Recently World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature has warned that dredging of Pripyat River could wreak havoc on an estimated 28 million people in Ukraine.
Pripyat River flows near the site of the infamous nuclear accident at Chernobyl.
It is Ukraine’s most important river, on which its capital city of Kiev is located.
The city of Pripyat, with a population of 45,000, was completely evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster and is now a ghost town.
The Pripyat River is being dredged as part of the restoration of a bilateral waterway between Ukraine and Belarus and is being seen as the first step of the much larger E40 project.
The E40 project envisions connecting the Black and Baltic Seas for ocean-going ships to ply.
It seeks to connect the ports of Gdansk in Poland on the Baltic, with that of Kherson in Ukraine on the Black Sea.
The Pripyat will become a permanent source of radioactive contaminants because annual dredging will be needed to ensure the successful operation of the E40 waterway.
The dredging of Chernobyl exclusion zone on Pripyat River could increase the radiation risk.
