Building a new shelter for Chernobyl

It’s probably not most people’s idea of the perfect working environment. But when Dr Eric Schmieman looks out of his office window towards the ravaged reactor of Chernobyl’s infamous power station, he sees a project that he describes as the most technically rewarding of his life.

Schmieman, a civil engineer from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the US, is currently senior technical advisor on what might well be one of the challenging and impressive engineering projects in the world today, the €1.5bn international effort to clean up the remains of mankind’s worst nuclear accident.

Known as the Shelter Implementation Plan (SIP), the project is funded through the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) by 46 different countries and organisations.  Since 1998, the engineers involved have worked their way through a long list of onerous challenges (see box), from stabilising the crumbling sarcophagus that was hastily erected following the 1986 disaster, to building the office blocks and associated infrastructure essential for such a long-running initiative.