While Japan struggles to stabilize its wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, engineers in Ukraine are only now starting construction of a new enclosure for Chernobyl's fourth reactor, almost exactly 25 years after it exploded and caused immense human and environmental damage in the region and globally.
It's too early to say whether the Japanese will need their version of Chernobyl's $1.4-billion, 29,000-tonne steelwork safe enclosure to clear away their nuclear ruins. But the hard lessons learned in the development of Ukraine's $2.2-billion shelter implementation plan following the April, 26, 1986, disaster could give Japan's cleanup a running start.