KIEV -- Proposed Western aid to close the disaster-struck Chernobyl power plant is less than one-tenth of the sum needed to complete the job, the head of Ukraine's nuclear power authority was quoted as saying Tuesday.


The Group of Seven leading industrialized nations offered Ukraine $200 million in immediate assistance to help shut the Chernobyl plant, site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986, and provide alternative energy sources.


"The financial aid which the G-7 plans to offer Ukraine will not cover even one-tenth of the necessary expenses,' Mikhail Umanets was quoted by Interfax Ukraine news agency.


He said Ukraine needed at least $1.39 billion to close Chernobyl and a further $1 billion to start up three nearly complete reactors at other stations.


Shortfalls in funds, he said, would mean "not carrying out a series of measures to take the station out of service and a threat that dangerous new points of radioactivity could emerge."


Ukrainian officials have variously named sums of $4 billion to $6 billion as necessary to close down the plant. The European Union has already pledged $120 million in immediate aid. It estimates the amount needed to close the plant at $1.5 billion.


Ukraine has come under growing pressure to close Chernobyl, where a 1986 explosion and fire in the fourth reactor, now encased in concrete, sent radioactivity all over Europe. International nuclear experts say continued operation of two reactors is unsafe.


The station's director says two working reactors can continue to operate into the next century and suggested starting a third, closed by a fire in 1991.


Parliament last year reversed a decision to close Chernobyl by the end of 1993, citing energy shortages.


The three new reactors -- at the Zaporozh'ye, Rivne and Khmelnitsky stations -- are of the pressurized water type considered safer than those at Chernobyl. Their construction was halted by a moratorium on new nuclear sites -- also lifted by parliament last year.