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Publish date: September 22, 2005
News
The Chernobyl Forum includes eight UN agencies, the World Bank, Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.
However, the press service of the Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry said the current casing will remain safe long enough for a new “arch” to be built over the sarcophagus. The new shelter will be in the form of an arch, 100 meters high and 250 meters wide. It will be assembled at a safe place near the reactor, and then mounted over the old casing. A tender will be held for the construction of the shelter at the end of November, the press service said. Work will then begin work on the shelter’s construction, involving 3,000 specialists.
The Chernobyl Shelter Fund, run by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, hopes to raise more than $1 billion for the project. Some 28 foreign governments have already pledged to contribute more than $750m.
Chernobyl’s number-four reactor, in what was then the Soviet Union and is now Ukraine, exploded on April 26, 1986, sending a radioactive cloud across Europe. Following the disaster, a concrete sarcophagus was built over the stricken reactor but the new 20,000-tonne steel case will cover the whole plant. EBRD officials hope that construction of the gigantic steel shelter will be completed by 2008/2009.
Recent attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "mark the beginning of a new and gravely dangerous front of the war," the UN atomic agency's director general said last week.
After years of inaction, Germany is working on its Carbon Management Strategy to resolve how CCS can play a role in climate action in industry. At the end of February, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action published first key points and a proposal to amend the law Kohlenstoffdioxid Speicherungsgesetz (KSpG). Bellona Deutschland, who was actively involved in the previous stakeholder dialogue submitted a statement in the association hearing.
In the midst of a global discussion on whether natural gas should be used as a transitional fuel and whether emissions from its extraction, production, transport and use are significantly less than those from other fossil fuels, Russia has developed ambitious plans to increase its own production of liquified natural gas (LNG) in the Arctic – a region with 75% of proven gas reserves in Russia – to raise its share in the international gas trade.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our main focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution risks and climate change.