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The West has been highly critical of the Soviet nuclear legacy but has done little to alleviate the danger. Foreigners come mainly to gather data on the effects -- medical, industrial and political -- of accidents, and then disappear. "Sometimes we feel like rabbits in a laboratory," says Viktor Ribachuk, Ukraine's deputy environment minister. Ukraine officials argue that they cannot do without nuclear power for the next five or six years, and many contend they will need it permanently.
So no one expects to see the end of these nuclear time bombs anytime soon. There are plans afoot to extend the life of some old reactors and to lift a post-Chernobyl moratorium on completing others. Dangerous reactors will be running into the 21st century. The crumbling sarcophagus over Chernobyl's devastated No. 4 may still be there too -- if it has not collapsed by then.