To this date, Reactors No. 1 & 3 are still functioning at Chernobyl. Five years ago, Reactor No. 3 had to be shutdown after a fire broke out. "It's already kind of tradition - the Chernobyl operates incident-by-incident. This proves that this plant must be closed very quickly," said Kostyantyn Buzadzhi of Greenpeace Ukraine, "It simply shows that Ukrainian nuclear industry isn't safe enough."

Officials have promised to shut down Reactor No. 1 in November, in a preparation to shut the whole power plant down altogether. The planned shutdown date for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station is in the year 2000. ^[67]