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The Documentary: Burying Chernobyl: Burying Chernobyl - Part One

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

13/01/2016 GMT

Burying Chernobyl - Part One

Burying Chernobyl

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Burying Chernobyl, Burying Chernobyl - Part One

Can the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986 be made safe?

A huge sarcophagus built to cover the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor nears completion. Can the site of Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986 be made safe?

A year before the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster in April 1986 Alla Kravchuk, left the nearby town of Pripyat in order to take her place at music college in Kiev. The rest of the family also moved away and so she and her father were together in Kiev when news of the accident broke. Since then Alla has never returned to the site although her parents did go back to help work on the plans to render Chernobyl safe in the long term.

Now, as plans are underway to mark the 30th anniversary of the accident and the huge mobile sarcophagus that will roll over the damaged reactor is nearing completion, Alla returns to both the Chernobyl Station and the deserted satellite town of Pripyat which was once her home.

Now, she travels back to see at first hand the Chernobyl Safe Confinement project, a scheme funded by countries from all over the world and watched by all those with an interest in Nuclear energy and the risks inherent in its production. She talks to those involved in the challenging task of making Chernobyl safe without risking the health of those involved in the task.

Alla also meets up with an old friend who had stayed in Chernobyl and was there at the time of the accident. Her story is a very different one.

(Photo: Workers walk by a shelter and containment area built over the destroyed fourth block of Chernobyl's old nuclear power plant, April 2015. Credit: Antatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images)

The Documentary: Burying Chernobyl

Alla Kravchuk returns to Ukraine as the huge sarcophagus built to cover the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor nears completion.

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