Chernobyl workers to get new village

Press, 24 July 1986, Page 10

Chernobyl workers to get new village

NZPA-Reuter Moscow

A new township will be built for Chernobyl workers, 25km south of the Ukrainian nuclear power station where a reactor exploded in April, the Soviet Communist Party daily, “Pravda,” reports.

It did not make clear what was to become of the old worker settlement of Pripyat, which lies about the same distance to the north of the plant and was contaminated during the world’s worst atomic power station accident.

But it implied that the new settlement for 10,000 people, to be called Zelyony Mys (Green Cape), would replace Pripyat for a long time to come, if not for ever. “Workers from the Pripyat house-building enterprise No. 3 will create a new settlement for the electric station which should to some extent by its situation repeat Pripyat,” "Pravda” said. Zelyony Mys, to be built at the mouth of the river Teterev, where it flows into the Kiev reservoir, would be complete with shops, restaurants, medical facilities, and a stadium, “Pravda” said. Chernobyl workers, now housed in a “floating settlement” of ships,

would move to Zelyony Mys as soon as possible, to be followed later by wives and children who have been temporarily housed in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. Some 92,000 people were shifted from a 30km security zone around the plant a week after they accident. “Pravda” said some of these evacuees had now gone home to villages inside the zone but the rest would not be allowed back until their safety could be guaranteed. By October this year 7250 houses and 200 consumer facilities were to be built for evacuees around Kiev and the Ukrainian city of Zhitomir, 125 km to the west.

Another 6000 private homes were being repaired to take more Chernobyl evacuees.

"Pravda” said some 50,000 building workers from all over the Ukraine were getting the houses ready, as well as building social facilities and laying power and communication lines and water-pipes, The Government daily, “Izvestia,” said earlier this month that 4000 houses were also being built in the neighbouring republic of Belorussia, southern parts of which were equally badly contaminated in the accident.