烏克蘭紀念切爾諾貝利25週年

當地時間4月26日，烏克蘭首都基輔等地舉行活動，紀念切爾諾貝利核電站事故25週年。烏克蘭總統亞努科維奇和俄羅斯總統梅德韋傑夫參加了當天晚些時候在切爾諾貝利核電站遺址舉行的紀念活動。梅德韋傑夫呼籲世界各國共同制定新的全球核安全標準，提高核能的安全性。日本地震和海嘯導致福島核電站危機以來，國際社會對切爾諾貝利核事故後續處理的關注度日益擴大，上週已有各方籌資5.5億歐元幫助烏克蘭建造新的防護罩。梅德韋傑夫還表示，自切爾諾貝利核電站事故發生以來，國際社會已經從中汲取了許多教訓，其中最重要的一條教訓就是：要讓人們知道真相。
　　1986年4月26日，位於烏克蘭基輔市以北130公里的切爾諾貝利核電站4號機組爆炸，大量放射物質泄漏，影響歐洲大部分地區，釀成了世界迄今最嚴重的核泄漏事故。今年3月11日日本發生里氏9.0級特大地震並引發海嘯，導致福島第一核電站多個機組發生放射物質泄漏。4月12日，日本政府將福島第一核電站事故等級提升爲最嚴重的7級，與切爾諾貝利核電站的事故等級相同。

On April 26 1986, the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl plant, then in the Soviet Union, exploded and caught fire after a safety test experiment went badly wrong.

The blast sent radiation billowing across Europe.

A total of 31 people died immediately but many more died of radiation-related sicknesses such as cancer, many of them in what is today Belarus.

Tens of thousands were evacuated, never to return, from Prypyat, the town closest to the site which then had a population of 50,000.

Last week the world community, spurred by the nuclear crisis at Japan's Fukushima plant, pledged 550 million euros ($780 million) to help build a new containment shell over the stricken reactor at the Chernobyl site to replace a makeshift one that has begun to leak radiation.

"Chernobyl was a challenge of planetary dimensions. The answer to this challenge can be provided only by the world community," Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich said on Tuesday.

"For a long time, Ukraine was alone with this calamity, but happily we are not alone now," he said in a statement on the presidential website

Yanukovich was to visit Chernobyl later on Tuesday with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill.

Chernobyl has remained the benchmark for nuclear accidents.

Though Chernobyl town itself was relatively untouched by the accident, Prypyat is now a ghost town at the center of a largely uninhabited exclusion zone with a radius of 30 km (19 miles).

On April 12 Japan raised the severity rating at its Fukishima plant to seven, the same level as that of Chernobyl.

DAY OF MOURNING

"This is a day of mourning for us. We are in mourning for the people who 25 years ago fought to protect us," said Gennady Pikul, 50, referring to firefighters and other 'liquidators' who at risk to their lives fought to control the blazing reactor.

"We will do everything we can so that this is never repeated," he said.

The 550 million euros raised at the donors' conference last week will be added to cash already contributed for construction of a new 110-meter high encasement over the reactor and a storage facility for spent fuel.

Soviet officials in 1986 withheld reporting the accident for two days, provoking Western accusations that a secrecy-obsessed Moscow had hoped to cover the accident up.

Medvedev, meeting survivors of Chernobyl clean-up efforts in the Kremlin on Monday, said there must be greater transparency in nuclear emergencies.

"I think that our state must learn the lessons from what happened -- from the now-distant Chernobyl incident in 1986 and the recent tragedies in Japan. Perhaps the most important lesson is the need to tell people the truth," he said.

"Because the world is so fragile and we are all so inter-connected, any attempts to hide the truth -- to refrain from talking about something publicly, glossing over a situation, making it more optimistic than it is -- these subsequently result in the tragic loss of human lives," he said.