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Russian, Ukrainian Leaders Remember Chernobyl Accident

   VOA News  April 26, 2011
   A veteran "liquidator" at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor places flowers
   during a ceremony to honor victims of the Chernobyl disaster, in
   Krasnoyarsk, April 26, 2011

Photo: Reuters

   A veteran "liquidator" at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor places flowers
   during a ceremony to honor victims of the Chernobyl disaster, in
   Krasnoyarsk, April 26, 2011

   Ukraine is marking the 25th anniversary of the deadly explosion at the
   Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which led to the worst nuclear disaster
   in history.
   As Japan struggles with its own nuclear crisis at the tsunami-damaged
   Fukushima nuclear plant, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said in
   a statement that no nation can overcome the consequences of such a
   catastrophe on its own.
   Commemoration of the Chernobyl disaster began in the middle of the
   night in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, when Russian Orthodox Patriarch
   Kirill struck a bell at the exact moment of the Chernobyl blast on
   April 26, 1986.
   The initial explosion killed two people, and radiation exposure killed
   30 others in the following months. At the time Ukraine was part of the
   former Soviet Union,and authorities in Moscow waited three days to
   report the accident to the world, acting only after Swedish officials
   recorded unusually high radiation levels at a monitoring station.
   The Chernobyl blast released 400 times more radiation than the atomic
   bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It sent a cloud of radioactive
   fallout into Russia, Belarus and over a large portion of Europe.
   The World Health Organization believes that around 4,000 people
   eventually could die because of the accident.
   Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday said Russia will put
   forward a plan to step up security at nuclear plants at the Group of
   Eight summit in May. Medvedev is expected to join Mr. Yanukovych and
   Kirill at Chernobyl later Tuesday to remember the victims.
   The disaster fueled a non-stop global debate about the safety of
   nuclear energy as a power source - a debate that has gotten hotter
   since last month's earthquake damaged the Japanese plant.
   The 1986 disaster has left a 30-kilometer area around the Chernobyl
   plant mainly uninhabitable, while environmentalists say fields in the
   surrounding area and the products grown there are still not safe and
   could pose a threat to human health.

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