Chernobyl—Another Casualty of the Ukraine Crisis

There’s not enough money to finish atomic disaster site’s new containment structure

Chernobyl’s New Safe Confinement arch under construction on April 2, 2014. SSE Chernobyl NPP photo

In 2010, Ukraine began working on a new, climate-controlled sarcophagus designed to seal off the irradiated skeleton of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant—the site of the world’s worst radiological accident.

Shaped like a giant arch, the new containment building—once finished—will survive for at least 100 years, keeping the environment safe from further pollution if the original sarcophagus nestled inside collapses.

But now the project risks being delayed by Ukraine’s political and economic crisis.

“We clearly see that our current contract for completion in October 2015 can’t be maintained,” Vince Novak, director of nuclear safety at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development—which gathers international funding for the arch—told Nuclear Engineering magazine.

“In our financial analysis we are of course making the working assumption that it will not receive any money from Ukraine in the near term,” he added. That’s because of a roiling economic and political crisis in Ukraine—worsened by the lingering threat of another Russian invasion.

Worse, there’s currently not enough funding to finish the job.