Chornobyl’s official Web site (http://www. chnpp.atom.gov.ua) contains data that will increase your heart rate. The specific characteristic of the Shelter (popularly known as the sarcophagus) is its potential threat, which is significantly greater than allowable norms and rules governing structures that contain nuclear and radioactive materials. The damaged nuclear power unit still contains some 200 tons of radioactive material. There are no effective means that would have an impact on their criticality, nor any reliable physical barriers to prevent radiation from leaking into the environment. At present, the Shelter still contains some 95% of nuclear fuel that was present in the power unit when the planet’s most devastating nuclear accident occurred in 1986. Water keeps invading the containment structure, owing to a number of reasons stemming from the blast, so that the Shelter’s current status as a more or less safe nuclear, radiation, and environmental project can be easily wrecked. Its structural characteristics do not meet established safety standards. In the western sector, the wall has a deviation of up to 50 cm, and there are cracks in various places. If a quake measuring 4.3 points on the Richter scale occurs, this will cause some of the Shelter’s roofing to cave in. In the southern sector, over the 24.3 meter level, the deaerator stack body, which contains much of the debris and construction materials, has deviated from the vertical by some 1.5 meters. Experts estimate that there is a 0.24 risk rate that the southern wall will collapse, which is well over the IAEA-recommended safety limits. In a word, the Shelter in Chornobyl cannot be kept under effective control, given the current facilities.
The Shelter was constructed in a record-breaking six months after the nuclear disaster. It was first conceived as a temporary containment structure built over Power Unit 4, which was wrecked by the explosion, to protect the environment from powerful radioactive emissions. No one denied that the project had many shortcomings, so its service life was set at 10-15 years. The shock from the disaster was also too great to take every detail into account. Last but not least, there was simply no experience in dealing with such a cataclysm, yet something had to be done quickly and effectively, as the USSR, and Ukraine as its constituent republic, was faced with repercussions from Europe, the last thing it needed. By the end of the perestroika campaign the glaring shortcomings of the Shelter were complicated by a shortage of funds. Solving the Chornobyl problem required at least twice the amount of the Soviet central budget.
Eighteen years have passed, with scientists and politicians periodically calling for closer attention to the Shelter. Meanwhile, what was originally designed as a temporary containment project had turned into an Egyptian sarcophagus of sorts that was apparently designed to last for centuries. Experts are now raising the alarm, pointing to the cracks and warning that it is token protection against lethal radiation; that it can pose as much danger as Power Unit 4 back in 1986. Funds are apparently being disbursed, but the Shelter is still there.
In an attempt to understand why this is happening, we examined data from the official findings of the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine (DSP ChAES, 2003).
Among other things, these findings make it clear that the DSP ChAES, while utilizing budget appropriations to sustain the Shelter in safe operating mode, violated legislative and normative acts of Ukraine and ineffectively utilized UAH 6.5 million, including budgetary violations involving nearly UAH 4.8 million, of which 700 million hryvnias were used for non-target purposes (Findings of the Board of the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine #19/11-1 of June 1, 2004, in the “Inspection Report on Use of Ukrainian Budget Money in 2003, Earmarked for Maintaining the Shelter in Safe Mode”).
One can only wonder about the monopoly status of the firm Pivdenteploenerhomontazh, considering their numerous supply contracts. According to a report submitted by a DSP ChAES inspector, a number of structural units have no legally valid licenses, which is contrary to current Ukrainian legislation; worse still, their operations are in violation of the established work schedule (see Findings). As a result, the emergency dust-absorption system has yet to be installed and the Shelter’s water-processing schedule has been complied with by a mere 8.6%, meaning that between 300 and 900 m3 of average liquid radioactive wastes are leaking from the area of the Shelter.
I don’t wish to brand anyone an incompetent and irresponsible administrator. There is no denying the fact that much has been done in Chornobyl, but the big question remains: Why are our people still being exposed to radiation?
In 1995 the European Union and Washington reminded Ukraine that the Shelter was obsolete and had to be renovated. At the time, the Ukrainian government had too many other problems to cope with, including a severe economic crisis. The EU and the US sent a clear message to Kyiv: Stop the Chornobyl power units. At the time, the corroding Shelter posed a real and apparent threat to the population of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and a number of EU countries (this threat is even more apparent these days), so the EU believed (and still does) that repairing the Shelter is a project that cannot be delayed.
Ukraine was adamant about its stand: Yes, such repairs must be done immediately, but we cannot shut down the power units, because we’ll be facing a critical power supply shortage. The talks lasted nearly five years. Finally, in December 2000, three Chornobyl power units were shut down, primarily in view of the need to renovate the Shelter and build a modern containment structure to cover the sarcophagus. In other words, the nuclear power plant was shut down in order to save people’s lives.
After that, everything happened in accord with two international programs, with full funding from the Ukrainian budget. The first program, aimed at making the Shelter ecologically safe, entailed an overhaul of the original sarcophagus and construction of a new containment structure. The other program required shutting down the Chornobyl nuclear power station (shutting down the power units, retrieving the nuclear fuel and recycling it; building recycling and storage facilities, etc.). All things considered, the first program had the highest priority, while the second one was a complementary, albeit vital, one. The underlying principle was: Take care of people’s safety first; then everything else. However, the funding, deadlines, structures, and scope demonstrated a clear disproportion in favor of the second program. It’s another alarming factor to be considered, since personal safety comes first, and the people who are responsible for this should understand this.
REFERENCE
The Shelter was designed between 20 May and June 1986, and built between June and September 1986. More than 90,000 construction workers were involved in the construction of the Shelter, which used over 400,000 m3 of concrete; the assembled metal structures weighed a total of 7,000 tons. The northern cascade wall was made of concrete, in the form of ledges about 12 meters in height. The encasement of the ledges was made of metal shields, each weighing hundreds of tons. Used or damaged metal structures were inserted in these ledges, along with containers with highly radioactive waste. The western wall, which was undamaged from the blast, was covered with metal sheets reaching 50 meters in height. Two 36-meter-long metal beams were installed in what remained of Power Unit 4, serving as supports for the roofing of the “central hall.” On them were placed 27 pipes with a diameter of 1,200 mm.
