Chernobyl's future hangs in balance

摘要

A white-tailed eagle soars in the clear winter air. It is hunting forfishinoneofthemost radioactive bodies of open water on the planet: the 12-kilometre-long cooling pond, whose waters doused the burning Chernobyl nuclear power station after it exploded 30 years ago. The pond is radioactive - as are the fish. But wildlife is booming in the exclusion zone that stretches for some 30 kilometres from the corroding plant. Grey wolves, lynx, wild boar, rabbits and moose roam the zone, says Denis Vishnevsky, an ecologist at the EcoCentre, which monitors the Ukrainian exclusion zone. Yet plans to turn the zone into a nature reserve are under threat from the nuclear industry, which wants to dispose of high-level radioactive waste here. The battle may soon be settled as decisions are made ahead of the 30th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear disaster, on 26 April.