KIEV, April 26 - Ukraine on Thursday launched construction of a EUR1 billion new safe confinement over the damaged reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to make it environmentally friendly.

President Viktor Yanukovych, at a grand ceremony, said the new facility will transform Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst civic nuclear accident in April 1986, into an ecologically safe system.