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Russia must cease its “nuclear terrorism,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday as he marked 40 years since the nuclear disaster at the Soviet-era Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Moscow was taking the world to the edge of nuclear catastrophe with its drone attacks on Ukraine, he said, referring to last year’s attack on the protective shell built over the plant to contain nuclear contamination.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said that maintaining the site’s security was in everyone’s interest. The cost of repairing the steel structure following the attack has been put at more than $500 million.<\/p>\n
“The world cannot allow this nuclear terrorism to continue, and the best way is to compel Russia to halt its crazy attacks,” he said.<\/p>\n
On April 26, 1986, a test at the Chernobyl plant in what was then the Soviet republic of Ukraine went out of control. Reactor four suffered a catastrophic failure, releasing radioactive material into the environment.<\/p>\n
Radioactive clouds spread across parts of northern and western Europe, with Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia most severely affected. The damaged reactor released radiation for months.<\/p>\n
Experts estimate tens of thousands of deaths can be linked to the disaster. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from the 30-kilometre exclusion zone around the now-decommissioned plant, which is located some 100 kilometres north of Kiev.<\/p>\n
Zelensky has long called for an end to the Russian occupation of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhya in southern Ukraine, which has been controlled by Russia’s Rosatom nuclear company since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n
Zelensky published a video to mark the 40th anniversary of the world’s worst civilian nuclear power disaster, calling for all the victims of the Chernobyl catastrophe to be honoured.<\/p>\n
The Soviet government in Moscow at the time came in for severe criticism for its handling of the crisis, concealing its scale and putting hundreds of thousands of people in danger.<\/p>\n
Speaking in Moscow to mark the anniversary, Rosatom head Alexey Likhachev said that today’s nuclear plants in Russia were safe. “The accident compelled us to a thorough reworking of our safety concepts,” he said.<\/p>\n
“A Chernobyl scenario at Russian nuclear reactors today has been ruled out,” Likhachev said. He paid tribute to the “heroic work” of the more than 600,000 technicians, troops, firefighters, construction workers and doctors from across the Soviet Union who worked to contain the aftermath 40 years ago.<\/p>\n
He said these “liquidators” had constructed the concrete sarcophagus built to limit radioactive emissions, which has since been covered by the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement, the steel arch now covering the site.<\/p>\n
In Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, people paid tribute to the victims of the 1986 disaster with moments of silence, exhibitions, concerts, film screenings and flower-laying ceremonies.<\/p>\n
More than 62,000 of the people affected by the disaster currently live in Kiev, including 30,000 liquidators. Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko welcomed them to the city hall to honour them.<\/p>\n
Belarus, where 70% of the radioactive precipitation occurred, was worst hit by the disaster. At least a fifth of the former Soviet republic was contaminated, particularly the Gomel region in the south, where large areas were contaminated with Caesium 137 and Strontium 90.<\/p>\n
Politicians, military officers and civilians marked the day in Belarus. Representatives of the embassies of Ukraine and Russia laid wreaths, the Foreign Ministry in Minsk reported.<\/p>\n
Exiled Belarusian activists opposed to the authoritarian rule of President Alexander Lukashenko held events in neighbouring countries. Irina Suchi, co-founder of the Ecodom environmental group accused the Minsk government of carrying on as though everything had returned to normal.<\/p>\n
“But there are no adequate controls,” she told dpa. Suchi called for tests on the soil and food products to check radiation levels. She said that around 100 environmental organizations had been shut down or forced into exile.<\/p>\n
“Over the entire 40 years, they have never told the population how to act when they live in a contaminated region,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n