An arch moves into place
Published 12 October 2026
By the next decade, the deterioration of the 1986 shelter that the Forum had warned about had led to a second structure. The US Geological Survey describes the New Safe Confinement as about two decades in the making: a massive steel arch built to seal in the site where a temporary structure had been erected quickly over reactor four. To limit workers' exposure to radiation, the new arch was assembled some three hundred metres away from the damaged building. Its segments were pre-assembled in Italy and shipped to Ukraine, and the framework was completed in 2014. Satellite images from 2015 and 2018 show the change in its position as the structure moved to the accident site. The engineering solution reflected the lesson of the first shelter: the next enclosure had to be built where people could work more safely, then brought to the hazard. C014, unis.unvienna.org, Chernobyl: The True Scale of the Accident C090, eros.usgs.gov, New Safe Confinement
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which managed the fund behind the project, recorded the start of the sliding operation on November 14, 2016. The arch it described spans 257 metres, is 162 metres long and 108 metres high, and weighs 36,000 tonnes equipped. A skidding system of 224 hydraulic jacks was to push it sixty centimetres per stroke over about forty hours of operation spread across several days. The structure had been built in two halves, joined in 2015, and fitted with an overhead crane so that the old shelter and the remains of reactor four could eventually be dismantled from inside. The EBRD gave its cost as 1.5 billion euros and its design lifespan as at least one hundred years. C089, ebrd.com, Major step in unique engineering project as Chernobyl arch slides into place
By November 29, 2016, the arch had reached its resting place. The EBRD's account of the completed operation says the structure had moved 327 metres from its assembly point to enclose completely the makeshift shelter assembled immediately after the 1986 accident. The bank described it as the largest moveable land-based structure ever built. Connection of its equipment to a control building, sealing, testing and commissioning remained ahead, with handover to the plant administration expected a year later. The programme around it was larger than one arch: the bank described a Shelter Implementation Plan of more than three hundred projects and activities, financed by a fund established in 1997 with contributions from 45 donors. C092, ebrd.com, Unique engineering feat concluded as Chernobyl arch has reached resting place
Ukraine's ecology minister called the start of the slide the beginning of the end of a thirty-year fight with the consequences of the accident. That is a minister's framing at a ceremony, not a claim that the fight was over. The arch enclosed the damaged reactor and its old shelter; it did not remove the fuel-containing material, process the waste stored around the site or settle how the unit would finally be decommissioned. The EBRD's own description keeps the future work visible: the crane exists so that the ageing shelter can be dismantled and the radioactive waste within managed. The confinement changed the condition of the hazard from an eroding improvised cover to an engineered enclosure designed for a century of further work. C014, unis.unvienna.org, Chernobyl: The True Scale of the Accident C089, ebrd.com, Major step in unique engineering project as Chernobyl arch slides into place