Chernobyl’s first wind park will be built next year

Chernobyl’s first wind park will be built next year, according to Ostap Semerak, Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources. Polesky Wind Park LLC won permission last week to build a $5 million, 4.5 MW wind turbine cluster on seven hectares near the deactivated nuclear plant. Ukraine’s strongest and most consistent winds are atop the Carpathians and along the shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. But Chernobyl, largely for symbolic reasons, has drawn more than 60 renewable energy proposals. Last month, Solar Chernobyl, a German-Ukrainian company, inaugurated the first solar plant in the exclusion zone, a $1.2 million, 1 MW installation. The minister writes on Facebook: “The Chernobyl zone is a territory of change.”