Ukraine inaugurated on Tuesday a metal dome built above the reactor accident victim of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to ensure the safety of the facilities during the next 100 years.
The metal frame, arc-shaped, weighs 25,000 tons (over 36,000 when it is equipped) and measures 108 meters tall and 162 feet long.
“This is equivalent to cover the Stadium of France or the Statue of Liberty”, explains in a statement Novarka, a company formed by the French groups Bouygues and Vinci, who conceived and built the dome.
With a life expectancy of at least 100 years, the structure will confine radioactive matter, protect workers on the site and isolate the sarcophagus already existing against the inclemency of the weather.
in Addition, you have equipment for future operations of dismantling of the reactor Nº4.
on April 26, 1986, to the 01H23, this reactor exploded during a safety test. During 10 days, the nuclear fuel burned, firing into the atmosphere radioactive elements that end up polluting, according to some estimates, up to three quarters of Europe, especially Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, at that time, soviet republics.
About 90,000 people worked during 206 days in the construction of a “sarcophagus”, a metal structure is 7,300 tons and consists of 400,000 cubic metres of concrete, under very difficult conditions, to isolate the reactor in the accident, explained to the AFP by Anna Korolevska, deputy director of the museum of Chernobyl in Kiev.
“This was done thanks to the superhuman efforts of thousands of ordinary people”, he explained.
“What were their means of protection? I worked with uniform ordinary construction workers!”, recalled Korolevska.
During the four years, about 600,000 soviet, known since then under the name of “liquidators”, were deployed in the place of the accident to extinguish the fire, building the concrete layer to isolate the reactor, rugged and clean up the territories of the surrounding area.
The human balance of the disaster remains a source of debate. The scientific committee of the UN (UNSCEAR) only recognizes officially thirty dead among the operators and firefighters who were exposed to radiation immediately to the explosion, but according to some estimates, the balance could be thousands of deaths. .
– The sarcophagus could sink –
although at first it was thought that the sarcophagus would last between 20 and 30 years old, his life ended up being shorter. In 1999 were the first works to strengthen it, and these were repeated in 2001, 2005 and 2006.
“Is a construction that is potentially dangerous, that poses a threat eventually to the environment and to the population”, she stated to the AFP Sergui Paskevitch, Institute of Problems of Safety of Nuclear power Plants of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Paskevitch said, for example, that environmental factors such as an earthquake could accelerate the collapse of the structure.
In contrast, the new dome should resist earthquakes with a maximum intensity of level 6 according to the scale of Mercalli (of 12 levels).
Against the risk of collapse of the old sarcophagus, which could lead to the escape of tons of magma highly radioactive, the international community committed itself to finance the construction of the new layer.
a fund Was established, managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and the works began in 2012. According to the EBRD, the construction of the dome, amounted to 1,500 million euros, although the amount of the entire enclosure of confinement amounted to 2,100 million euros.
After installation, the dome will not be operational until the end of 2017, when you have installed all the necessary equipment.
“then work will begin to dismantle the shaky old building,” said Sergui Bojko, the head of the State inspection for nuclear regulation (the agency in charge of nuclear safety in Ukraine). Even so, the responsible qualified that still has not set any timetable to respect.
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