Bird’s Eye: 25 years since the meltdown, and this week there was a big announcement about the building of a giant two part steel container to cover the debris. The Guardian animated film of how it’s supposed to work is well worth watching, as is the slide show of what the area surrounding it now looks like.
* Ukraine raises $785m to seal Chernobyl under new ‘shell’ The Guardian
Governments from around the world today pledged $785m (€550m) to seal the stricken nuclear reactor at Chernobyl within a 20,000-tonne steel shield that would be large enough to enclose St Paul’s Cathedral in London. The huge arch is designed to prevent any further radiation from escaping for 100 years.
The pledges, made at a conference in Kiev ahead of the 25th anniversary of the disaster on 26 April 2011, bring the total raised for the Chernobyl safety works to $1.8bn and will enable efforts to finally secure the reactor which caught fire in April 1986.
* Chernobyl Today: A Creepy Story told in Pictures Village Of Joy
In the zone of alienation in northern Ukraine, Kiev Oblast, near the border with Belarus. Its population had been around 50,000 prior to the accident. Today, the only residents are deer and wolves along with a solitary guard. Prypiat used to be proud for being home to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers. But something happened on 26 April 1986…
It took three days before all permanent residents of Chernobyl and the Zone of alienation were evacuated due to unsafe levels of radioactivity. People from around the Soviet Union were forced to come and work here in order to liquidate the danger and evacuate the residents. Many of the workers died or had serious illness from radiation. My father was also recruited for this operation, but he bribed corrupt local officers with some good sausages which were rare and a valuable item at those times, so he’s fine and alive today….
