Ukraine will consider storing nuclear waste from abroad at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the site of the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster, President Viktor Yushchenko said Thursday.
"Politically, we have to study this question," Yushchenko was quoted as saying after visiting the plant in the north of the country.
"Undoubtedly, there can be economic feasibility… so we have to think hard before making a political decision," Interfax quoted him as saying.
Chernobyl's number-four reactor, in what was then the Soviet Union and is now Ukraine, exploded on April 26, 1986, sending a radioactive cloud across Europe.
Following the disaster, a concrete sarcophagus was built over the stricken reactor and a new 20,000-tonne steel case to cover the whole plant is planned on being constructed between 2008 and 2009.
The power station was eventually shut down on December 15, 2000.
related report
Vilnius (AFP) Dec 05 – Rwe Nukem of Germany has won a contract worth 120 million euros (160 million dollars) to build a treatment center for solid radioactive waste in Lithuania, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development announced Monday.
Rwe Nukem will plan, build and instal the components of the new waste treatment center, which is expected to start operations in late 2009, the bank said in a statement.
The waste treatment centre will be built on the site of the Ignalina nuclear power plant, situated in eastern Lithuania near the border with Belarus. The project will be financed by the Ignalina International Decomissioning Support Fund, administered by the EBRD, the statement said.
In accession talks with the European Union, Lithuania committed to shut down the Ignalina nuclear plant in 2009 and has already closed one of its two Chernobyl-type reactors.
The international fund to support the closure of Ignalina was set up in 2001.
The closure of Ignalina is also supported by the EU, which is to provide close to 500 million euros until 2006 to assist with the plant's closure and develop Lithuania's energy sector.
