Thousands of Ukrainians demand reopening of Chornobyl nuclear power plant
KYIV, December 17 - Braving freezing weather, thousands of Ukrainians gathered Tuesday in the capital Kyiv to call for the reopening of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant and demand Western governments provide funding promised when the plant was closed two years ago.
Some 8,000 to 10,000 people, including hundreds of pensioners and children who suffered health damage from the Chornobyl accident 16 years ago, came to the central Sofia Square, some waving banners reading "Give Chornobyl a second life" and "No money, no safety." They demanded that Ukrainian and Western governments restore benefits to some 3 million people affected by the accident.
"We want to restore everything that has been taken from these kids' lives - medicine is not provided, there's no rehabilitation, no food. Everything has been taken from the children," said Nadia Matyesh, director of the Chornobyl Children's Fund for Survival in Korosten, a city 95 kilometers (60 miles) west of Chornobyl whose 65,000 residents were all affected by the accident.
After the one-hour protest, demonstrators broke into seven groups to picket the embassies of the Group of Seven richest nations, demanding their governments finance programs to meet Ukraine's energy needs and solve the social problems caused by Chornobyl's closure.
A U.S. Embassy representative attended the demonstration and received a letter of demands. "We will read it and give it consideration," the embassy said.
Ukraine's cash-strapped government has been unable to meet its generous Soviet-era obligations to provide social protections for the estimated 3.3 million people, including 1.5 million children, affected by the accident.
Demonstrators also protested against cuts in Chornobyl benefits planned for the 2003 budget.
Ukraine shuttered Chornobyl's last reactor in December 2000 and appealed for Western help in completing the Rivne and Khmelnytsky reactors to compensate for the lost electricity capacity.
Chornobyl was the site of world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, when one of the reactors there exploded, sending a radioactive cloud over much of Europe. In April, officials at the Chornobyl plant said gaps in the concrete and steel shell, or so-called sarcophagus, that covers the damaged reactor total more than 1,000 square meters (10,700 square feet).
The Chornobyl Fund, comprised of Western governments, the European Union and Ukraine, pledged more than US$700 million to replace the existing sarcophagus over the reactor. Ukraine earmarked the remaining US$50 million, but as of June only US$130 million had been spent.
Work to construct a new covering is not expected to start before 2004 and should be completed by 2008.
Yury Andreyev, president of the advocacy group Ukrainian Union of Chornobyl that organized the demonstration, said one reactor at the Chornobyl plant could be restarted in two to three weeks "if the West refuses to keep its promises." |
