"The cost of the new secure shelter for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant... is 1.91 billion dollars (1.53 billion euros)," the ministry's press service quoted Zhvania as saing. "This is a preliminary estimate."

The Chernobyl Shelter Fund, run by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, hopes to raise more than one billion dollars for the project.

Some 28 foreign governments have already pledged to contribute more than 750 million dollars.

Chernobyl's number-four reactor, in what was then the Soviet Union and is now Ukraine, exploded on April 26, 1986, sending a radioactive cloud across Europe.

Following the disaster, a concrete sarcophagus was built over the stricken reactor but the new 20,000-tonne steel case will cover the whole plant.

EBRD officials hope that construction of the gigantic steel shelter would be completed by 2008/2009.

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