Ukraine paid homage Saturday to victims of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, a “planetary“ drama as Kiev called it, 22 years after the world’s worst nuclear incident.
Overnight, some hundred Ukrainians including President Viktor Yushchenko and other top state officials laid wreaths at the monument to the victims of Chernobyl in Kiev and lighted candles during a religious service held for the tragedy, the presidential press service said, AFP reported.
In Slavutich, a small town 50 kilometers (30 miles) away from the wrecked nuclear power station, where most of its personnel live, an overnight vigil was due to be held.
“The Chernobyl catastrophe became planetary and even now continues to take its toll on people’s health and the environment,“ the health ministry said in a statement.
On April 26, 1986, reactor number 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, contaminating large parts of Europe but especially the then-Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Over 25,000 “liquidators“, mostly Ukrainians, Russians and Belarussians who worked on the ruined reactor and constructed a concrete sarcophagus enclosing it, lost their lives, according to official figures.
The official UN toll in September 2005 set the number of the accident’s victims in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus at 4,000, but the figure had been contested by non-governmental organizations.
Officially, Ukraine alone numbers 2.3 million people qualified as “having suffered from the catastrophe.“
Some 4,400 Ukrainians, who had been children or adolescents at the time of the accident, were operated for thyroid cancer, which is the most common consequence of radiation, the health ministry said.
The station, whose last reactor continued to produce electricity, was closed down in December 2000. However, its cracked sarcophagus, which contains some 200 tons of radioactive magma made up of nuclear fuel, makes it a continued threat.
The magma is “our worst problem. It is highly radioactive and we do all we can so that rain and snow do not make it into the sarcophagus,“ the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Minister Volodymyr Shandra said in a statement.
Ukrainian authorities had completed reinforcement of the old concrete sarcophagus, which had been constructed at speed shortly after the catastrophe, but a new steel sarcophagus, which would cover the old one, is yet due to be built.

Criminals are enjoying such a life of luxury in British jails that they don’t bother trying to escape, a senior prison union official said.
Dangerous prisoners enjoy satellite television, free telephone calls and breakfast in bed in the country’s “cushy“ jails, Prison Officers’ Association General Secretary Glyn Travis added. Cheap drugs are readily available, he said.
Travis said that in some cases, overstretched staff were powerless to impose order because they were frightened of breaching prisoners’ human rights.
In comments published by several newspapers, Travis gave an example of a breach at Everthorpe Prison in East Yorkshire, where a dealer regularly used a ladder to scale the fence and supply inmates with drugs and mobile phones.
Inmates at an unnamed top security prison recently told Justice Secretary Jack Straw that conditions were like a “holiday camp,“ the media reports said. Dismissing claims he was making a political point to get more staff and funding, Travis said the prison service was in crisis and that tough jails were too “cushy.“
“What we are after is a safe and secure system that the public can have confidence in, and it has nothing to do with making a political statement,“ he told BBC radio.
“What we are saying is that the public deserve to have safe and secure prisons. We have a serious crisis in prisons today.“
He said the incident at Everthorpe showed how serious the problem was, when prisoners with a history of escaping preferred to stay in jail.
“The prisoners did not take this opportunity, or plan to escape, because we believe that life is so cushy within the prison system,“ he added.
His comments are a blow to the government’s tough-on-crime rhetoric and comes as ministers are being heavily criticized for chronic overcrowding in British jails.
A spokesman for the Prison Service said the service was aware of a security breach but dismissed claims that prisons were cushy.
“The National Offender Management Service recognizes that a careful balance must be maintained between the concerns of the public that prisoners should not benefit from their criminal behavior and the need to ensure that, wherever possible, prisoners are rehabilitated,“ he said in a statement.