Ukraine: Chornobyl reactor’s radioactive dust shelter opened

KIEV, Ukraine – A structure built to confine radioactive dust from the nuclear reactor at the centre of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster is up and running.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy formally opened the “new safe confinement” shelter that spans the remains of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant’s Reactor No. 4.

The structure cost 2.2 billion euros (about $2.5 billion) and took nine years to complete. Officials have described it as the largest movable land-based structure ever built.

Reactor No. 4 at the Chornobyl plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded and burned on April 26, 1986. The disaster’s eventual death toll is subject to speculation and dispute.

The World Health Organization’s cancer research arm estimates that 9,000 people will die of Chornobyl-related cancer and leukemia if the health effects follow a similar pattern to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.