Western-led donors agreed yesterday to pledge most of the $768 million needed for a shell to encase the unstable Chernobyl nuclear reactor, but officials warned political fallout from its 1986 explosion was not over.
Delegates from 37 governments, led by the G7 leading industrialised nations and the EU, boosted promised contributions to $715 million from the $393 million already pledged, allowing work to start on the steel-latticed concrete "tomb" due for completion in 2005.
But an official from one EU government said a bigger battle still remained in efforts to consign Chernobyl's destructive legacy - which has cost Ukraine billions of dollars since it sprayed clouds of radioactive dust across Europe in 1986 - to history.
"This could all still unravel," he warned, citing the intention of the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Yushchenko, to complete two new nuclear plants to replace lost output from Chernobyl.
Western nations promised to fund the transition in a 1995 deal which left the choice of power source open, but Germany's Greens, junior partners in the coalition of the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, oppose any support for nuclear energy.
"I don't believe there'll be the support in the EU to fund this project, because it depends on export credit guarantees Germany doesn't want to give," the official said.
Experts say decommissioning Chernobyl's last active reactor, as Ukraine promised on December 15th, completing the two plants at Khmelnitsky (K2) and Rivne (R4) and building safe waste storage sites might cost up to $2 billion in total.
The environmental group Greenpeace says K2/R4 alone could cost more than that figure.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which runs the Chernobyl Shelter Fund, said the new total pledged was sufficient to begin an international tender for the construction of a new "sarcophagus" around reactor number four.
The German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, said he expected the small outstanding sum to be pledged at a third donor conference.
But while Mr Schroder has pledged to honour the 1995 deal on new plants, Kiev's nuclear plans will make it tough for him to win Greens backing, especially after persuading them to support a slower shutdown of German nuclear plants than they wanted.
The G7 and the EU are due to decide in the autumn on funding under the 1995 deal, following an EBRD report, which officials expect to support the 90 per cent complete K2 and R4 reactors.
Mr Trittin, who said the only safe nuclear plant was one that had been shut down, told Mr Yushchenko a quick solution was possible if Ukraine agreed to a non-nuclear option.