The world's largest metal movable structure will be unveiled Tuesday over the Chernobyl nuclear power plant's doomed fourth reactor in Ukraine to ensure the safety of future generations across Europe.
The giant arch - nearly as long as two football pitches and taller than New York's Statue of Liberty - will edge into place over an existing crumbling dome that the Soviets constructed in haste when disaster struck three decades ago on April 26.
Radioactive fallout from the site of the world's worst civil nuclear accident contaminated Ukraine and spread across three-quarters of Europe. Work on the previous safety dome began after a 10-day fire caused by the explosion was contained but as radiation still spewed.
About 30 of the cleanup workers known as liquidators were killed on site or died from overwhelming radiation poisoning in the following weeks. The toll from the accident caused by errors during an experimental safety check remains under dispute because the Soviet authorities did their best to cover up the tragedy.
Kiev held a May Day parade as invisible contamination spread over the city while then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev only admitted on May 14 that something had gone terribly wrong.
A UN estimate in 2005 said around 4,000 people had either been killed or were left dying from cancer and other related disease. But the Greenpeace environmental protection group believes the figure may be closer to 100,000.
The authorities maintain a 30km wide exclusion zone around the plant in which only a few dozen elderly people live.
Concerns over the safety of the disintegrating concrete shelter, built by 90,000 people in just 206 days, prompted the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to spearhead a $2.2bn project to install a new safety dome.
#Cuba Offers Medical Treatment to 800 #Chernobyl Children (2016) https://t.co/iLTZVrr4VW
— Nahia Sanzo (@nsanzo) November 27, 2016
Long time coming
Chernobyl’s dangers are real but Kiev complains Europe's help took a long time coming. The EBRD found 40 state sponsors to fund a competition in 2007 to choose who should build a movable dome the likes of which the world had never seen.
A French consortium of two companies known as Novarka finished the designs in 2010 and began construction two years later.
The shelter was edged toward the fourth reactor in just under three weeks of delicate work this month that was interrupted by inclement weather and other potential dangers.
It will later be fitted with radiation control equipment as well as air vents and fire protective measures.
That equipment inside the arch is due to start working by the end of 2017. Novarka believes that its arch will keep the continent safe from nuclear fallout for the next 100 years.
Giant new dome set to keep Chernobyl safe for generations https://t.co/NchPKzQRUy
— GMA News (@gmanews) November 27, 2016