Ukraine Won't Abandon Reactor Plans

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

A non-Japanese nuclear issue:

Friday October 1 11:27 AM ET 

Ukraine Won't Abandon Reactor Plans

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - President Leonid Kuchma said Friday that two new 
nuclear reactors must be operational before the Chernobyl nuclear 
power plant can be closed.  

Anti-nuclear and environmental organizations, along with some Western 
governments, have urged Ukraine to consider alternative sources of 
energy and to shut down Chernobyl by 2000 as it had earlier pledged.  

The energy-hungry and economically struggling Ukraine says it will 
not close Chernobyl, site of the world's worst nuclear accident, 
until the new reactors at the Rivne and Khmelnitsky plants are 
completed, and it wants Western assistance to do so.  

Kuchma had visited the Rivne plant in northwestern Ukraine on 
Thursday.

Kuchma, speaking at a news conference, said that nuclear safety has 
advanced dramatically since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, so an atomic 
power plant accident ``would not cause such global consequences.''  

``Today, we would not be able to survive economically without 
launching the reactors at Rivne and Khmelnitsky,'' the president 
added.  

Ukraine, whose nuclear power plants provide more than 40 percent of 
the country's energy needs, has been demanding loans from the G-8 
group of developed nations in order to complete the reactors. The 
group has promised aid to Ukraine in 1995 to help close Chernobyl.  

Only one reactor remains operational at Chernobyl, and it is 
undergoing repairs expected to last until Nov. 9.  

The two new reactors, whose construction was halted after the 1991 
Soviet collapse, are more than 80 percent ready. They are modern than 
the reactor that exploded at Chernobyl. The cost of completing them 
has been estimated at $1.2 billion. 

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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