page_title: Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
section_title: Decommissioning
hierarchical_section_title: Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant / Decommissioning
caption_attribution_description: English: The so called New Safe Confinement colloquially known as the second sarcophagus in 2018.
context_page_description: The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is a closed nuclear power plant near the abandoned city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine, 16.5 kilometers northwest of the city of Chernobyl, 16 kilometers from the Belarus–Ukraine border, and about 100 kilometers north of Kiev. It was cooled by an engineered pond, which is fed by the Pripyat River about 5 kilometers northwest from its juncture with the Dnieper.
  Reactor No. 4 was the site of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and the power plant is now within a large restricted area known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Both the zone and the former power plant are administered by the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management. The three other reactors remained operational after the accident but were eventually shut down by 2000, although the plant remains in the process of decommissioning as of 2020. Nuclear clean-up is scheduled for completion in 2065.
context_section_description: After the explosion at reactor No. 4, the remaining three reactors at the power plant continued to operate, as the Soviet Union could not afford to shut the plant down. The schedule for plant decommissioning is intimately wrapped with the dismantling of reactor No. 4 and the decontamination of its environs. The Chernobyl New Safe Confinement will have equipment which will make decommissioning relatively incidental to, yet an integral part of, the cleanup of the exploded reactor. The majority of the external gamma radiation emissions at the site are from the isotope caesium-137, which has a half-life of 30.17 years. As of 2016, the radiation exposure from that radionuclide has declined by half since the 1986 accident.
  In October 1991, reactor No. 2 caught fire, and was subsequently shut down. Ukraine's 1991 independence from the Soviet Union generated further discussion on the Chernobyl topic, because the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's new parliament, was composed largely of young reformers. Discussions about the future of nuclear energy in Ukraine ultimately moved the government toward a decision to cancel the operation of reactor No. 2.
  In November 1996, following pressure from foreign governments, reactor No. 1 was shut down. Removal of uncontaminated equipment has begun at reactor No. 1 and this work could be complete by 2020–2022. In December 2000, reactor No. 3 was shut down after operating briefly since March 1999 following 5 months of repairs, and the plant as a whole ceased producing electricity. In April 2015, units 1 through 3 entered the decommissioning phase.
  In 2013, the pump lifting river water into the cooling reservoir adjacent to the facility was powered down, with the thermal sink, expected to slowly evaporate.
caption: Monument to the casualties of the Chernobyl disaster in front of the New Safe Confinement
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