FYI.....
Jaro
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Ukrainians Gather To Demand Reopening Of Chernobyl Plant
17 December 2002 Dow Jones International News
KIEV (AP)--Braving freezing weather, thousands of Ukrainians gathered in a central square in the capital Kiev to call for the reopening of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and demand Western governments provide funding promised when the plant was closed in 2000.
Some 8,000 to 10,000 people, including hundreds of pensioners and children who suffered health damage from the Chernobyl accident 16 years ago, stood in Sofia Square. Some waved banners reading "Give Chernobyl a second life" and "No money, no safety." They demanded the Ukrainian government and Western governments restore benefits to some 3 million people who were affected by the accident.
"We want to restore everything that has been taken from these kids' lives - medicine is not provided, there's no rehabilitation, no food. Everything has been taken from the kids," said Nadezhda Matyesh, director of the Chernobyl Children's Fund for Survival in Korosten, a city 60 miles west of Chernobyl whose 65,000 residents were all affected by the accident.
After the one-hour protest, demonstrators broke into seven groups to picket the embassies of the Group of Seven richest nations, demanding their governments finance programs to meet Ukraine's energy needs and solve the social problems caused by Chernobyl's closure.
Ukraine shuttered Chernobyl's last reactor in December 2000 and appealed for Western help in completing the Rivne and Khmelnytskyi reactors to compensate for the lost electricity capacity.
Chernobyl was the site of world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, when one of the reactors there exploded, sending a radioactive cloud over much of Europe.
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