Eighteen years after Chornobyl nuclear accident, Japan continues to provide assistance to Ukraine (04/25/04)

Eighteen years after Chornobyl nuclear accident,
Japan continues to provide assistance to Ukraine

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Almost certainly, one country from among the dozens that have contributed money to aid in alleviating the afteraffects of the Chornobyl tragedy understands better than all the rest what the Ukrainian nation has suffered through. One need mention only Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Perhaps only the Japanese fully realize what radioactive contamination brings with it and what Ukrainians have lived with in the 18 years since an explosion blew the roof off of the fourth reactor at the ill-fated nuclear energy complex, sending a plume of radioactive gas across the globe and leaving the land around the nuclear complex contaminated for generations to come.

"It is a huge catastrophe on a worldwide scale. We know the consequences of radiation," explained Hiroshi Chayama, first secretary of the Embassy of Japan in Ukraine.

Mr. Chayama underscored that while it wasn't a nuclear bomb that destroyed Chornobyl as it did the two Japanese cities, the damaging afteraffects of the low-level radiation that continues to emit from the area 18 years later can be compared to problems in Japan after a similar amount of time had passed.

According to Ukraine's Ministry of Health, 94 percent of the surviving liquidators of the Chornobyl accident - the clean-up workers who actively worked to bring the fires and radioactive leakage under control in the months after the disaster and didn't perish in the process - are in ill health today. Similarly, nearly 90 percent of the people who lived in the area immediately adjoining the reactor at the time of the man-made calamity suffer from a variety of ailments and illnesses, including various types of thyroid disorders and immuno-deficiency problems.

While other industrialized nations have emphasized democracy development and economic reforms in their aid to Ukraine, Japan has quietly spent some $100 million in the last decade to help Chornobyl survivors and children with Chornobyl-related illnesses. A good portion of that money has also gone to cleaning up the radioactive mess at the Chornobyl site and increasing safety at all of Ukraine's nuclear reactor complexes.

Mr. Chayama said that the majority of Japanese aid to Ukraine, whether government-funded or NGO-funded, goes to Chornobyl-related projects.

He explained that Japan supports projects in three areas: alleviating health and social consequences of the accident; stabilizing the existing shelter over the destroyed fourth reactor and building a new, more permanent shell; and increasing safety at the other nuclear facilities in Ukraine, by means such as professional training and exchanges.

"We determined several years after the accident that the real need was to help the people and the children suffering from thyroid problems," explained Mr. Chayama.

Since 1994 Japan has supplied medical equipment and medicines to Ukrainian hospitals in the amount of $5 million, including to the Okhmadyt Specialized Children's Hospital and the Center for Radiological Medicine.

It has provided more than $1 million to Japanese NGOs working across Japan, including in the prefectures of Tokyo, Kyoto, Ibaraki, Saytama, Yamaguchi and Tiba, who have spent the money in Ukraine on various projects aimed at increasing quality of life for sick children.

Among the Japanese non-government organizations working in Ukraine today are: the Chornobyl Children's Fund of Japan, which has established a children's sanatorium and school buildings in the country; the Association to Help Chornobyl, which has supplied medical equipment and services, including transportation of patients; the Society of Dr. Junod, which provides consulting services in the Chernihiv region, including the education of medical specialists; the Hiroshima Medical Association for the Support of Leukemia Victims, which supplies medicines; and the Basic Human Needs Association, which gives (professional consulting and medicinal support in the Zhytomyr region).

Most recently the Japanese Embassy has become involved in aiding the evacuees from Chornobyl, who were moved to areas where new communities had been established. Japan has contributed $1.2 million to a project conducted by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) that is aimed at helping the displaced with the social and psychological problems they continue to confront, including the inability to find new jobs since the Chornobyl facility was closed and the related problems of alcoholism, drug abuse and spousal abuse. The program also provides solutions for practical problems, such as the need to dig wells to provide clean and consistent water supplies to some communities.

In another cooperative effort with the UNDP, which is being carried out in conjunction with UNICEF, Japan is helping to finance the United Nations International Chornobyl Research Information Network. This program aims to develop a system of networking among experts and Chornobyl victims via computer and other modern technologies to provide the newest and most accurate information on how to live more safely in an environment that has been polluted by radiation. Mr. Chayama said the point is not to make people comfortable with living in a radioactive environment but to give them information they can trust in and rely on.

"Many times these people are skeptical of the information they receive from the government," explained Mr. Chayama. "They are more willing to listen to information provided by international agencies such as UNICEF."

Japan has also played a key role in the development of the International Research Center in the city of Slavutych, built after the accident at the nuclear facility forced the evacuation of the entire city of Prypiat. The research center, whose work is aimed at neutralizing the radioactivity within the "hot" No. 4 reactor and developing ways to make the exclusion zone environmentally safe, including finding ways to use contaminated soil beneficially, is funded and manned by the countries of the G-8.

Japan is also intrinsically involved in the work occurring on the Chornobyl "sarcophagus," the concrete shelter that was hastily erected around the destroyed nuclear reactor in the months after the accident to stem extensive leakage of radioactivity. The shelter has been crumbling for some years now and a new cover is badly needed.

Japan has contributed $45 million to the Shelter Implementation Fund - among the largest donations by a single country towards the $380 million that will be needed to build a new structure over reactor No. 4.

The design for a new shelter is now nearing completion and construction efforts are under way to reinforce eight critical zones within the current sarcophagus before the new cover is built beginning in 2006. The goal is to have a new shelter - one that will prevent radiation leakage even if the surrounding structures are destroyed by man-made or natural calamities - completed by 2008. Ultimately, the goal is to remove the radiation materials and dispose of them after the proper technology is developed.

The last area in which Japan has played a leading if quiet role in Chornobyl matters is in developing and implementing safety standards for the other Chornobyl-like RBMK reactors in Ukraine. Since 1994 it has donated $19 million to the Nuclear Safety Account. Much of the financing for this program has been channeled through the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which has an ongoing nuclear safety program in Ukraine.

A project of no less importance, as Mr. Chayama explained, has been the training of Ukrainian reactor specialists both in Ukraine and in Japan. The diplomat pointed out that his country has sponsored the training of dozens of Ukrainian nuclear engineers in Japan. It has also brought its own specialists to Ukraine to train technicians here.

| Home Page |