By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — If you're going to Ukraine this summer, be sure to take a change of lead underwear. To judge by recent developments in the country's nuclear power industry, you might well need it.
Not only have negotiations with western aid-givers on shutting down the Chernobyl nuclear power plant struck a snag, but safety standards at all five of Ukraine's nuclear plants are under threat as a result of acute funding shortages.
Meanwhile, the country's influential nuclear power establishment remains committed to bringing new nuclear generating capacity on stream.
During April the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, was thick with western financial representatives and working groups, trying to reach agreement with Ukrainian authorities on how to cope with the remaining problems at Chernobyl — which in 1986 was the scene of the world's worst-ever nuclear disaster — while providing for Ukraine's future energy needs.
Officials of the Ukrainian government conferred on April 22 with representatives of the European Commission and the Group of Seven advanced industrial countries.
The meeting ended with assurances that the terms of a November 1995 memorandum, under which the G7 countries were to provide financial aid in return for the final shutdown of the Chernobyl plant, would be met. Detailed plans would be drawn up for the construction of a new shell around the destroyed fourth reactor, and for facilities to process and store radioactive waste.
It soon emerged, however, that disagreements over Ukraine's future energy strategies had thrown the shutdown plans into limbo.
Of US$3.1 billion pledged by the western side in grants and loans for the Chernobyl closure, $1.2 billion has been earmarked for the completion of two new nuclear power reactors, Khmelnitsky 2 and Rovno 4, meant to make up for the lost generating capacity.
In past years, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is to finance much of the work associated with the shutdown, had no special misgivings about the plans for these new "nukes". Now the bank is having second thoughts.
Before handing over the money for the reactors, the EBRD in February formed a special commission of independent experts to study the question of whether completing them made economic sense. The commission found that the money would be better spent on energy conservation and on developing alternative energy sources.
This advice failed to strike a chord with the Ukrainian government. Even officials responsible for the environment did not respond positively. In mid-April environment and nuclear safety minister Yury Kostenko stated that Kiev disagreed with the commission's findings. If the terms for closing the Chernobyl plant were changed, the news service RFE/RL quoted Kostenko as saying, the Ukrainian government might reconsider its plans for the shutdown.
Meanwhile, the western representatives during the April talks did little to address the chaotic state of the Ukrainian nuclear power industry.
Even while new nuclear plants are being built, the existing ones suffer from severe chronic cash shortages. The Chernobyl plant cut its output to half capacity in March after having been unable to purchase nuclear fuel since July 1996.
Operators in Ukraine's nuclear plants receive their pay only sporadically. Late in March, Chernobyl plant director Sergey Parashin reported that his workers were owed wages for nearly three months. The delays mean that employees are often hungry and under psychological stress.
According to the news agency Interfax, Kostenko admitted to parliament on April 8 that safety in the nuclear plants was "unsatisfactory". Lack of money for routine preventive maintenance now means that the situation can only deteriorate.
During April, the news service RFE/RL quoted State Nuclear Committee deputy chairperson Vasyl Katko as saying that Ukraine's nuclear power plants would be unable to afford annual repairs during the coming summer because energy consumers were not paying their bills. According to Katko, the plants can undertake only 30% of necessary repair work.
Even if the disputes between Kiev and western aid-givers are eventually ironed out, acute dangers remain at Chernobyl, and ending them will pose enormous challenges.
Ukrainians reacted with alarm last September when measuring instruments inside the concrete and steel "sarcophagus" that encloses the ruined fourth reactor several times recorded a dramatic increase in neutron levels. Scientists theorised that the migration of radioactive materials inside the melted reactor fuel could result in a chain reaction and another explosion.
Experts are now trying to work out how to remove an estimated 180 tonnes of highly radioactive material from the destroyed reactor for more secure storage.
Once this has been achieved — if it proves possible — a new sarcophagus will be built over the present structure, which has deteriorated badly and is no longer airtight. Current plans provide for this work to be completed by 2005 and to cost between US$600 and US$800 million.
For Ukraine, a country that has known nothing except deepening economic depression throughout its independent existence, the continuing costs of Chernobyl are a devastating burden.
According to deputy emergencies minister Volodymyr Potikha, western aid is covering only a fraction of what Ukraine is spending to deal with the effects of the catastrophe. Speaking to journalists on April 23, Potikha said that over the past five years his country had spent the equivalent of US$14 billion to contain and clean up the damage.
The economic costs are hardly to be measured against the cost in lives ruined or brought to an end by radiation-induced sickness. Olga Babilova, head of the Ukrainian Health Ministry's radiology department, told journalists during April that 772 children in Ukraine had developed thyroid cancer since the Chernobyl catastrophe. This is about 50 times the number that would normally be anticipated for this disease, which is very rare among children in uncontaminated regions.