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"The following is a statement made by Robert A. McConnell, co-founder of the U.S. Ukraine Foundation, on April 21 before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing on stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. Chairman [Howard] Berman, ranking member [Ileana] Ros-Lehtinen and distinguished members of the committee: As the committee looks at the very important issue of nuclear weapons, their proliferation and the potential of their use by terrorists, as well as reviewing the results of the April 12-13 nuclear security summit, I offer comments and a historical perspective related to one country most in the news during the summit: Ukraine. I do not speak for Ukraine or for anyone in Ukraine, however, as you are aware, I am one of the founders of the Washington, D.C.-based U.S.-Ukraine Foundation [a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization that hopes to build peace and prosperity in Ukraine through democratic values] that, having established an office in Kyiv in 1990, is among a select few with an American presence in Ukraine since before independence. Therefore, I speak for myself and my comments are based upon personal knowledge gained from trips to Ukraine made before we opened our office there, meetings with Ukrainian government officials that began before independence, hundreds of hours spent with the leadership of Rukh (the "Movement" that was established in 1989 and was a fundamental catalyst to Ukraine's drive for independence), as well as having participated in numerous meetings between officials of the Ukrainian government and officials of our own government in the early 1990s and since."

"Ukraine is seeking to supply its nuclear reactors with uranium mined in the country from 2015, Deputy Fuel and Energy Minister Natalia Shumkova said. Ukraine aims to increase uranium production to 5,000 metric tons a year in 2020 and 6,000 tons in 2030, from 830 tons, Shumkova said at a conference in Kiev today. The eastern European country needs to invest 9.9 billion hryvnia ($1.25 billion) in uranium output through 2013, she said. The ministry this week announced a tender to build a uranium plant and will pick a winner by early October, according to Shumkova. Russia's OAO Tvel and Toshiba Corp.'s Westinghouse Electric Co. have the experience to build the plant, she said. Ukraine plans to construct a third nuclear reactor at its Khmelnytskyi power plant by 2016 and a fourth by 2017, Yuriy Nedashkovskyi, the president of DP NAEK Energoatom, Ukraine's state-owned operator of nuclear power stations, said at the same event. The construction is worth 30.1 billion hryvnia, he said. "

"As Ukraine comemmorates the victims who perished on the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster on Monday, people around the world protest against the dangers of nuclear power. Addressing the psychological and social effects of the Chernobyl disaster and securing the site are still key priorities, experts say. A man lights a candle and lays flowers in front of memorial for Chernobyl victims in Slavutich, 200 kilometers north of capital Kiev on Monday. Ukraine paid homage on Monday to the victims of the Chernobyl disaster while still struggling with the legacy of the world's worst nuclear disaster 24 years ago. Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych said the victims should be remembered forever and promised to find financial resources for expanding social security for the people affected by the Chernobyl disaster."

Ukraine will accelerate the development of nuclear power in a bid to reduce dependence on imported energy, visiting Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said here Tuesday. More nuclear reactors will be brought into operation in Ukraine by 2013, said Yushchenko, who was on a one-day visit to Vienna.

"Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed creating a nuclear power holding company with Ukraine as the two former Soviet republics rebuild ties. "We have made massive proposals, referring to generation, nuclear power engineering, and nuclear fuel," Putin told reporters after a meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev today. Any cooperation may be phased, Putin said after the surprise visit to Kiev. Russia and Ukraine have reached agreements on natural gas subsidies and a navy base since Yanukovych's election in February improved ties between the neighboring states. Putin also met yesterday with his Ukrainian counterpart, Mykola Azarov, to discuss industrial cooperation. "

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko criticised his government on Tuesday for slow progress on building a new shelter to encase the wrecked fourth reactor of the Chernobyl power plant, site of the world's worst nuclear accident. Ukraine signed a deal in September 2007 with the French-led Novarka consortium to erect an arch-shaped shelter at the plant where a fire, followed by an explosion, occurred on April 26, 1986, sending radiation billowing over parts of central Europe. This project was due to be completed over four to five years at a cost of $1.39 billion. A second deal with U.S.-based Holtec International foresees building a facility to house spent nuclear fuel from reactors. Turning on his political rival Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Yushchenko told a national security meeting: "We have had three international conferences, more than $900 million in resources have been brought together ... why is there an empty building site today?".

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko criticised his government on Tuesday for slow progress on building a new shelter to encase the wrecked fourth reactor of the Chernobyl power plant, site of the world's worst nuclear accident. Ukraine signed a deal in September 2007 with the French-led Novarka consortium to erect an arch-shaped shelter at the plant where a fire, followed by an explosion, occurred on April 26, 1986, sending radiation billowing over parts of central Europe. This project was due to be completed over four to five years at a cost of $1.39 billion. A second deal with U.S.-based Holtec International foresees building a facility to house spent nuclear fuel from reactors. Turning on his political rival Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Yushchenko told a national security meeting: "We have had three international conferences, more than $900 million in resources have been brought together ... why is there an empty building site today?".

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko criticised his government on Tuesday for slow progress on building a new shelter to encase the wrecked fourth reactor of the Chernobyl power plant, site of the world's worst nuclear accident. Ukraine signed a deal in September 2007 with the French-led Novarka consortium to erect an arch-shaped shelter at the plant where a fire, followed by an explosion, occurred on April 26, 1986, sending radiation billowing over parts of central Europe. This project was due to be completed over four to five years at a cost of $1.39 billion. A second deal with U.S.-based Holtec International foresees building a facility to house spent nuclear fuel from reactors. Turning on his political rival Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Yushchenko told a national security meeting: "We have had three international conferences, more than $900 million in resources have been brought together ... why is there an empty building site today?".

Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko has approved the programme of a gradual dismantle of the Chernobyl atomic power plant. According to the plan it will take over 50 years to make the Chernobyl an ecologically safe place, clean of radioactive contamination. Starting from January 1 next year, Ukraine will begin pulling the plant down, a process divided into four phases. Ukraine plans to spend 4.075 billon grivna (over $US 620 million) of its budget and about $US 48 million of international financing just for the startup of the project, which involves certain urgent technical and ecological measures.

KIEV (AFP) - Ukraine paid tribute Saturday to victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 22 years ago while anti-nuclear demonstrators at home and abroad also recalled the worst civilian nuclear disaster in history. A group of Ukrainians led by President Viktor Yushchenko laid a wreath during the night at a monument to the victims of the catastrophe in which a reactor exploded one night in April 1986.

KIEV, Ukraine: Twenty-two years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, work is under way on a larger, stronger shelter to cover the ruins of the exploded Soviet power plant and prevent further contamination. For years, the original iron and concrete shelter that was hastily constructed over the reactor has been leaking radiation, cracking and threatening to collapse.

Twenty-three years have passed since The Day of April 26 divided human fates into "before" and "after" the disaster at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Until this day it is the world's worst anthropogenic catastrophe unmatched for its environmental impact. For Ukraine Chornobyl is an everyday reality and a host of global-scale problems. Unfortunately, the problems caused by the catastrophe are as acute today as they were 23 years ago. Can one get used to devastated villages and abandoned fertile land? Today nothing prevents us from learning in detail what was happening on the banks of the Prypiat in late April-November 1986. In May 1986 foreigners were the first to learn the truth: on April 30 a Geiger counter on a Swedish nuclear power plant detected an unacceptably high level of radiation. After the Swedish government ascertained that the discharge did not take place in Sweden, it made an official inquiry. Mikhail Gorbachev addressed the people only 18 days after the disaster, on May 14. And three years passed before the information on the radioactivity conditions was declassified and publicized. After the explosion at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the scientists at the Institute for Nuclear Research (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) identified two groups of radionuclides emitted from the damaged reactor. One of them included volatile radioactive substances carried up high in aerosols with the streams of warm air (iodine-131, iodine-135, cesium-134, cesium-137, and strontium-90). Nearly 30 percent of cesium accumulated in the reactor core was emitted.

Ukraine paid homage to victims of the Chernobyl catastrophe 23 years after the worst nuclear accident in history. "Today we remember with profound sadness those heroes who fought against the nuclear storm and sacrificed themselves for us and our children," President Viktor Yushchenko said in an address published by his press service. Some 100 Ukrainians, including Yushchenko and other top officials, laid wreaths overnight before the monument to Chernobyl's victims in Kiev and lighted candles during a religious service dedicated to the tragedy, an AFP photographer reported.

_ 1955: A U.S. government reactor makes Arco, Idaho, the world's first town electrified by nuclear power. _ 1957: The U.S.' first commercial nuclear power plant becomes operational in Shippingport, Pa. (Nuclear reactors were already in service in the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom). It was retired in 1982. _ March 29, 1979: Three Mile Island Unit 2 in Middletown, Pa., melts down. No one was killed or seriously injured that day, but the public relations disaster sets back the industry for decades. _ April 26, 1986: Chernobyl nuclear power plant explodes in Soviet Ukraine, killing thousands. A radioactive cloud floats over much of Europe and large areas of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are contaminated. _ 1996: The U.S.' last new reactor comes online at Watts Bar nuclear power plant near Spring City, Tenn. It took 22 years to finish Unit 1 and Unit 2 remains unfinished, becoming a poster child of the industry's inefficiency. _ 2001: Worries about terrorist plots against nuclear power plants prompts new security measures. Governors send National Guard troops to watch over plants as public confidence about the safety of the installations drops. _ 2002: Employees discover an acid leak after it nearly ate through a reactor vessel cap at the Davis-Besse plant in Oak Harbor, Ohio. Owner FirstEnergy Corp. pays a record $28 million fine and juries convict two plant employees of hiding the corrosion. _ 2007: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission receives first full power plant application in 28 years. NRG Energy Inc.'s proposal for two reactors near Bay City, Texas, is one of 26 licenses pending at the agency. _ February 2009: President Barack Obama calls for a cap on greenhouse gas emissions. The proposal would almost certainly raise the cost to operate coal- and gas-fired plants and is seen as a boost for nuclear energy.

"Ukraine renounced its bomb-grade uranium on Monday in a boost for President Barack Obama's summit on securing the world's nuclear materials, as a US official warned of the "growing" risk of nuclear terrorism. Obama called the 47-nation summit in Washington, the biggest hosted by a US leader since 1945, to try to secure loose materials in military and civilian stockpiles worldwide within four years. The gesture from ex-Soviet republic Ukraine, site of the horrific 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion, gave early impetus to the summit."

"Russia and Ukraine have signed an intergovernmental agreement to finish the construction of Reactor Units 3 and 4 at Ukraine's Khmelnitsky Nuclear Power Plant. This means Russia will effectively foot the bill for completing a long-obsolete project developed as far back as when the two nations were still part of the Soviet Union. Andrei Ozharovsky, 09/06-2010 Andrei Ozharovsky, 17/06-2010 - Translated by Maria Kaminskaya The agreement was signed on June 9 in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, by Ukraine's Minister of Fuel and Energy Yury Boiko and Russia's head of the state nuclear corporation Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko. The deal sees Russia unfreezing the construction of Units 3 and 4 at Khmelnitsky Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) - a site located 40 kilometres from the city of Rovno, in Ukraine's Khmelnitsky Region. The plant was built in 1981."

President Viktor Yuschenko opposes privatization of the Turboatom turbine company (Kharkiv), the largest turbine manufacturer in Ukraine. Yuschenko announced this on November 19 at a meeting with employees of Turboatom. "We will not give the factory to anyone. It is an enterprise that is operating successfully," said Yuschenko.

The general contractor to build reactors three and four at the Khmelnytsky nuclear power plant will be Russia's ZAO Atomstroiexport, a source in the Fuel and Energy Ministry told Interfax-Ukraine. "The interagency tender commission on the selection of the type of generating units for reactors three and four at the Khmelnytsky NPP has finished its work. After studying proposals from Atomstroiexport, South Koera's ÊÅÐÑÎ and U.S. company Westinghouse, the commission said that the Russian project was the best," the source said.

This study of bone density compares BMD development in 2854 women affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident with two non-contaminated control groups using the DXL Calscan portable bone densitometer device. By Prof. S.S. Rodionova, CITO (Moscow). A new study has been published in the international journal "Annals of Traumatology and Orthopedics" by a research team led by Prof. S.S. Rodionova, founder of the Russian Osteoporosis Society and Professor of Traumatology at the Central Institute of Traumatology & Orthopedics (CITO). Random bone mineral density testing was performed using the portable DXL Calscan device (Demetech, Sweden) on 2854 women who are now between the ages of 15 and 80 years. The device uses a patented technology of dual energy x-ray and laser (DXL) to better eliminate errors caused by lean soft tissue and fat in DXA devices. The Chernobyl accident of April 1986 caused radioactive contamination to the environment in many communities in the Brjansk region of western Russia, near the Ukraine and Belarus borders. While some specific communities within this region were spared from this contamination, other communities were greatly affected. The effects of the environmental damage caused in the affected communities continue to be seen in the form of health problems for their inhabitants. This study examines the increased risk of osteoporosis and future fragility fractures in affected areas compared to control groups.

Twenty-two years ago, the most serious accident in nuclear history disrupted the lives of millions of people. Massive amounts of radioactive materials were released into the environment resulting in a radioactive cloud that spread over much of Europe. The greatest contamination occurred around the Chernobyl nuclear power station in areas that are now part of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. People in Czechoslovakia were not in acute danger, but like others in the communist block they learnt about the nuclear accident many days after it happened and the media censorship ordered by the communist regime prevented them from taking even the most basic precautions.

Twenty-two years ago today the Soviet Union announced that a serious nuclear accident had occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the Ukraine near the small town of Pripyat 100 kilometres from the capital Kiev. The explosion in reactor number four, which occurred three days before, is the world's worst reactor meltdown, spewing radioactive material across the then Soviet Union and much of northern Europe.

MINSK - Several thousand supporters of Belarus' opposition marched through Minsk on Saturday to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident and protest an alleged government coverup of the disaster's consequences. Many of the 3,000 marchers expressed particular dismay over the government's policy of assigning recent university graduates to work in areas contaminated by the explosion. Reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl, in what is now northern Ukraine, exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing radiation over a large swath of the former Soviet Union and much of northern Europe in the world's worst nuclear accident.