Chernobyl’s Steel Radiation Shield Is the Biggest Moving Structure Ever

In the normal macrocosm , it ’s what you ’d call a bad investment : drop $ 2 billion to ramp up the large moveable structure ever — and knowing that it wo n’t work for long than 100 twelvemonth . But in Chernobyl , it ’s the best available option for protecting a whole continent from the worst nuclear disaster in history .

Today is the 28th anniversary of the disaster , which killed 31 and subjects C of others to extreme suffering , and left 200 tons of radioactive dermis and 16 dozens of uranium and plutonium exposed inside the smoking remains of Reactor 4 . At the clip , larger-than-life workers quickly constructed an ad hoc tax shelter over the reactor to stop the spew of radioactive material across Ukraine and Western Europe , using 7,000 metric wads of metal and many more tons of concrete . But that protection — experience as the Sarcophagus — was never meant to last . And now , it ’s in peril of collapse .

The Sarcophagus . Image viaCHNPP .

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Enter New Safe Confinement , a project that ’s nearly as one-time as the nuclear meltdown it ’s designed to contain . It ’s a two - fork-like architectural plan : First , thousands of workers are construct a 300 - ft - tall steel archway that weighs more than 32,000 - tons . Though it ’s being built a few hundred meters forth from Reactor 4 , it ’s eventually going to cover it , create a slurred brand cage around the reactor in slip it collapses . But because the area near it is too radioactive for worker to stay there for longer than a few minutes , this huge social structure is being build next doorway — then , very very slow , it will be slid on polytetrafluoroethylene - coated tracks to cover the reactor .

We last checked in with its progressalmost six months ago , the 300 - foot archway was well underway . But today , on the anniversary of the disaster that ask it , here ’s a compendium of the most incredible photographs of its construction in the calendar month since our last look . As telling as it is , it probably wo n’t compare to watch out it slide into place . [ CHNPP ]