World governments and international organisations have pledged to provide €550 million for the construction of a new shelter at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovich said today.
"This is what we have been able to raise through joint efforts - and we consider this figure preliminary - €550 million," he said at a dedicated pledging conference in Kiev.
Ukraine is looking to the world to pledge more funds to help it contain the consequences of history's worst nuclear accident, but donors seem likely to put up less than the €740 million it seeks.
Leaders from the Group of Eight industrial powers and the European Union are gathering in Kiev for a conference marking 25 years since the Chernobyl disaster, which has been brought into sharper focus by the nuclear crisis at Fukushima in Japan.
A European-backed venture foresees construction of a new shell over Chernobyl's No. 4 reactor, which blew up in April 1986, to contain radioactivity leaking through a makeshift shelter from hundreds of tonnes of radioactive material still inside.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said yesterday the commission would allocate an extra €110 million towards this and allied Chernobyl projects.
"We hope our key partners will also step up their contributions in order to complete the works of the shelter by 2015," he said.
But a commission official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said total pledges were likely to come far below the €740 million that Ukraine sought.
Today's "donors' conference" opens a week of commemorations in Ukraine marking the Soviet-era explosion and fire at the Chernobyl plant, located on Ukraine's northern border with Belarus. A prevailing southeast wind carried a cloud of radioactivity over Belarus and Russia and on into parts of northern Europe.
The official short-term death toll from the accident was 31, but many more died of radiation-related sicknesses such as cancer. The total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate.
Reuters