and what to do with it. Meanwhile radiation keeps spreading outward, polluting more land around the zone.

As part of the whirlwind of activity that centers on Chornobyl every year at the time of the anniversary, a group of Western experts met in Kyiv on April 22 to again consider what should be done with the still unstable radioactive mass beneath the crumbling 10-year-old sarcophagus.

The group had discussions with Ukrainian Chornobyl experts to decide how to stabilize the 200 tons of fuel that remain covered by the sarcophagus, which was hastily erected after the reactor blew on April 26, 1986, and which is now said to be leaking radiation and slowly crumbling.

The biggest problem thus far has been obtaining accurate information on what is going on inside the shelter. "Until now the situation has not been fully controlled and, therefore, we could not totally rely on the information," Valentyn Kupnyi, the Chornobyl facility's deputy director general in charge of the shelter, told reporters on April 16.

The biggest threat has been that, because the fuel is still unstable, a nuclear reaction could begin anew if sufficient mass developes. This has led experts to scuttle earlier plans to cover the nuclear reactor in a reinforced high-tech prophylactic and let the radiation waste away.

Carol Kessler, the head of the Western delegation visiting Kyiv, said both Kyiv and the West had agreed on a plan to reduce the threat caused by the unstable fuel. According to an RFE-RL Daily Report, she said the April 22-23 meetings had resulted in a plan to ensure the safety of the deteriorating concrete sarcophagus and on the removal of the nuclear fuel.

Days earlier, on April 15, Ukraine's Minister of Chornobyl Affairs Valerii Kalchenko announced that a nuclear-waste-processing complex would be built in the 30-kilometer Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. Initial plans call for a facility capable of processing and burying 500,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste whose decay period would not exceed 30 years. Bidding for the right to develop the project, which is scheduled to be completed within three years, will be awarded by tender. Ukraine has set aside 27 million hrv in 1997 for initial costs.

Exclusion zone to be expanded

And while the various projects laggardly move forward, Ukraine has declared that sufficient amounts of radiation have spread to the regions adjoining the 30-kilometer Chornobyl exclusion zone to merit consideration of its expansion by one-third.

The director of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, Oleksander Hrebeniuk, on April 17 revealed that plans are being laid to widen the forbidden zone by another 1,000 square kilometers. "The territory of the zone in June will be 3,000 square meters," said Mr. Hrebeniuk. According to Mr. Hrebeniuk, the absorption will take place in two stages: first the area from the Uzh River to the Belarusian border will become a special zone, then parts of Polissia and the Zhytomyr region will be included.

However, the zone will not be as tightly sealed as the original Chornobyl exclusion zone, a 30-kilometer circle surrounding the nuclear plant that was emptied of people in the months after the disaster and that has remained a virtual no-man's land.

Ukraine's Minister of Environmental Safety and Nuclear Protection Yurii Kostenko said "new areas of contamination that have been identified are not going to become part of the original zone and will not be treated the same."

In fact Mr. Kostenko believes that de-populating areas should not be the mission, but that the goal should be to make clean water and food available (see interview with Minister Kostenko beginning on page 1). "Nuclear contaminants naturally keep moving outward. They are washed away by water and carried in the atmosphere. I want to emphasize that the discussion should not be on relocation but on normalizing the situation and the life of those affected," he explained.

Mr. Kostenko said that more than 50 percent of Ukrainians today live in areas affected by radioactive pollution.

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