Signing the Memorandum of Understanding

Helping prevent mass destruction.  To the Ukrainian Ministry of Emergencies and Population Protection from the Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe to sign a memorandum to help implement an important Ukraine-UK initiative.  The UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has been working with the embassy and other partners in Ukraine, the UK and elsewhere to build a centralised store for highly active spent radioactive sources.  These are mainly small sources used in civil industrial and medical processes such X-ray machines and recent estimates suggest that there could be as many as 400,000 across Ukraine.  The UK has allocated up to £2.1 million (29 million UAH) to the design and construction of the proposed centralised store, which will meet all Ukrainian and international radiation safety standards.  It's due to open in 2011 and will be located inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

I sign the Memorandum of Understanding alongside Volodymyr Shandra, Ukrainian Minister of Emergencies at the Ministry in Kyiv.  We each make a statement, followed by a short press conference.  It's good to see practical work being done to help prevent the spread of materials which could be used potentially in a "dirty" bomb, and all the more so in that the work will have such a practical and valuable outcome in the form of the planned new store.  The project will be even more successful if, as hoped, the UK's agreement to allocate funds to the design and construction of the store helps to trigger additional funds from other international partners.  Many other countries are already engaged in helping clean up Chernobyl, including the separate proposed international shelter project, to which the UK has so far donated over €90m (over UAH 1 billion).