Victim Entombed at Chernobyl Site

One of the first victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster was never found and his body has been entombed forever with the remains of the ill-fated reactor, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda said Friday.

The newspaper singled out for praise Valery Khodemchuk and Vladimir Shaskenok, two operators who perished in the first minutes of the April 26 accident that sent a radioactive cloud floating across much of Europe and western Soviet Union.

Previous reports had said Khodemchuk, identified May 14 by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev as one of the two men killed in the initial blast and fire, had died from falling debris.

“Valery was never found,” the paper said. “The fourth (reactor) unit became his grave and maybe some day it will be written that it is not the reactor that is buried there but Valery Khodemchuk.”

Soviet experts have been working around the clock to seal the damaged reactor in concrete from above and below using remote controlled bulldozers and robots.