The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said Thursday it would offer 135 million euros (215 million dollars) to help finance a new sarcophagus around the Chernobyl reactor, scene of the world's worst nuclear accident.

An EBRD spokesman told AFP the bank would contribute to a global fund to finance a safe enclosure at the facility, located in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine.

"There is a predictable shortcoming in the financing so 135 millions euros of the bank's profits will be transferred to this fund," he said.

The spokesman added that the sarcophagus, which should be ready by 2012, was estimated to cost 1.3 billion euros.

On April 26, 1986, reactor number 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, contaminating large parts of Europe but especially the then-Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

The current sarcophagus, resembling a huge concrete shield, stands over the ruins of the reactor in the heart of a 30-kilometer-radius (18.6-mile) exclusion zone and was built in the immediate aftermath of the accident to confine radioactive leaks.

Huge steel girders were later added to prop up the sarcophagus's foundations and outer walls.

The planned new construction, measuring 190 metres (623 feet) wide and 200 metres long, will resemble a half-cylinder and slide over the existing sarcophagus. The steel structure will weigh 18,000 tonnes -- more than twice the Eiffel tower.

The EBRD was created in 1991 to help former communist and ex-Soviet states in their transition to market economies.