Almost a quarter-century after its explosion killed hundreds and shocked the world, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor still sits crumbling amid an uninhabitable wasteland in northern Ukraine, still emits surprising amounts of radiation, and still absorbs vast amounts of money.
Much of that money, at least $71-million of it, has come from Canadian taxpayers, intended to pay for a project launched in 1997 under a pledge from leaders of the G-7 countries to enclose the reactor in a permanent, sealed sarcophagus.
It was meant to be finished in eight years and cost $768-million (U.S.), a symbol of a resurgent Ukraine returning to democratic government and an open economy, putting the 1986 disaster permanently in the past.
But in a story of tragic disappointment that exemplifies the web of corruption and distrust that so often ensnares relations between Ukraine and the West, 13 years later the cost of the project has ballooned to almost $2-billion and construction has not even begun.
Canadian officials describe it as a “money sink” that has fallen prey to the worst aspects of Ukraine's failed development, a physical manifestation of the once-wealthy country's political decay.
Later this year, after the G-8 conference in Huntsville, Ont., the Canadian government will be asked to make another pledge, likely in the tens of millions of dollars, in an effort to raise another $200-million to $300-million to get the job done by the end of 2012, before the reactor decays further and poses an even graver danger. While the reactor's original sarcophagus, built in a hurry after the disaster, was recently reinforced, it is a flimsy structure that could collapse, sending a radioactive dust cloud into the atmosphere. Portions of the reactor core are still exposed to open air and rainwater.
On Sunday, five years after the Orange Revolution raised hopes of a more democratic and economically prosperous Ukraine, Ukrainians will go to the polls in the final round of a presidential election that has already eliminated incumbent President Viktor Yushchenko, blamed by the West for many of the problems surrounding the Chernobyl containment project. But for the bankers and Canadian government officials who have been working for a decade and a half to protect the world from the radioactive ruins of Chernobyl, there is a fear that the New Safe Confinement project, as it is known, will again spin out of control.
“In order to avoid any funds being lost to corruption, we had to take great care, and sometimes it meant that there were periods of years where none of the Ukrainians were doing anything,” said Vince Novak, head of nuclear safety for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The EBRD, a development-finance body that aids post-communist economies, was appointed by the G-8 to manage the Chernobyl project.
Most of the delays and cost increases are tied directly to the political turmoil that has embroiled Ukraine since the 2004 Orange Revolution. Mr. Yushchenko, the reformist President in whom the West had placed its hopes, proved to be a terrible manager of both the project and his cabinet, and corruption and cronyism flourished under his watch. At least one minister who headed the project was notorious for corruption and links to organized crime, and others allowed such practices to flourish.
It did not help that Yulia Tymoshenko, his first prime minister, was purged by Mr. Yushchenko after a few months, creating factional splits that hobbled the project. She is now running for president against Viktor Yanukovich, a pro-Russian candidate who, like her, has his own business interests.
At least a dozen cabinet ministers have controlled the project since it began, in some cases seizing it from their counterparts after only weeks, EBRD officials said.
