Chernobyl Shutdown Set for ’93 : Ukraine: Public pressure at home and abroad is cited. The closure had not been due till 1995.

The Ukrainian legislature decided Tuesday to close the Chernobyl nuclear plant within two years and called on the United Nations to help finance the dismantling of the power station, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

“This is the optimal decision for today, considering the technical conditions at the station and the social-political climate,” said Vladimir F. Shovkoshytny, president of the Chernobyl Union, a group of experts seeking to improve nuclear safety. He is also a member of the Ukrainian legislature.

“The station is not safe and it is a cause of constant fear for citizens of Kiev and for the whole world, because we live on a small planet,” Shovkoshytny added.

The legislature had earlier decided to shut the plant in 1995, but the date was moved up because of public pressure at home and abroad. It has been strong since Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4 exploded in April, 1986.

The decision to close the plant--a move that might cost up to $15 billion by some estimates--is partly based on the local and international reaction to a fire in the plant’s reactor No. 2 earlier this month. It caused no radiation leakage but reminded the world that the power station, effectively, is a time bomb.

“The fire prompted the decision” to speed the plant’s closing, but to ensure that it is shut in the safest possible manner, the 1993 date was suggested, said Shovkoshytny, who formerly worked as an engineer at Chernobyl.

The legislature, however, stressed that without the help of foreign specialists and money from abroad, the Ukraine would not be able to close the plant by the target date, because it suffers from the same dire economic problems facing the rest of the Soviet Union.

“The Supreme Soviet of the Ukraine hopes that all countries, first of all nuclear powers, support this humane initiative,” the legislature said in a statement.

“I think that all countries with nuclear energy should be interested in helping us,” Shovkoshytny said, adding that the estimated cost of closing down the station is $15 billion. “It’s the first time that a large nuclear plant has been liquidated anywhere in the world. It’s not just our problem, it’s a problem that faces the whole world.”

Besides requesting money, the Ukrainian legislature has also announced an international competition to decide how to best deal with the exploded Chernobyl reactor No. 4. It is encased in a concrete sarcophagus but remains a serious threat. Although stabilized at a tremendous cost in 1986, the reactor is still highly radioactive and far from leakproof, according to specialists and environmentalists.

Closing Chernobyl, which produces about 3% of all the electricity in the Ukraine, will carry a heavy economic price, and the republic’s government will be forced to implement energy conservation programs, according to a report on state television.

Soviet officials still maintain that the death toll from the Chernobyl disaster was 32, but some Soviet scientists contend that the actual number of people who died as a result of the explosion is in the hundreds or even thousands. An abrupt increase in thyroid cancer as well as other illnesses has been noted by doctors in the region.

Although the explosion occurred in the Ukraine, people in Russia and Belarus (formerly Byelorussia) also suffered severely from radioactive fallout.

Officials from the Soviet Union and the United Nations issued a statement earlier this year that $650 million in foreign contributions is needed to help the Soviets rebuild the lives of people affected by the accident.