KYIV, April 27 - Ukraine’s president on Monday unveiled a new EUR 448.2 million nuclear waste repository at Chornobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster that unfolded exactly 35 years ago, AP reported.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Chornobyl together with Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and vowed to “transform the exclusion zone, as Chornobyl is referred to, into a revival zone.”

“Ukraine is not alone, it has wide support (from its) partners,” Zelenskyy said. “Today the new repository has been put into operation and it is very important that today a license to maintain the new repository will be obtained.”

The Ukrainian authorities decided to use the deserted exclusion zone around the Chornobyl power plant to build a place where Ukraine could store its nuclear waste for the next 100 years. Ukraine currently has four nuclear power plants operating and has to transport its nuclear waste to Russia. The new repository will allow the government to save up $200 million a year.

Grossi said on Twitter Monday that the IAEA “will continue working tirelessly in addressing decommissioning, radioactive waste and environmental remediation related with Chernobyl accident.”

Reactor No. 4 at the Chornobyl power plant 110 kilometers (65 miles) north of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv exploded and caught fire deep in the night on April 26, 1986, shattering the building and spewing radioactive material into the sky.

Soviet authorities made the catastrophe even worse by failing to tell the public what had happened — although the nearby plant workers’ town of Pripyat was evacuated the next day, the 2 million residents of Kyiv weren’t informed despite the fallout danger. The world learned of the disaster only after heightened radiation was detected in Sweden.

More than 600,000 people took part in fighting the consequences of the disaster. Thirty plant workers and firefighters died within the first few months after the accident.

Eventually, more than 100,000 people were evacuated from the vicinity and the 2,600-square-kilometer (1,000-square-mile) exclusion zone was established where the only activity was workers disposing of waste and tending to a hastily built sarcophagus covering the reactor.

Radiation continued to leak from the reactor building until 2019, when the entire building was covered by an enormous arch-shaped shelter. (ap/ez)