Containment Efforts
Immediately following the meltdown, authorities attempted to use helicopters to drop sand, lead, and boron on the core to absorb some of the radiation that was being released. Unfortunately these attempts were largely unsuccessful, and most of the material never made its way to the core. The next plan of attack was to use 400,000 cubic meters of reinforced concrete to build a sarcophagus and stop the spread of radiation. While this was successful initially, the sarcophagus was poorly built and started to deteriorate in the mid 90’s. The Ukrainian government completed the final step of containment in 2017 by building “New Safe Confinement”, a huge structure intended to cover the entirety of the core and existing sarcophagus. This structure is an engineering marvel and was designed to be slid into place, allowing construction to happen at a safe distance from the core. Financing proved to be a challenge for the project, as costs continued to increase throughout construction. The estimated total cost of the New Safe Confinement plan is estimated to be over $2 billion.
