After years of work and 1.5 billion euros, the new safety housing for the stricken Chernobyl nuclear reactor begins to slide gently into place.
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Slowly moving into place in Ukraine, Chernobyl’s New Safe Confinement has cost some 1.5 billion euros and is projected to last at least 100 years. It is 257 metres wide with a length of 162 metres, a height of 108 metres and a total equipped weight of 36,000 tonnes.
Its job is contain the radiation leaking from the concrete sarcophagus that was hastily poured by heroic emergency workers after the nuclear reactor failed in April 1986.
Securing #Chernobyl: today #Arch has been successfully shifted by 24 metres towards #Reactor4 in less than 3 hours. Great start. pic.twitter.com/SOybjgakwo
— The EBRD (@EBRD) November 14, 2016
“This is a culmination of hard work by many parties, over the years in Ukraine and worldwide. The new safe confinement is an unprecedented engineering success, it is an extremely complex structure built in a contaminated area. It is the largest land-based moveable structure,” said the EBRD Director of Nuclear Safety Vince Novak.
#Arch sliding operation to secure #Chernobyl reactor has begun. Here is the story of making #Chernobyl secure. pic.twitter.com/Q68Z7TgA6w
— The EBRD (@EBRD) November 14, 2016
The structure is moving into place in stages of 60 centimetres as its progress is checked, an operation that will last five days.