The explosion three and a half decades ago at the Chernobyl nuclear power station - in what is now Ukraine - was the world’s worst civilian nuclear accident. Radioactive particles were blown as far as Scotland and tonnes of uranium and plutonium remain in the damaged reactor core.
The international community tasked the EBRD with managing the funds to help Ukraine overcome the crisis and secure the site.
The first of Chernobyl’s reactors was completed in 1977. By the time all four were powered together, they generated 10% of Ukraine’s electricity. But the design of the RBMK reactor was fatally flawed.
BACK TO TOPIn the early hours of April 26th 1986, a planned test went spectacularly wrong. In the remains of the control room, a Chernobyl worker shows where the button depressed to initiate the test was located.
BACK TO TOPOver 100 times more radiation was released than by Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
31 individuals were killed at the time. Hundreds of thousands of ‘liquidators’ were drafted in to contain the disaster.
BACK TO TOPAn area of 100,000 km2 remains contaminated indefinitely.
Abandoned buildings line the roads into Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone.
BACK TO TOPThe order to evacuate citizens was late in coming. When it did, they were told they’d only be gone for three days. They were never to return.
This is Pripyat, the model town where Chernobyl staff and their families lived.
BACK TO TOPThe faces of forgotten politicians, displayed on banners for a demonstration, lie abandoned and undisturbed in the remains of Pripyat’s theatre.
Empty of humans, the town is now visited by wolves and elk.
BACK TO TOPAt the heart of the work to secure Chernobyl is the New Safe Confinement (NSC), the giant arch which now encloses Reactor 4.
The NSC protects it from the elements, and includes remote control cranes to safely dismantle it and extract remaining fuel.
BACK TO TOPConstructing the NSC was a unique engineering challenge. It’s big enough to enclose Notre Dame, yet also had to be capable of being skidded over Reactor 4.
BACK TO TOPWork continued daily in the ruins of Reactor 4 to prepare the ground for the NSC skidding operation.
More than 40 countries and organisations have contributed to funding work in Chernobyl, and the EBRD is the largest single donor.
BACK TO TOPThe operation to slide the New Safe Confinement – all 32,000 tonnes of it - over Reactor 4 was successfully completed in November 2016
BACK TO TOPThe EBRD also backed the construction of a facility to safely store spent fuel from all of Chernobyl’s reactors
BACK TO TOPMore than 21,000 fuel assemblies will be dried and cut, inserted into canisters, and stored in modules like these.
It’s a crucial task. The spent fuel will be made safe for at least a century.
BACK TO TOPThe EBRD was guided by the knowledge that securing Chernobyl was a joint effort by the international community and Ukraine.
It was money well spent – for all our safety.
BACK TO TOPThe New Safe Confinement at Chernobyl Power plant in its final position, July 2019.
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In two weeks in November 2016, the entire 36,000-tonne structure was pushed 327 metres into position, covering the reactor building. The sliding was achieved using a skidding system consisting of 224 hydraulic jacks, nudging the arch 60 centimetres with each stroke.
The NSC is now the largest moveable land-based structure ever built.
The New Safe Confinement represents an extraordinary feat of engineering. The 36,000 tonnes structure is 108 metres high, 162 metres long and has a span of 257 metres. It provides a safe working environment equipped with heavy duty cranes for the future dismantling of the shelter and waste management.
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