00:00A crowd lays flowers at a Kyiv memorial to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 40 years ago Sunday.
00:06Some people here, like Valery Repeta, worked at the Chernobyl plant
00:10and were there the night it exploded in a series of blasts
00:14after a botched safety test when safety rules were ignored.
00:18It's a night that stayed with him.
00:19At the moment of the explosion, the explosion fell and the roof fell to the 12th point and I was
00:27like in the bed.
00:29Radioactivity spread over Europe and beyond.
00:32In addition to the 31 workers and firefighters who died on the scene,
00:36an unknown number, perhaps thousands, have since died from radiation-related illnesses.
00:41And nearby residents were evacuated, never to return home.
00:45For them, that painful experience is a lesson not forgotten.
00:49When it comes to nuclear plants in this part of the world, vigilance is key.
00:54It's important to protect the atomic stations,
00:56because if there will be such events like Chernobyl, Запорожье and others,
01:01it will just destroy not only the population of Kyiv, Ukraine and other countries.
01:07But that isn't easy.
01:09For four years, it's been nothing but war.
01:12Russia, the successor of the now-collapsed USSR, hasn't stopped attacks on the now-independent Ukraine,
01:18the country where Chernobyl now lies.
01:20Russia has attacked Ukraine's infrastructure.
01:23And Kyiv says this includes a 2025 drone attack that threatened to rip into a protective arc
01:29covering the plant's most dangerous section.
01:31It had to be patched up, a near disaster averted.
01:34And the 2,000-plus strong crew still working at Chernobyl say,
01:38as the war drags into its fifth year, the plant is still far from in the clear.
01:43The main risk is the military risk.
01:47Because in the zone of the
01:49and in the same way, under the KS objects,
01:54there are a lot of aircraft and rockets.
02:00And what we see now, after the launch of the 14th of July 2025,
02:07can be repeated and the consequences may be much worse.
02:12And should the war continue, as it may well,
02:15it could complicate plans to repair the protective arc.
02:18And to keep the structure functional, work needs to start soon.
02:21So our experts estimate is that the work needs to be done by 2030.
02:26So it needs to start in 2028, early beginning of 2028.
02:32Forty years on, even in greatly changed times,
02:35the Chernobyl disaster is still very much a part of the present for Ukraine.
02:39Chris Ma and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.
