Tidslinje

26 april 1986 kl 01.23 (58)

Reaktor 4 i Leninverket i Tjernobyl exploderar.
_______________________________________________________________________________


_______________________________________________________________________________

14 december 1986

Los Angeles times
Moscow pays Chernobyl Disaster Victims 1.12 billion dollar

MOSCOW — The Soviet Union has paid $1.12 billion in compensation to victims of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which no longer poses a danger to the environment, the Communist Party Central Committee said Saturday.

The Central Committee in a statement carried by the Tass news agency said it is satisfied with the construction of the concrete tomb encasing the damaged nuclear reactor. The reactor exploded April 26, sending a radioactive cloud floating across the western Soviet Union and much of Europe.

The committee said $1.12 billion has been paid out in compensation to 116,000 people evacuated from the Chernobyl area in the Ukraine, about 600 miles southwest of Moscow.

It said the figure did not include the construction of housing and other facilities for the evacuees.

Of the funds paid in compensation, a total of $728 million was raised through voluntary private contributions to a special government relief fund.

In previous statements the government said the total expected economic losses from the disaster would be more than $2.8 billion.

The committee, in its review of the disaster, said that 237 people had been hospitalized with radiation sickness and that now "most of those affected" have been released from the hospital and returned to work.

It said 28 of those hospitalized had died. The statement did not account for three other fatalities included in the official death toll of 31 that was announced by Soviet officials in August.

"The destroyed reactor has ceased to be a source of radioactive contamination of the environment," the committee said.

Two other nuclear reactors at the four-reactor site that were not damaged physically but contaminated by radiation have been restarted, the statement said.

The committee said 390,000 cubic yards of concrete and 6,000 tons of steel were used to build the tomb around Reactor No. 4.

_____________________________________________________________________________