President Viktor Yanukovych Monday warned that Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear plant remains an urgent threat due to lagging safety measures, on the 24th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear disaster.
The plant's fourth nuclear reactor still presents an active danger after work to replace an ageing sarcophagus around the facility was delayed due to a shortage of funds last year, Yanukovych said according to a statement.
The problem "is urgent not only for Ukraine but also for our neighbours," he said.
"We must of course unite our partners, donors and all our neighbours around the question because it is highly dangerous."
The atomic fallout from the 1986 accident at Chernobyl, when one of the reactors exploded, spread to neighbouring European states, leaving some two million people still suffering from contamination, Yanukovych said.
"There are still more than two million people suffering from harmful effects of radiation exposure, of whom 498,000 are children," he said.
The death toll from the Chernobyl disaster is bitterly disputed, with a United Nations toll from 2005 setting it at just 4,000, but non-governmental groups suggesting the true toll could reach tens or even hundreds of thousands.
According to Ukrainian official figures, more than 25,000 people known as "liquidators" from then-Soviet Ukraine, Russia and Belarus have died since taking part in the bid to limit radioactive fallout after the catastrophe.
Many children and adolescents touched by the nuclear fallout have suffered from thyroid cancer — the most common illness from the radiation.
While the Chernobyl power plant was finally closed in 2000, the dead reactor is still a threat because the concrete cover hastily laid over some 200 tonnes of spilled radioactive material is cracking.
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