Ukraine Says May Close Chernobyl In Mid-2000

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

Tuesday October 19 5:24 AM ET 

 Ukraine Says May Close Chernobyl In Mid-2000

KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine may close down its troubled Chernobyl 
plant, scene of the world's worst civil nuclear accident, by next 
summer, station spokesman Serhiy Pavlovsky said Tuesday.  

``First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh has said the station 
will work until the summer of 2000,'' Pavlovsky told Reuters from 
Chernobyl, 50 miles north of the capital Kiev.  

Pavlovsky said mid-2000 had been set as the deadline because 
that was the limit of the safe lifespan of Chernobyl's only working 
reactor, number three.  

Ukraine had originally promised the West it would close Chernobyl 
by 2000 in exchange for international aid to complete the 
construction of two replacement reactors at its Rivne and 
Khmelnytska nuclear power stations.  

Cash-strapped Ukraine has repeatedly complained that the West is 
delaying financial help to complete the new reactors.  

Chernobyl originally had four working reactors but the fourth 
exploded in April 1986, sending radioactive dust over Ukraine, 
Russia, Belarus -- all then in the Soviet Union -- and parts of 
Europe.  

Reactor number one was stopped in 1997 after its safe lifespan 
ended while number two has still not been rehabilitated after a fire 
in 1991.  

The station's last working reactor was shut down in July for more 
than four months of repairs and the plant's authorities have said it 
would come back on stream on November 9.  

But Pavlovsky said the repairs would be not be completed in time 
and the station might be restarted some 20 days beyond the initial 
schedule. He said financial problems and a lack of  
equipment were the main reason for the delay. 

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

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