Bye reactor number 4 - for now

Image from Vinci

Next year the French consortium Novarka (VINCI Construction Grands Projets (lead contractor) and Bouygues Travaux Publics) will start building a 18000 ton sarcophagus. It will be 105 metres high, 150 metres long and with a span of 257 metres - formed as an arch. Construction will be done 2012/2014.

It will be built next to the old shelter and slid over it on rail tracks and hopefully it will last 100 years.

Meanwhile the inner construction will be slowly dismantled and removed and in 50 years the nuclear fuel will be extracted. No one has reported where yet.

Ukraine’s president Victor Yushchenko said last year that areas in Chernobyl is ready to be used again, he is convinced that the Chernobyl-zone will wake up with increasing phase.

To this date there are 439 nuclear power plant world wide and there are 35 under construction. Each of these produce 25-30 tonnes high level waste each year and we haven’t yet agreed what to do with it.

Edited this part a bit : (death toll of millions was a bit much)
This one “little” nuclear plant in Chernobyl may cause the death of hundreds of thousands of people, isn’t it a bit naive to thrust it won’t happen again? We can add all the depots as factors on top of the 439 nuclear power plants.

Death toll above is highly debatable though, check out these links :
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/mar/25/energy.ukraine
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects#Long-term_health_effects
- http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/chernobyl-deaths-180406

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Comments

“This one “little” nuclear plant in Chernobyl will cause the death of millions of people”

[citation needed]

Hi Ed, thank you for commenting, but I am not sure what you mean. Did I overcalculate the number?

I wish we would stop producing nuclear plants and started to bury them.

I wish they would all shut down :(!!

nuclear power is much cleaner than coal and you want them to all shut down? it produces more electricity at less of a footprint than coal power does. granted solar and wind energy is the best way to go as far as lessening our footprint but it isn’t as widespread and doesn’t yet produce enough power for highly populated areas.

skamp, you should read a bit more about the Chernobyl accident. You really trust that none of the hundreds of nuclear plants will ever present a similar danger?

We were a few meters of concrete before Europe would be inhabitable for 800 years.

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