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For the first time, experts have recognized Ukrainian lands that were excluded from cultivation after the Chornobyl accident in 1986 as appropriate for agricultural use. For more than 30 years, the 2,000 square kilometer area had remained semi-abandoned. However, due to natural radioactive decay and soil erosion, the level of contamination has significantly decreased. Scientists assessed the radiation contamination of approximately 100 hectares of land in the Zhytomyr region and predicted the absorption levels of radioactive elements by common agricultural

Representatives from Ukraine and France inspected the aftermath of the recent Russian attack on the New Safe Confinement, or Ark, a protective structure enclosing the fourth reactor unit of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and designed and built by a French consortium. Currently, French partners are exploring the possibility of providing support for the Ark’s restoration through the International Cooperation Account for Chornobyl. The extent of the damage is being assessed, and a plan is being developed to restore the

. In the aftermath of the 1986 nuclear disaster, a French consortium, Novarka, built the €1.5 billion New Safe Confinement. An American company, Holtec International, built the first stage of what is to be a $1.3 billion dry storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. The new facility is to store 260 cubic meters of reprocessed fuel returned from Russia. The tender closes Sept. 13, the ProZorro auction is to be Oct. 19, and construction is to be completed by Dec.

Kyrylo Harnyk, an official with the Exclusion Zone Management agency, told a Chornobyl tourism roundtable yesterday. Two weeks ago, Ukrzaliznytsia sent the first test train down the Vilcha – Yaniv track. This rail section was restored to connect the nuclear waste storage site with Ukraine’s national rail network. With trains running again for the first time in 35 years, opportunities open up for rail tours of the exclusion zone.

Economy Minister Oleksiy Lyubchenko told Ukraine’s international reform conference in Vilinius last week. “Ukraine has the Chornobyl zone, where a huge amount of land is not used,” he said. “There, you can grow crops such as corn, then process it into biogas, and make electricity from biogas.”

Located near the shuttered nuclear power plant, the unit is “the largest dry spent fuel storage facility in the world” according to the EBRD which coordinated donation from OECD countries. Designed to last 100 years, the facility is to package in double-walled canisters and store in concrete the 21,000 spent fuel assemblies of Chornobyl reactors 1, 2 and 3.

Ukravtodor has repaved the 40 km road between Dyliatky checkpoint, the main entrance to the Exclusion Zone, and Pripyat town. “Our task is to put in order the popular tourist routes in three years and provide normal access to the Zone for conservationists, scientists, power engineers and entrepreneurs,” Alexander Kubrakov, Head of the State Highway Agency wrote on a Facebook post. He said that volume of tourists increased 15-fold in five years, from 8,000 in 2015 to 124,000 in 2019.