Ukrainian authorities decided the deserted area around the Chernobyl nuclear facility can be put to good use after the worst nuclear disaster in history 35 years ago, according to news reports Tuesday.
Ukraine's president unveiled Monday a new nuclear waste repository at Chernobyl, the site of a nuclear meltdown on the night of April 26, 1986.
Almost 10 tons of radioactive material spread into the atmosphere and surrounding regions around 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Kyiv. Two nuclear plant workers were killed immediately. Another 30 perished within weeks from radiation exposure.
Soviet authorities made the accident even worse by not immediately telling the public what had happened - though the nearby town of Pripyat was evacuated the following day, the two million people in Kyiv were not informed despite the danger of the fallout.
Other countries learned of the catastrophe only after increased levels of radiation was detected in Sweden, according to Associated Press.
On Monday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Chernobyl with International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Mariano Grossi, and vowed to transform the exclusion zone into a "revival zone."
"Ukraine is not alone, it has wide support from its partners," Zelenskyy said.
Radiation continued to leak from Chernobyl until 2019. As remote-controlled machinery inside the shelter started to dismantle the nuclear reactor, authorities felt new sense of hope about the place.
"We want a new narrative to appear. It wasn't a zone of exclusion, but a zone of development and revival," WECT News quoted Bohdan Borukhovskyi, Ukraine's deputy environment minister, as saying.
The former Soviet country currently has four nuclear reactors operating and has to transport its nuclear waste to Russia.
The new repository will allow Ukraine to store its nuclear waste for the next 100 years and save up $200 million per year.
