Ukraine remembers Chernobyl disaster 30 years later – ABC Color

KIEV. Ukraine on Tuesday commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear accident in history that caused, according to estimates, thousands of dead and contaminated up to three-quarters of Europe.

The head of the Ukrainian state, Petro Porochenko, and Suma Chakrabarti, President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which manages funds for measures security features that protect the place, will visit on Tuesday the former Chernobyl power plant, only one hundred kilometers north of Kiev.

lay flowers in memory of the victims of the disaster and attend the signing of an agreement for the EBRD grants EUR 40 million for the construction of a repository for spent nuclear fuel at the plant.

During the night, the inhabitants, as every year, had brought flowers and candles to memorial Chernobyl victims in Slavutich, a town about 50 kilometers from the center and built after the disaster to accommodate their employees.

“Thirty years after the Chernobyl accident, it is crucial to carry out joint efforts between Ukraine and the international community to transform the site into safe for the environment, “said Chakrabarti Monday in Kiev.

on April 26, 1986, at 01H23, the reactor number 4 of the plant exploded during a safety test.

for ten days, the nuclear fuel burned, ousting the atmosphere radioactive elements that according to some estimates polluted up to three quarters of Europe, but especially Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, in that moment Soviet republics.

Moscow first tried to hide the accident. The first public warning was given on April 28 by Sweden, which had detected an increase in radioactivity. The Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev did not speak publicly about the incident until 14 May.

Once the authorities acknowledged the accident, a total of 116,000 people had to leave their homes located in the area exclusion, which today are still unable to return. In the following years, 230,000 others were displaced.

Today about 5 million Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusians live in areas where the amount of radiation is high.

four years, some 600,000 people, mainly military, police, firefighters and officers, worked as “liquidators” to contain the nuclear fire and create a concrete barrier to isolate the reactor.

currently, the human balance the catastrophe remains controversial. According to the Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation UN (UNSCEAR) there were 30 deaths among the agents sent to contain the effects of the accident in the days following the disaster.

A controversial report published by the UN in 2005 estimated at “about 4,000″ victims in the three most affected countries. A year later, Greenpeace put the figure at about 100,000.

Weighs the disaster, three other reactors at Chernobyl continued to produce electricity until December 2000.

“sarcophagus” of concrete built quickly in 1986 threatens to collapse and expose the air 200 tons of highly radioactive magma.

to avoid a new catastrophe, the international community has committed to fund the construction of a new protection , Safer. A giant steel arch waterproof, whose duration is estimated to 100 years at least, is already built and should be fully operational by the end of 2017.