WORLD : New Chernobyl Evacuations Set
Realizing that they underestimated the extent of the Chernobyl accident, Soviet authorities will evacuate 14,000 more people this year from the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, Pravda said today.
The Communist Party daily indicated that more work is needed to limit the damage from the April 26, 1986, explosion and fire at the nuclear power reactor that killed 31 people according to official figures.
Pravda said radioactive dust that has piled up in the 20-mile danger zone around the plant will take decades to remove and will have to be processed by a special, as yet unbuilt, complex.
The continued evacuations are the result of belated recognition by authorities that the accident spread more radioactivity over a wider area than at first thought. (Story, A1)
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