Putin and Russia should pay Ukraine for Chernobyl
Commentary
While Moscow tries to focus attention on the unpaid natural gas bills of the new Kyiv government, the world should be making Russia pay to complete the the restoration of the Chernobyl area.
Russia has left the bankrupt Ukraine to pay for clean up and maintenance of an exclusion zone around the 26,000-square kilometer (10,039 square mile) site.
A meltdown at the Soviet-built and operated nuclear plant on April 26, 1986 created a huge wasteland barely 80 miles from Kyiv that extends into the former Soviet republic of Belarus, five miles from the reactor.
More of Belarus was contaminated than Ukraine or Russia, by some accounts.
Russia hid the deadly accident, the biggest man-made disaster of all time, until Sweden detected extremely high levels of radiation.
The negligence, which some scientists believe has led to one million deaths and shortened the lives of many other people, probably contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russia has left payment for construction of a huge dome over the nuclear plant to Ukraine, which lacks the more than $2 billion left to complete the project. Japan is paying many times that to recover from its nuclear disaster, triggered by a tsunami and earthquake, not government incompetence.
Despite the accident, Russian President Vladimir Putin [Unlink] has continued to push for the development of more nuclear energy. Considering the huge reserves Russia has of natural gas, critics consider his position almost criminal.
The Good News
Chernobyl is the one corner of Ukraine that no one need fear Russia or the empire-driven Putin will seek to annex. And it is near the border of the obliging former Soviet Republic, Belarus, only 100 miles from Kyiv.
That is the official wasteland of 2,600-square-kilometers called the exclusion zone. Many scientists think the area affected by the meltdown of the former Soviet nuclear power plant is much larger.
Scientists do not agree on how many died as a result of the disaster or had their lives shortened. Some have put the toll above 1 million.
Other areas in the world, including surrounding US nuclear plants and nuclear weapon facilities, also have claimed an unknown number of lives.
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