S I T E   D O S S I E R

Chernobyl, Ukraine

 Site Description
 Site Progress


Site Description

The world's worst nuclear disaster took place on April 25 and 26, 1986, when testing in the Chernobyl power plant, 62 miles north of Kiev, triggered a fiery melt-down of the reactor's core. Thirty people were killed in the accident, 135,000 evacuated, and one hundred times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki was released. To this day, the 19-mile exclusion zone around the plant remains uninhabitable.

Within seven months, the reactor was buried in a concrete casing designed to absorb radiation and contain the remaining fuel. However, the sarcophagus was only meant to be a temporary solution and designed to last 20 or 30 years. International organizations such as the United Nations worry that supporting beams may be rusting and about the long-term integrity of the shelter.

One major reason for the concern is that though an enormous amount of radiation was released during the disaster, most of the radioactivity remain trapped within the remains of the plant. Some estimate that more than 100 tons of uranium and other radioactive products, such as plutonium, remain to be released. Chernobyl is also thought to contain some 2,000 tons of combustible materials. Leaks in the structure lead experts to fear that rainwater and fuel dust have formed a toxic liquid that may be contaminating the groundwater.

Estimates by international aid organizations suggest that about 78,000 to 91,000 square miles of Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine were contaminated with cesium-137 at levels over 1 curie per kilometer. About 350,400 people have since been resettled out of the worst of the contaminated areas; 5.5 million people, including more than a million children, remain.

Site Progress

In 1997, a plan was launched by a consortium of countries and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to build a new containment shelter for the plant and monitor the site for things like radiation, structural stability and earth tremors. The new structure will be big enough to cover London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral and is expected to cost about $760 million.