2 New Reactors Will Be Completed at Chernobyl, Pravda Reports

The No. 3 reactor at Chernobyl will come back on line next year, and plans to build a fifth and sixth reactor at the stricken nuclear power station will be fulfilled, the plant’s director said in an interview published Friday.

An explosion and fire April 26 at the plant spewed a radioactive cloud over much of Europe. The plant’s No. 4 reactor was destroyed in the accident, and its highly radioactive wreckage is being permanently entombed in a concrete sarcophagus.

In an interview with the Communist Party newspaper Pravda, Chernobyl director Erik Pozdyshev made the first known reference to plans for the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors, which were under construction when the accident occurred.

“After putting into operation the first reactor, we shall finish the preparation works to reintroduce the second,” said Pozdyshev, who was appointed director of the Chernobyl plant on May 25, after the previous chief was fired for negligence in dealing with the accident.

“Next year, we shall put into operation the third reactor,” he said. “And after that, the fifth and sixth reactors, whose construction was stopped because of the accident.”

Western experts had forecast that the No. 3 reactor, which shared some equipment with the fatal reactor, would never be restarted because of heavy contamination.

They also said it would be impractical to complete the additional two reactors, which were in the early stages of construction. Large parts of the surrounding countryside remain contaminated following the accident that Soviet authorities said killed 31 people and required the evacuation of more than 100,000 others.

Pozdyshev was quoted as saying that the No. 1 reactor, which produced electricity last week for the first time since the accident, is working now in a “test regime.”

He did not say what that means, but the suggestion was that the No. 1 reactor has not yet resumed full output and regular supplies to the Ukrainian power grid.

Pozdyshev told Pravda that workers overcame “a psychological barrier” when they restarted the No. 1 reactor.

Pozdyshev said that 6,500 people worked at the Chernobyl plant before the accident and that 1,300 work there now.

Pozdyshev said measures he had undertaken since his appointment included firing workers who had returned to Chernobyl to reclaim their jobs after deserting their posts during rescue and decontamination operations.

The trade union newspaper Trud said that a relief fund set up after the accident now totaled more than $725 million.