Could Chernobyl Happen Again?

Ukrainian school teachers walk inside a nuclear bomb shelter inside the school in the city of Slavutich, Friday, April 21, 2006. Some 50,000 Pripyat residents were evacuated after the disaster, taking only a few belongings. They never returned, and workers and their families now live in the new town of Slavutich, 60 km (37,5 miles) from the plant. The city of Slavutich was built following the evacuation of Pripyat, which was just 1.5 km (about one mile) away from the Chernobyl plant. On April 26, the world will mark the 20th anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which sent radioactive cloud across Europe.(AP Photo/Oded Balilty) (Oded Balilty - AP)

Vladimir Chuprov, head of energy issues at the Russian branch of the Greenpeace environmental watchdog group, said work conditions are as important as the technology _ and more worrisome.

Reactors can be modernized, he said, but "the majority of nuclear accidents are connected not with technology, but with the human factor."

A study by Greenpeace and the Russian Academy of Sciences found many nuclear workers in Russia showing up for work drunk or on drugs, Chuprov said. At the Leningradsky plant in northern Russia, pay is so poor that some workers have to moonlight as taxi drivers, he said.

Yuri Sarayev, a nuclear expert at the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, said pay hasn't kept up with the country's booming economy, so "specialists with solid training and 10-15 years experience are leaving, and being replaced by less-prepared people."

Russian officials insist the RBMK reactors' future is bright and their service life will be extended from 30 to 45 years, with the last to close in 2036.

That confidence isn't universally shared. Lithuania, a former Soviet republic, has already mothballed one RBMK at its Ignalina plant and is to shut the other in 2009.

Can a Chernobyl-type disaster happen again?

Nikolai Tarakanov, a scientist and retired general who heads the Center for Social Support of Chernobyl's Invalids, replies: "No one can give you a guarantee that it will not happen tomorrow."