26
DAILY MIRROR WEDNESDAY 30.11.2016
mirror.co.uk
DM1ST
Charles: ‘I was run
over by bus at uni’
Prince Charles has told how he was ­incident. If the prince had not survived
run over by a bus as he cycled while a it, Prince Andrew would have become
student at Cambridge University.
heir, with Princess Beatrice following
The heir to the throne, 68, who studied in line after him.
at Trinity College between 1967 and 1970,
In Cambridge, 32% of people commute
said: “Quite how I survived
by bicycle. Charles became
I don’t know.”
the first heir to the throne to
The prince was speaking
take a degree and was
at a reception to mark the
awarded a 2:2 in History.
university’s Fitzwilliam
He was joined by wife
Museum bicentenary.
Camilla, 69, at the museum
He said: “For me it’s
and the couple also met
always the greatest pleasure
primary school pupils helped
to come back to Cambridge.
by its outreach programme.
“I ’ve always felt so
Meanwhile, Prince William
lucky to be able to study at
revealed that the Duchess of
this university.
Cambridge now has a pas­­
“It all went by in a flash
sion for colouring-in books.
and I’m horrified to realise
He said yesterday Kate, 34,
that very shortly, next year
is a fan of the book Secret
in fact, it will be 50 years
Garden as he met its illussince I arrived.
trator Johanna Basford.
“All I can say is time goes
It has sold a million copies
past unbelievably quickly
and Johanna, 33, was picking
but I enjoyed it enormously.
up an OBE at Buckingham
“Quite how I survived
Palace. She said: “Prince
being run over by a bus
William said his wife likes to
when I was on a bicycle just
colour in the Secret Garden,
outside here I don’t know.
which was really sweet.”
“But it was a very special
Speaking about the pastexperience, as most of you
time, which is said to promote
probably know.”
relaxation, Johanna added: “I
Aides said later they had DRAMAPrince at Cambridge think people are craving a
never heard about the and with Camilla at museum digital detox.”
Hillsborough
blame game
SOUTH Yorkshire Police
tried to “spread the blame”
during hearings into the
96 Hillsborough disaster
deaths, a legal review said.
But Hugh Tomlinson QC
agreed with a decision by
the Independent Police
Complaints Commission not
to probe ex-Chief Constable
David Crompton over how
he instructed lawyers.
Instead the review said it
was “highly regrettable” Mr
Crompton did not tell
lawyers to “make a clear
distinction” between the
position of his force and that
of individual senior officers.
Flock of 1,500
geese stolen
A GANG has stolen a flock
of 1,500 geese from a farm.
The birds, worth £100,000,
were taken in the middle of
the night and John Newton,
of the National Farmers
Union, said they were
“clearly stolen to order”.
He added: “They’re not
the kind of numbers you
could sell down the pub.”
It’s believed large vehicles
may have been used to
transport the birds from the
farm, in Bawburgh, Norfolk,
early on Sunday.
Police urged anyone
of fered th e ge e se to
contact them.
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Pictures: philip
coburn
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DAILY MIRROR 27
WEDNESDAY 30.11.2016 30 years on, Chernobyl site is sealed
MONUMENTALMirror
man Tom at Chernobyl
SIP SERVICEBen Carter
Joy at last as
autistic lad’s
a cup winner
By JEREMY ARMSTRONG
EXCLUSIVE by TOM PARRY S
pecial
Correspondent in Chernobyl, Ukraine
BUILT with bolts from Wrexham and
overseen by a man from Bury, this
gigantic steel shelter encloses the
reactor responsible for one of the
worst nuclear disasters in history.
Thirty years after an explosion ripped
apart the Chernobyl power plant and
spewed radioactive dust across Europe,
the devastated reactor number four has
finally been sealed off.
Six years in the making, the 108-metrehigh steel arch is the largest moveable
land structure ever built. Its completion
brings an end to a nightmare that has
scarred two generations.
Yesterday, at a ceremony inside the
radiation exclusion zone in Ukraine, British
engineer David Driscoll, 66, spoke of his
vital role as the health and safety manager
overseeing one of the most daunting
construction projects ever undertaken.
David has been involved for eight years,
from the earliest planning stages. He has
carefully watched over 1,200 workers from
40 nations, and ensured not a single one
has suffered radiation poisoning.
Coincidentally, the ventilation system
that will safeguard the crumbling reactor
inside the arch was manufactured on the
same Bury street that David grew up on.
Speaking after the official unveiling by
the Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko,
David told the Daily Mirror how he became
involved in the task: “I was working offshore
on an oil platform on the Gulf of Mexico
when my previous project director said,
‘David, I’ve got a job for you’.
“I said, ‘What is it?’ He told
me it was Chernobyl and I
said, ‘Don’t be stupid’.
“When he insisted it
was real, I said, ‘You
must be joking’. When
he explained, I thought
that it would be a
good challenge.
“I think the whole
project is contributing,
not just to the Ukraine
but to the safety of the
world, because Chernobyl’s
been a threat for a long time.
“This is bringing the chapter
to a close but, for me, it has been
an excellent chapter. It has been a
great opportunity. It’s not over for me until
they give me the key to lock up,” he said.
“It will be prepared for the future, when
they dismantle the reactor and original
shelter,” he said of the mammoth arch.
After eight years in Ukraine, David feels
so at home in the country he has no plans
to leave now the project has finished.
He explained: “I’m going to stay in
Ukraine afterwards. I have bought myself
a house and I’m settled here.”
The shimmering steel structure looms
large, sticking out in a frozen wasteland
rendered uninhabitable by the catastrophe
on April 26, 1986.
More than 200,000 people were evacuated from their homes in the weeks after
the disaster as the then-Soviet Union
A DAD desperate to replace
his autistic son’s damaged
favourite cup is to get a lifetime’s supply.
Marc Carter’s son Ben, 13,
would only use his treasured
Tommee Tippee “litle blue
cup” – of a type no longer
made – since he was two.
When it started wearing
out, Marc’s Twitter plea for
help with finding another
was retweeted 12,000 times.
It read in part: “People say
he will drink when he’s
thirsty but two emergency
trips to A&E with severe
dehydration say otherwise.”
The father of three, from
Great Torrington, North
Devon, 42, said it was a
“huge surprise” to hear from
the manufacturer.
Northumberland-based
Tommee Tippee said it did
not usually keep moulds but
staff launched a worldwide
search for the original design
and planned to produce 500.
MASSIVE ARCH
IN NUMBERS
86,000
The steel cladding on
the outside of the
arch, 86,000 square metres, is
enough to cover a size equivalent to
12 football pitches.
100
The new shelter has a
planned lifespan of at least
100 years.
20,000
The foundations for
the arch contain
20,000 square metres of concrete.
£1.7bn
Cost of the arch.
Workers from more
than 40 countries helped build it.
162
The shelter is 162 metres
(531ft) long and 108m high.
The arch is three-and-a-half times
the weight of the Eiffel Tower and
longer than two jumbo jets.
challenge
You may be due a refund.
DM1ST
devastationView of nuclear power
plant’s fourth reactor after the explosion
government slowly responded to the leak.
Over time, deserted houses by the roadside
in the exclusion zone have been gradually
devoured by the surrounding forest.
Pripyat, once a model Soviet city next
to Chernobyl, is now a ghost town.
The shells of deserted apartment blocks
serve as a permanent reminder of the
scale of the catastrophe. At the top of
one tower block is a faded Communist
hammer and sickle.
Our footsteps crunching in the snow
are the only sound in the ghostly main
square, making it hard to imagine that this
was once a city with a 30,000-strong
Steel shelter encases reactor
that caused nuclear disaster
ENTOMBED
community, whose members were respon- were evacuated the day after the accident. home and to have to live with the fear of
sible for keeping the four reactors at the We were only allowed to take a few radiation. That is why today is a big mile­belongings from our flat because of the stone for me and my family.”
plant running.
To secure the massive arch, more
Now, thanks to this engineering project, radioactive contamination.
than 500,000 bolts were specially
“We had to move to a different
some of the abandoned towns and villages
made in Wrexham, to lock the
city. It was extremely upsetting
nearby might one day be resettled.
25,000-ton, 250-metre-wide
Valeriy Sulimov, 56, who was in the to have lost my friends, our
steel framework together.
­audience at yesterday’s event,
The structure cost more
was working at Chernobyl at
than £1.7billion, funded by
the time of the disaster.
donations from more than 40
The former Pripyat resident
countries, including the UK.
lost two close friends in the
Technicians slid the building,
explosion and many of his
called the New Containment
colleagues later died from the
Arch, into place using hydraulic
toxic effects of radiation.
jacks, painstakingly shunting it
On the day of the disaster,
60cm at a time over a distance
Valeriy’s wife was working at
of 237 metres.
reactor four but her kindly boss
The careful process to shift it to
sent her home because it was
the site makes it the largest moveher birthday. Had she not been
able land structure ever built.
given the day off, she too would
Waterproof and temperaturehave perished.
Dad-of-two Valeriy says: “We ghost townAbandoned buildings in Pripyat &, inset, David Driscoll controlled, the arch is fitted with
an overhead crane to allow for the future
dismantling of the previous, crumbling,
Soviet-era shelter and the remains of
reactor four.
Igor Gramotkin, director-general of the
Chernobyl plant, says: “We were not
building this arch for ourselves. We were
building it for our children, our grand­
children and our great-grandchildren.
CONSEQUENCES
“This is our contribution to the future,
in line with our responsibility for those who
will come after us.”
Ostap Semerak, Ukraine’s Minister of
Ecology and Natural Resources, says of
the completion of the project: “The sliding
of the arch over reactor four at Chernobyl
is the beginning of the end of a 30-yearlong fight with the consequences of the
1986 accident.”
[email protected]
JAMMEDCongested roads
Britain worst
in Europe for
costly traffic
By MARK ELLIS Transport Correspondent
TRAFFIC jams cost British
firms more than any other
European country’s.
Transport information
company Inrix identified
more than 20,000 pinch
points in 21 British cities and
estimated time wasted in
traffic jams will cost motorists £62billion by 2025.
Inrix found the worst
three traffic blackspots in
terms of money wasted by
that time were London with
£42billion, Edinburgh at
£2.8billion and Glasgow with
£2.3billion.
And the The TomTom
Traffic Index found traffic
across the UK’s 25 most
congested places increases
the time a vehicle spends on
the road by 127 hours a year.
The index says that
equates to nearly £768mil­­
lion of traffic-jam time for
the UK’s 902,500 light
commercial vehicles.