You're reading: Ukraine to double its contribution to Chornobyl Shelter Fund

Ukraine will double its contribution to the Chornobyl Shelter Fund by $54.163 million, to $104.163 million.

A corresponding decision was sealed in government resolution No. 410 dated April 13, 2011, which introduced amendments to resolution No. 1927 dated December 18, 2002.

The government simultaneously extended the deadline for the transfer of the contribution money from 2010 to 2014.

According to the government, from 1997 to 2010 Ukraine transferred $48.366 million instead of the $50 million due to be paid to the Fund.

Ukraine is to allocate $3.204 million to the Fund in 2011, $10.198 million in 2012 and 2013 each. In 2014 Ukraine is to earmark $32.197 million for the contribution to the Fund, including $22 million in the financing of the dismantling of unstable constructions at the Shelter facility after 2014.

The latest resolution gives the green light to the draft letter addressed to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development regarding the distribution of the additional contribution by Ukraine to the Chernobyl Shelter Fund.

The government authorized Ukrainian Emergency Situations Minister Viktor Baloha to sign this letter.

As reported, the construction of a new safe Shelter facility at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) is estimated at EUR 990 million.

Two funds were created to perform work related to Chornobyl NPP: the EUR 1.54 billion Chornobyl Shelter Fund and the EUR 255 million Nuclear Safety Account Fund, which should finance the construction of storage facilities for waste nuclear fuel.

Presently the shortfall of funding at the first fund is EUR 600 million, while that at the second fund is EUR 140 million. Both funds have already spent about EUR 500 million for various Chornobyl projects.

To ensure more contributions to both funds, Kyiv is to host a conference of donor countries on April 19, 2011.

EBRD Vice President Horst Reichenbach said the bank shareholders were willing to contribute up to 25% of the sum the donor countries will vow to allocate at the donor conference on April 19.

Yet, he pointed out that the final sum to be contributed by the bank has yet to be endorsed by an EBRD shareholder meeting scheduled for the end of May in Astana (Kazakhstan).

The current feasibility study on the Shelter facility holds that the assembly of the facility’s elements is to start in fall 2011 and the work at the Chornobyl NPP’s site is to begin in spring 2012.

The new safe facility is to be put over the Chornobyl destroyed reactor in July 2015.

It will be 25 years on April 26, 2011, since the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

The plant was officially shut down on December 15, 2000.

Meanwhile, the sarcophagus built over the fourth destroyed reactor is gradually falling apart.

Ukraine is building a new shelter facility above the sarcophagus.