The world’s largest metal moveable structure will be unveiled on Tuesday over the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s doomed fourth reactor in Ukraine to ensure the safety of future generations across Europe.
The giant arch — nearly as long as two football grounds and taller than New York’s Statue of Liberty — will edge into place over an existing crumbling dome that the Soviets constructed in haste when disaster struck three decades ago on April 26.
Radioactive fallout from the site of the world’s worst civil nuclear accident contaminated Ukraine and spread across three-quarters of Europe.
Work on the previous safety dome began after a 10-day fire caused by the explosion was contained but as radiation still spewed.
“It was done through the super-human efforts of thousands of ordinary people,” the Chernobyl museum’s deputy chief Anna Korolevska said.
“What kind of protective gear could they have possibly had? They worked in regular construction clothes.”
About 30 of the clean-up workers, known as liquidators, were killed on site or died from overwhelming radiation poisoning in the following weeks.
Death toll uncertain
The toll from the accident caused by errors during an experimental safety check remains under dispute because the Soviet authorities did their best to cover up the tragedy.
Kiev held a May Day parade as invisible contamination spread over the city while then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev only admitted on May 14 that something had gone terribly wrong. A United Nations estimate in 2005 said around 4,000 people had either been killed or were left dying from cancer and other related disease. — AFP
