The last reactor at Chernobyl has been permanently shut down. It was an accident on the site in Ukraine that destroyed the nuclear dream 14 years ago.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko told the closing ceremony audience: “For the entire world, Chernobyl stands as a negative symbol that should have no place upon the Earth.”
But the closure will leave a host of controversies over the new reactors meant to replace Chernobyl and the safety of its sister reactors in Russia and Lithuania.
Chernobyl reactor number four exploded on 26 April 1986. It spewed a cloud of radioactivity over Europe and sparked a worldwide retreat from nuclear power. It left 200 tons of deadly debris that will take generations and billions of dollars to clean up. Western nations have pledged $700 million for a new concrete sarcophagus to seal the site.
Reactor two was closed after a fire in 1991, reactor one was shut in 1996 and now reactor three is due to be powered down as part of a political deal with western countries.
Ukraine only agreed to close the reactor as long as funding was found for replacement nuclear power generation. On 7 December, the 57-country European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) voted by a majority to approve a $215 million loan towards the completion of new reactors at Khmelnitsky and Rovno in western Ukraine. The European Commission is expected approve a further $585 million this week.
The funding is being granted despite evidence from experts that the new reactors are unsafe and uneconomic. A leaked report commissioned by the Austrian government, which has long opposed the new reactors, concludes that they are “particularly hazardous” because they may not withstand earthquakes.
The report was written by nuclear consultant Helmut Hirsch, for the Institute of Risk Research at the University of Vienna. It says that earthquakes in the region could be up to five times more powerful than previously assumed. “A re-evaluation of the seismic hazards is therefore urgently required,” argues the report.
A report for the EBRD concludes that investing in improving energy efficiency would be far better than building new plants. One of this report’s authors, Steve Thomas from the Science and Technology Policy Research unit at the University of Sussex, points out that Ukraine’s coal and nuclear plants can generate twice as much power as the country currently consumes.
“It makes absolutely no sense to build any more plants of any kind,” he told New Scientist.
But according to Energoatom, the Ukrainian nuclear power company, another report by US consultants, Stone and Webster, concludes that two new reactors would be cost effective. And the company’s Alexander Maistrenko claims the differences between their design and that of the Chernobyl reactors “provides assurances of the absolute impossibility of a recurrence of the 1986 accident.”
There are, however, still 13 Chernobyl-style RBMK reactors in operation – 11 in Russia and two in Lithuania. The environmental group, Greenpeace, wants them all closed for fear of another accident. Although this may happen to the Lithuanian reactors at Ignalina, the Russians are busy upgrading their reactors to prolong their lives for another 15 years.