WITH THE ARRIVAL of the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, real progress in the international effort to remove the remaining risks posed by the site can be seen on two fronts. The first concerns the plan to construct a new structure over the old "shelter" covering the destroyed Unit 4. The second involves the safe storage of the spent nuclear fuel from Units 1,2, and 3, to allow those reactors to finally be decommissioned. To accomplish the first task, the Shelter Implementation Plan (SIP) was devised, setting out a program to first make the old shelter safe, and then to build a new one. The new steel structure will be more than 100 meters high (328 feet), which is tall enough to house the Statue of Liberty. Called the New Safe Confinement (NSC), the structure will be assembled on site, at a distance from the highly radioactive Unit 4, and then slid into position, covering the re- mains of the reactor building and the old shelter.
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