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Leigh Turner

Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna

Part of UK in Ukraine

10th October 2011

Chornobyl: Safer Storage of Radioactive Waste

How radioactive is the environment at the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone?  The question seems particularly pertinent when you’re planting a tree and the wind is blowing sand in your eyes.

This was the scene recently when I visited Chornobyl with Volodymyr Kholosha, Head of the State Agency of Ukraine for the management of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.  The UK is investing #8m for the construction of a Centralised Store for disused sealed radioactive sources (SRS) in the Vector complex at Chornobyl, together with [euro]2m in funding from the European Union.  The store is designed to bring together from all over Ukraine small radioactive sources used in applications such as x-ray machines, cancer treatments and water purification and keep them in one of the most secure and closely monitored places on the planet.  You can read more about the event on the embassy website. A link to TV coverage of the event is here (in Ukrainian).

Driving from Kyiv to Chornobyl was an opportunity to marvel once again at the feat of the embassy’s charity walkers who covered the 110 km distance earlier this year.  It was also a chance to look at the New Safe Confinement Project – a plan to build a sliding protective shield to cover Chornobyl’s Reactor No 4.  I hope to blog about that later.  As I noted in an earlier blog, “Holidays in Chernobyl”, the site remains thought-provoking – and fascinating.  Making it as safe as possible remains an important and long-term task.

NB: the spelling “Chornobyl” is from the Ukrainian language, as opposed to “Chernobyl”, as transliterated from Russian.

About Leigh Turner

I hope you find this blog interesting and, where appropriate, entertaining. My role in Vienna covers the relationship between Austria and the UK as well as the diverse work of…

I hope you find this blog interesting and, where appropriate, entertaining. My role in Vienna covers the relationship between Austria and the UK as well as the diverse work of the UN and other organisations; stories here will reflect that.

About me: I arrived in Vienna in August 2016 for my second posting in this wonderful city, having first served here in the mid-1980s. My previous job was as HM Consul-General and Director-General for Trade and Investment for Turkey, Central Asia and South Caucasus based in Istanbul.

Further back: I grew up in Nigeria, Exeter, Lesotho, Swaziland and Manchester before attending Cambridge University 1976-79. I worked in several government departments before joining the Foreign Office in 1983.

Keen to go to Africa and South America, I’ve had postings in Vienna (twice), Moscow, Bonn, Berlin, Kyiv and Istanbul, plus jobs in London ranging from the EU Budget to the British Overseas Territories.

2002-6 I was lucky enough to spend four years in Berlin running the house, looking after the children (born 1992 and 1994) and doing some writing and journalism.

To return to Vienna as ambassador is a privilege and a pleasure. I hope this blog reflects that.