E40 Inland Waterway Project | UPSC

• The Pripyat river flows from northwestern Ukraine to its confluence with the Dnieper river, Ukraine’s most important river, on which its capital city of Kiev is located.
• On April 26, 1986, a blast occurred at the No.4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near Pripyat city in the then Soviet Ukraine.

SOURCES : EUROMAIDEN

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• The Pripyat river passes through the exclusion zone established around the site.
• The city of Pripyat, with a population of 45,000, was completely evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster .
• The dredging of the Pripyat river that began recently, is being done at eight locations, four of which lie barely a few kilometres from the remains of reactor No.4.
• Some 28 million people downstream who depend on the Dnieper river for water and food, could be at increased radiation risk .

• The Pripyat will become a permanent source of radioactive contaminants because annual dredging .
• This would contaminate the water supply of eight million people, including the population of Kiev.
• While irrigation and the use of dredged soil for agriculture could contaminate crops that 20 million Ukrainians depend upon.

• Changes to the hydrology of the region where E40 is being built — Polesia — could also dry out its peatlands, turning an important carbon sink into a serious carbon source.

E40 INLAND WATERWAY