One Chernobyl Reactor Closed, One to Restart

Ukraine shut down nuclear reactor No. 1 at Chernobyl on Saturday but immediately announced plans to restart another at the disaster-ridden plant.

The announcement clouded prospects for the final closure of Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident more than 10 years ago. Chernobyl’s only other working reactor, No. 3, is scheduled to be shut down in 1999.

The country’s Nuclear Energy Committee, citing Ukraine’s energy crisis, said reactor No. 2, which has been idle since a massive fire there in 1992, would be temporarily restarted at the end of 1997.

A committee spokesman would not say how long the reactor would function but stressed that the decision “does not mean that Ukraine is backing away from its international commitments” to close Chernobyl, 60 miles north of Kiev.

Under heavy pressure from the West, Ukraine agreed to shut Chernobyl by 2000. It won a $3.1-billion pledge of aid from the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations to compensate for lost jobs and electricity.

Engineers shut down the 19-year-old reactor No. 1 on Saturday, slowly cutting power until the 1,000-watt Soviet-designed RBMK reactor stopped, Ivan Sharshin, duty engineer at the plant, said.

Workers removed fuel rods from the reactor core, and the turbines shuddered to a halt. In two or three days, engineers will start removing the nuclear fuel and begin the costly process of taking the reactor apart.

Many Ukrainians don’t want to shut down Chernobyl, which provides 7% of Ukraine’s electricity.

Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4 exploded during an April 26, 1986, test, spewing radioactive dust across much of Europe. At least 31 people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the blast, and thousands more are believed to have died since then from radiation-related illnesses.