Gore visits Chernobyl disaster site

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Thursday July 23 10:04 AM EDT 

Gore visits Chernobyl disaster site

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Al Gore 
visited Ukraine's Chernobyl power plant on Thursday,
taking in the eerie desolation that surrounds the deathly still site of 
the world's worst civil nuclear accident. 

Gore flew to Chernobyl by helicopter, sweeping past towns long 
since abandoned by inhabitants fleeing the explosion of
reactor Number 4 on April 26, 1986 and the ensuing radioactive 
cloud that spewed over large swathes of Ukraine, Belarus
and Russia. 

He also inspected the plant on foot, standing before the 20-story 
steel and concrete "sarcophagus" that encases the tonnes of
highly radioactive fuel that remain within the destroyed reactor. 

"Today, for the first time, I saw Chernobyl," Gore said in a speech 
in Kiev later on Thursday. "It looms as a menacing
monument to mistakes of the century now slipping away from us; a 
hulking symbol of human decisions unworthy of our children." 

Gore, who is in the middle of a three-day visit to Ukraine and 
Russia, declined to comment on his reaction to Chernobyl during
his two-hour tour under a hazy blue sky. 

"Is this what it looks like inside?" Gore asked as he looked at a 
scale model of reactor Number 4 showing twisted girders and
debris encased in the massive sarcophagus. 

"Yes, it's even worse," replied Valentin Kupny, who is in charge of 
the project to repair the sarcophagus, adding after a
moment that no one knew exactly what the reactor's destroyed 
core looked like because no one could get close enough. 

U.S. officials said Gore, a long-time environmentalist, wished to 
visit Chernobyl to see its devastation first hand and to
dramatize the need to shore up the deteriorating sarcophagus -- a 
$760 million, eight-year undertaking. 

The scene had surrealistic touches, with freshly planted beds of 
white, yellow and purple flowers sitting a stone's throw from
the reactor complex, which is surrounded by a concrete wall and 
miles of barbed wire to keep people out. 

Nearly all of the tens of thousands of people who once inhabited 
the region have long since left, tardily evacuated from the site
two days after the accident as the former Soviet authorities slowly 
reacted to the unfolding disaster. 

The U.S. vice president, who toured the area dressed in an ordinary 
grey suit, also visited the nearby town Pripyat. 

U.S. officials said there was no danger to Gore's health from his 
brief visit, but they also took no chances, sending medical
teams to scour the site for days ahead of time looking for "hot 
spots" of radiation. 

Pripyat, once home to many of the plant's workers, is now a ghost 
town of empty concrete apartment blocks with broken
windows, overgrown trees and an air of total abandonment. 

The town was emptied in such haste that a summer carnival that 
was to open there on May 1, 1986 remains standing, its ferris
wheel and bumper car arena slowly gathering dust. 

Andrei Glukov, who lived in Pripyat with his wife and two children, 
told Gore he was awakened at one in the morning after the
accident by someone who said he could not divulge what was 
happening, but that Glukov should look out of his window. 

After the explosion, the plant burst into flames that consumed its 
turbines and caved in its roof. 

In another surreal scene, Gore flew past dozens of trucks and 
helicopters used during the cleanup but now left to rust in open
fields because they are too radioactive to use again. 

Western nations and Ukraine are seeking to raise the $760 million 
needed to shore up the deteriorating sarcophagus that the
Soviet authorities built around the destroyed plant, which sits next 
to Chernobyl's one remaining functional reactor. 

So far, roughly $400 million has been raised -- $300 million from 
the Group of Seven industrial nations, about $50 million from
Ukraine and $37 million drummed up from a group of countries at a 
conference that Gore chaired in November. 

Washington is also pressing Ukraine to honor an agreement to 
close Chernobyl's one remaining operational reactor by the year
2000. Kiev has threatened to keep it open unless it receives $1.2 
billion to build two replacement plants. 

------------------
Sandy Perle
Technical Director
ICN Dosimetry Division
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Costa Mesa, CA 92626
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sandyfl@earthlink.net
sperle@icnpharm.com

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