乌克兰纪念切尔诺贝利25周年

当地时间4月26日，乌克兰首都基辅等地举行活动，纪念切尔诺贝利核电站事故25周年。乌克兰总统亚努科维奇和俄罗斯总统梅德韦杰夫参加了当天晚些时候在切尔诺贝利核电站遗址举行的纪念活动。梅德韦杰夫呼吁世界各国共同制定新的全球核安全标准，提高核能的安全性。日本地震和海啸导致福岛核电站危机以来，国际社会对切尔诺贝利核事故后续处理的关注度日益扩大，上周已有各方筹资5.5亿欧元帮助乌克兰建造新的防护罩。梅德韦杰夫还表示，自切尔诺贝利核电站事故发生以来，国际社会已经从中汲取了许多教训，其中最重要的一条教训就是：要让人们知道真相。
　　1986年4月26日，位于乌克兰基辅市以北130公里的切尔诺贝利核电站4号机组爆炸，大量放射物质泄漏，影响欧洲大部分地区，酿成了世界迄今最严重的核泄漏事故。今年3月11日日本发生里氏9.0级特大地震并引发海啸，导致福岛第一核电站多个机组发生放射物质泄漏。4月12日，日本政府将福岛第一核电站事故等级提升为最严重的7级，与切尔诺贝利核电站的事故等级相同。

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.