a014  2333  29 Apr 86
PM-Nuclear Foes, Bjt,0713
Environmental Groups, Nuclear Industry Joust Over Chernobyl Disaster
Laserphoto WX6
By ROBERT FURLOW
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - It could happen here, nuclear foes declared.
    No it couldn't, an industry official countered.
    Groups on both sides of the nuclear debate in the United States had
clear opinions Tuesday about implications of the Soviet nuclear power
plant accident, though all were quick to concede they had few details
about the accident itself.
    A quickly pulled-together coalition of 18 environmental and
energy-safety groups called for tightening of federal power plant
controls rather than weakening as some have proposed.
    But doing away with nuclear power entirely is the best long-range
solution, coalition members said.
    ''As long as there are operating nuclear power plants in the United
States, we live with the risk of a similar accident here,'' a group
statement said.
    ''We presently have a de facto phase-out of nuclear power in the
United States,'' the coalition said, with members contending at a
news conference that such power is proving less efficient than other
energy sources. ''We should accelerate this phase-out through a
transition to least-cost energy planning and environmentally sound
energy technologies.''
    However, a very different view came from Carl Walske, president of
the Atomic Industrial Forum, an industry group.
    Asked at a news conference about chances of such an accident here,
he said, ''I don't think it's possible in the United States.''
    He cited basic differences between Soviet and U.S. nuclear plants, a
crucial one being the containment domes that American power reactors
have and the Soviet one lacked.
    ''My opinion is it couldn't happen here because all of our analysis
and all the data we find in operating these reactors indicate we're
on track with a system where that can't happen,'' Walske said.
    The anti-nuclear forces said earlier that they expected such
contentions and that they strongly disagreed.
    Members of their coalition said the 1979 accident at the Three Mile
Island plant in Pennsylvania showed that even modern U.S. plants with
containment domes aren't immune from potentially disastrous mishaps.
    The Three Mile Island accident was a partial meltdown, but very
little radiation was released. No one was killed, although 250,000
people were evacuated.
    ''The proposals for safety deregulation being advanced by the
nuclear industry and the agency responsible for regulating it suggest
that the lessons of Three Mile Island have never been learned,'' the
statement said. ''The accident at Chernobyl, apparently the worst
nuclear plant accident in history, affords us a second chance.''
    ''We urge that the warning be heeded and that the nation's civilian
nuclear policies be re-evaluated before an even worse accident
occurs. And we call upon all nations to begin planning for the
orderly phase-out of nuclear power worldwide.''
    The groups also called for an international investigation of the
Soviet accident. They took the Russian government to task for acting
''irresponsibly by not promptly warning its neighbors of the accident
so adequate precautions could have been taken'' as radioactive
materials floated their way.
    A statement released by Walske's industry group in Bethesda, Md.,
said that based on what was known by late Tuesday the group ''does
not expect this to have any significant impact on the U.S. nuclear
industry.''
    But the coalition of nuclear foes said in their statement: ''We call
on the Congress and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to halt efforts
to deregulate nuclear power and roll back safety standards. This is
the absolute wrong time to further weaken the nuclear plant licensing
process, to limit liability for nuclear accidents and to raise
permissible levels of radiation exposure.''
    The coalition said a handful of U.S. reactors don't have containment
domes, and they said that lack should be remedied.
    However, Walske noted that those plants are used for military
nuclear production, not for producing electric power. ''They're not
stressed and strained as much as commercial plants so the need for
containment is less,'' he said.
    Groups endorsing the coalition statement were the Union of Concerned
Scientists, Environmental Action, Health and Energy Institute, Safe
Energy Communications Council, Public Citizen, Nuclear Information &
Resource Service, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, National Audubon Society,
Friends of the Earth, Solar Lobby Environmental Policy Institute,
Christic Institute, Government Accountability Project, Blacks Against
Nukes, Environmental Task Force, Task Force Against Nuclear Pollution
and League of Conservation Voters.
    
AP-NY-04-30-86 0233EDT
***************

a015  2352  29 Apr 86
PM-US-Nuclear Powers, Bjt,1028
Chernobyl Accident Sends Shock Waves Toward U.S. Nuclear Industry
By MATT YANCEY
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - The Chernobyl catastrophe in the Soviet Union,
which may be the worst nuclear energy accident in history, is
producing a new dose of political fallout for a U.S. atomic program
already reeling from cost overruns, plant cancellations, safety
concerns and fears about radioactive wastes.
    Stocks of American utilities with heavy investments in atomic power
plants plummeted Tuesday as news about the severity of the accident
at the four-reactor Chernobyl plant 60 miles north of Kiev began
filtering to the United States.
    Nuclear industry officials braced themselves for a repeat of the
political and public furor that stalled the U.S. program for two full
years immediately after the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island
plant in Pennsylvania.
    However, citing the more stringent government regulation of nuclear
power here than in the Soviet Union, particularly since the TMI
accident, officials and energy experts said the long-term effect of
the Chernobyl accident on the U.S. atomic activities will be minimal.
    ''Those who want to discredit nuclear energy will use this to do
that,'' said Elihu Bergman, executive director of Americans for
Energy Independence, a coalition of industry and academic experts.
''The real issue is the effect that declining oil prices will have on
utility plans for new power plants.''
    Charles K. Ebinger, director of energy and strategic resources
studies at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic Studies,
called the disaster ''just the type of thing nuclear opponents have
been looking for.''
    Sen. James McClure, R-Idaho, said he feared ''many people would try
to draw parallels between this accident and the U.S. experience.''
But, he added, ''We have nothing in this country that is identical to
the Soviet plants.''
    An ad-hoc coalition of several anti-nuclear and environmental groups
- including the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club and
the National Audubon Society - cited the Soviet accident on Tuesday
in calling for shutting down the U.S. atomic program.
    ''As long as there are operating nuclear power plants in the United
States, we live with the risk of a similar accident here,'' the
coalition said in a statement.
    However, industry and government officials said the same kind of
accident is virtually impossible at a civilian power plant here,
primarily because all U.S. plants are enclosed in four-foot-thick
concrete and steel containments.
    According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, no nation other
than the Soviet Union operates civilian power plant reactors without
containments to prevent radiation from escaping into the atmosphere
if other safety systems fail.
    In addition, ever since a 1974 fire at the Browns Ferry nuclear
plant in Alabama, government regulators have required U.S. reactors
to have expensive automatic sprinkler systems for extinguishing fires
similar to the one at Chernobyl.
    U.S. reactors, as opposed to those in the Soviet Union, have a
''defense-in-depth'' concept, said James Vaughan, acting assistant
energy secretary for nuclear power programs.
    ''People who live around power plants in this country are not
subjected to the kind of risks that this type of accident
represents,'' said Paul Turner, vice president of the Atomic
Industrial Forum, an industry group.
    Ed Davis, president of the American Nuclear Energy Council, the
industry's lobbying arm, said the Soviet accident ''doesn't help us,
but I'm optimistic we'll weather the storm.''
    ''It's clear that the Soviets have taken some shortcuts and I think
the public will recognize the contrasts between the two systems,''
Davis said. ''Utilities were not planning to order any new reactors
for at least three to five years anyway.''
    With 101 civilian power reactors holding Nuclear Regulatory
Commission operating licenses, atomic power now provides about
one-sixth of the United States' electricity. That is expected to grow
to 19 percent by 1995 as most of the 27 plants still under
construction are completed, according to Energy Department
projections.
    However, no new plants have been ordered since 1978. And utilities
have canceled more than 100 reactors, largely because the growth in
electricity demand has not met the historic annual 7 percent
increases that had been anticipated into the future when the plants
were ordered in the 1970s.
    Plants completed in recent years have been plagued by expensive
safety ''backfits'' ordered in the wake of Three Mile Island,
double-digit interest rates and prolonged construction periods.
    William Lee, chairman of Duke Power Co., one of the nation's largest
nuclear utilities, told congressional committees last year that no
utility will order another reactor until some of the regulatory and
financial paths for them are cleared.
    Congress, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Reagan
administration have been working in recent years to remove some of
the barriers to a nuclear revival.
    Legislation extending no-fault nuclear accident insurance to future
plants but raising the liability ceiling from its current $620
million level to $2 billion to $8 billion was passed by a House
committee last week and a Senate committee earlier this year.
    The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has taken several steps and the
Reagan administration is sponsoring bills to pre-approve
''standardized'' designs for future plants.
    Industry and Wall Street officials said the Soviet accident may set
those efforts back temporarily.
    ''One thing members of Congress do not like to do is legislate in
the absence of facts so I think they're going to be inclined to put
things on hold for awhile,'' said Davis.
    While the stock prices of electric utilities with large investments
in nuclear plants dropped Tuesday, largely in reaction to the Soviet
accident, financial analysts said they expect them to rebound.
    Fulton S. Holmes, a utility analyst at New York's Thomson McKinnon
Securities, said each unfinished plant costs the sponsoring companies
$30 million a day, and investors fear delays over safety concerns
caused by the Soviet accident will aggravate the loss.
    ''I think this reaction is the nervous nellies, not the people who
know what's going on in the industry,'' said Joseph B. Muldoon, a
utility securities analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott Inc., a
Philadelphia investment firm.
    
AP-NY-04-30-86 0252EDT
***************

a017  0016  30 Apr 86
PM-Nuclear Containment, Bjt,0734
Concrete And Steel Contained TMI Hazards
By RICH KIRKPATRICK
Associated Press Writer
    HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A concrete and steel building kept lethal
levels of radiation from escaping during the Three Mile Island
accident in 1979, but Soviet officials dismissed the barrier a few
months later as unnecessary.
    Blocked by 3-foot-thick walls, radioactive iodine, cesium, strontium
and other hazardous elements that escaped from the ruptured and
partially melted uranium fuel at TMI went no farther than the
building's basement.
    The plant's owner, GPU Nuclear Corp., refuses to speculate on what
would have happened had there been no containment, as is the case at
the Chernobyl nuclear station near Kiev in the Soviet Union.
    U.S. intelligence sources said Tuesday that the Chernobyl reactor
core had melted down and that the graphite coolant was burning.
Radiation was detected more than 750 miles away over Scandinavia, and
the Soviet Union reported that two people were killed and four towns
evacuated.
    Containments are required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for
all 101 licensed U.S. civilian nuclear power plants, but five
government reactors that produce material for nuclear weapons don't
have the structures because they are not covered by the regulation.
    Four of the weapons-production reactors are at the U.S. Energy
Department's Savannah River plant at Aiken, S.C. The fifth, which
produces plutonium for weapons and steam for electricity, is in
Hanford, Wash.
    DOE officials maintained that the containments are not needed
because the reactors have confinement systems and filters to remove
radioactive materials from gases that might escape during an
accident. The plants also operate at much lower temperatures and
pressures than civilian plants, they said.
    Critics, however, were unconvinced.
    ''That's what the Soviets were saying about their design, too,''
said Thomas Cochran, a scientist for the Natural Resources Defense
Council.
    Pennsylvania Gov. Dick Thornburgh, who managed the state's response
to the TMI accident, said he tried to share his experience with
Soviet officials during a November 1979 visit there.
    So strong was their belief in the safety of their plants that they
waved off his comments about evacuations and other preparations,
Thornburgh said.
    ''Safety was a solved problem,'' Thornburgh quoted the Soviet
officials as saying. ''The threat from nuclear facilities was less
than that from coal and the entire concern about safety had been
overdramatized.''
    They saw little need for containment buildings and said reactors
were so safe that one could be built in Red Square in Moscow, he
said.
    Various studies after the March 1979 accident near here describe the
extent of contamination held in check by safeguards common to U.S.
commercial reactors.
    Nearly 11 million curies of radioactive iodine were retained in
water and about 36,000 curies in the atmosphere inside the sealed
building, according to the President's Commission on the TMI
Accident. But only about 14 curies escaped from water that had been
pumped to an unsealed auxiliary building in the accident's early
hours, officials have said.
    Curies are a measure of radioactive decay and 14 curies translate
roughly into a dose rate of 0.01 rem over a 50-year period to a
person. U.S. guidelines for employees at nuclear plants limit
exposure to any kind of radiation over a three-month period to 3 rem.
    Iodine was a concern during the accident because of its ability to
combine with other substances in human bodies and in the food chain.
The element tends to collect in the thyroid gland and in high
concentrations can cause tumors.
    Although considerable amounts of cesium and strontium were released
from the damaged fuel, no detectable amounts were ever found outside
containment, the president's report said.
    About 10 million curies of gases, mostly xenon, did reach the
atmosphere, but came out of water in the auxiliary building. The gas
was not considered especially hazardous because it doesn't combine
with anything and was dissipated in the atmosphere.
    Radiation levels in parts of the building continue to be hazardous.
In the basement, where more than 600,0000 gallons of contaminated
water collected during and after the accident, dose levels are still
35 rem per hour, plant spokesman Gordon Tomb said Tuesday. He said
that at some isolated spots along the walls, the dose rates are as
high as 1,000 rem per hour.
    The most deadly elements, plutonium and uranium, stayed within the
reactor system and no evidence was found that they had contaminated
the interior of the containment building, plant officials said last
year.
    
AP-NY-04-30-86 0316EDT
***************

a018  0025  30 Apr 86
PM-Scandinavia-Radiation, Bjt,0501
Scandinavians Demand Earlier Warning
By CECILIA LONNELL
Associated Press Writer
    STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Scandinavian leaders are demanding earlier
warning about nuclear accidents such as the power plant disaster in
Soviet Union, which they first learned about when they began to pick
up an increase in radiation already over their countries.
    Health officials said radiation in the Nordic countries, which did
not reach dangerous levels, was expected to continue declining today,
four days after the accident at Chernobyl, north of the Ukrainian
capital of Kiev, hundreds of miles to the southeast.
    Swedish weather experts said Tuesday that a change in winds had
ended further contamination of Northern Europe and that any
continuing contamination would be blown into Poland and
Czechoslovakia.
    The accident apparently happened Saturday, but Soviet officials did
not say anything about it until late Monday, hours after Swedish and
Finnish experts said they had detected increases in radiation and
pointed the finger at the Soviet Union.
    The Soviets still have provided little information about the
disaster beyond announcing that two people died and several villages
have been evacuated. But U.S. intelligence reports indicate that a
fire still is burning at the Chernobyl plant.
    Bengt Pettersson of Sweden's Nuclear Power Inspection Board told a
news conference Tuesday the concentration and composition of
radioactive fallout measured in Scandinavia indicated a core
meltdown, one of the most dangerous accidents possible in a nuclear
power plant.
    Danish Prime Minister Poul Schlueter called it ''totally
unacceptable and unsatisfactory that we can come to experience such a
great, tragic, nuclear power accident without the governments in the
affected countries, at least neighboring states, being informed about
what happened.''
    Schlueter said Denmark would push for international agreements
requiring the Soviet Union and other countries with nuclear power
plants to provide quick warning of accidents.
    Birgitta Dahl, the Swedish energy minister, said it was
''unacceptable that Sweden was not immediately informed.''
    The Danish, Swedish and Norwegian ambassadors in Moscow reportedly
went to the Soviet Foreign Ministry to demand an explanation.
    Jan-Olof Snihs, head of Sweden's Radiation Protection Institute,
said work would probably be speeded up on converting 25 scientific
radiation measuring stations around the country to provide early
warnings.
    The automatic stations began detecting increases in radioactivity on
Sunday, but the readings were not noticed until Monday, Snihs said.
    Despite assurances that the radiation levels were not dangerous,
hundreds of Danes flocked to drugstores to buy iodine tablets, which
can hinder the body's absorption of radiation.
    Sweden and West Germany have said the Soviets asked for advice on
how to control a fire at the nuclear power plant.
    Stockholm University Professor Frantisek Janouch, a nuclear
physicist who spent 10 years doing research in the Soviet Union, was
quoted by the Swedish national news agency TT as saying that
indicated the accident was very serious and that ''they are at a
loss, and do not know how to handle the situation.''
    
AP-NY-04-30-86 0325EDT
***************

a020  0055  30 Apr 86
PM-US-Soviet Accident Rdp, Bjt,1108
U.S. Government Tells World What Happened at Chernobyl
By GUY DARST
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - The American government, making use of its spy
satellites, is telling the world through leaks and intelligence
briefings what the Soviet Union won't tell its own people: One of
history's worst nuclear power disasters could be a million times
worse than Three Mile Island.
    The U.S. government is laying out a picture of a reactor building
blown apart, a gigantic raging fire and deadly radiation still thrown
into the air four days after the still unexplained mishap at
Chernobyl, 60 miles north of Kiev in the Soviet Union's breadbasket,
the Ukraine.
    Emerging from a closed-door briefing Tuesday by the Central
Intelligence Agency, Sen. Malcolm Wallop, R-Wyo., said, ''One would
have to assume that there is contamination flowing everywhere within
that 30-kilometer (19 miles) radius,'' a reported evacuation zone.
    Radiation is ''100,000 to 200,000 to perhaps a million times greater
than anything that was contemplated at the worst point in the
appraisal of Three Mile Island,'' Wallop said. He said that
assessment came from his briefers.
    ''There are extensive levels of radiation, some of which are high
enough to cause instantaneous death, some of which will cause death
in days or weeks,'' Wallop said.
    Despite the apparent severity of the accident, presidential
spokesman Larry Speakes said there appeared to be no threat to the
United States.
    ''It appears the radioactive air mass is currently moving to the
northwest,'' over Scandinavia and toward the polar cap, Speakes told
reporters in Bali accompanying President Reagan on his Far East trip.
    In Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency released a
statement saying the radioactivity was expected to disperse by
''normal atmospheric activity'' over the next few days. The agency
said that if any radiation were to eventually reach the United
States, it would probably have dispersed to a level too low to
threaten public safety.
    The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 near Harrisburg, Pa.,
theoretically could not have dosed anyone outside the plant more than
100 millirems - four chest X-rays - and experts said the most exposed
individual more likely received 10 millirems at most.
    In a rare gesture, the United States offered help to the Soviet
Union, but there was no word that the offer was accepted by Moscow.
    The State Department informed the Soviets this country would be
willing to send doctors to treat radiation victims and equipment and
personnel to monitor the severity of the radiation release, its spead
and its potential for longterm damage.
    But criticism was heard too. A resolution introduced in the Senate
urged that the International Atomic Energy Agency investigate the
accident, which apparently occurred last Saturday. A House
resolution, with 100 co-sponsors, condemned the Soviets for failing
to notify the world as soon as it knew the threat to its neighbors.
    No word came from U.S. sources on the death toll at Chernobyl.
    ''It could be two, 12 or two dozen,'' said Sen. Patrick Leahy,
D-Vt., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. ''I've
seen nothing that indicates that huge numbers of people are dead.''
    The Soviets officially announced a toll of two, but that was termed
''frankly preposterous'' by Kenneth Adelman, head of the Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency.
    Radiation is escaping from the plant because nearly 2,000 tons of
graphite used to control the fission reaction is on fire. The fire is
throwing into the air the radioactive fission products that have
accumulated in the reactor fuel.
    It could burn for days, experts say.
    ''As long as the fire continues, there will be a continued release
of radiation,'' Allan Bromley, a physics professor at Yale
University, told a Washington news conference.
    Speakes said such an accident could not happen in the United States
because U.S. power reactors - unlike Chernobyl - have containment
structures designed to keep any releases of radioactivity from
escaping, plus additional safeguards.
    Small amounts of radioactive gas were released during the Three Mile
Island accident.
    A ranking administration official with access to intelligence said
that on Tuesday morning ''smoke was still billowing from the site.
... The roof had been blown off and large portions of the walls (of
the reactor building) had caved in.''
    The adjacent reactor in the four-unit complex seemed to be in some
danger from the fire, the administration official said. The three
remaining reactors had been shut down.
    It was clear that such precise detail came from the KH-11 spy
satellite, but nobody in a position to know that would confirm it.
    The administration official said intelligence analysts ''don't
believe there was a nuclear explosion per se'' at Chernobyl. ''But
there was clearly a meltdown'' in a process triggered by a
conventional explosion of some kind.
    ''There was no fuel meltdown,'' Bromley said. Though fuel rods may
have melted, the uranium oxide fuel could not have gotten hot enough
- 5,000 degrees Celsius, he said.
    The reactor has 1,661 vertical rods containing uranium surrounded by
water that is turned into steam by the heat of fission.
    The EPA statement said the accident involved the fourth and newest
Chernobyl reactor.
    Most of the core of the reactor, which was of a type called RBMK by
the Soviets, was destroyed by the fire, the statement said.
    The core contains approximately 200 tons of uranium interspersed
within 1,700 tons of graphite, according to EPA.
    ''The fire will continue to spread radiation from the core as along
as it burns, although the Soviets have indicated that the rate of
release is decreasing,'' said the EPA.
    Most speculation by experts in the U.S. nuclear industry followed
this line of thinking: interruption of coolant flow to the reactor,
heat buildup, collapse of fuel tubes, possible explosion of hydrogen
bubble formed by the hot fuel tubes, ignition of graphite, perhaps
unnoticed at first. There are many unanswered questions such as what
happened to backup systems.
    But Bromley introduced an alternative: Something going wrong while
deliberately heating the graphite to remove energy that builds up by
the constant bombardment with neutrons.
    This energy must be released periodically by heating the graphite.
If the operation is not carefully controlled, too much heat can
result in a fire.
    But Vic Dean of General Atomic Technologies in San Diego, the
company that built the only commercial graphite reactor in the United
States, the gas-cooled reactor at Fort St. Vrain, Colo., said he
didn't think such a process started the accident.
    
AP-NY-04-30-86 0355EDT
***************

a023  0140  30 Apr 86
PM-Nuclear Disaster, Bjt,1242
Thousands Evacuated As Nuclear Disaster Threatens Other Reactors
By ROXINNE ERVASTI
Associated Press Writer
    MOSCOW (AP) - Soviet officials ordered the evacuation of four towns
and shut down the remaining reactors at Chernobyl, where an inferno
was believed to still be raging after a nuclear disaster spawned a
radiation cloud that contaminated water and milk 1,000 miles away.
    The government, in a sketchy report Tuesday on the weekend disaster
60 miles north of Kiev in the Ukraine, reported two deaths.
    Soviet newspapers today provided their first information on the
disaster, but limited themselves to printing only a text of a
government statement that was released Tuesday. Soviet officials
reached by telephone in Kiev today refused to comment.
    U.S. intelligence sources in Washington said the Chernobyl reactor
complex experienced a meltdown Saturday, still was billowing smoke
Tuesday and threatened another reactor at the same site.
    U.S. officials said there appeared to be no way to put the fire out
immediately. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., vice chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, said after a CIA briefing Tuesday that
radiation from the damaged plant ''continues to escape at an alarming
rate.''
    Sweden and West Germany said Tuesday that the Soviets had asked for
help in controling the fire.
    Swedish national radio, quoting the Radiation Protection Institute,
said today that warnings might be issued against drinking rain water
in areas where recent showers had concentrated radioactive
contamination from Chernobyl, more than 1,000 miles away.
    The radio said rainfall had raised contamination levels in Uppsala
north of Stockholm and in Gavle in central Sweden. It said
radioactive contamination had also been detected in milk from cows on
the island of Gotland, off the eastern Swedish coast, but that it was
still considered safe to drink.
    Fallout might also be detectable in the United States by the
weekend, but the amounts would be too small to be dangerous, U.S.
specialists said. Because of shifting wind patterns, there were
forecasts that the radiation could show up on both coasts.
    The radioactive cloud looped back toward Central Europe and the
Soviet Union from Scandinavia on Tuesday, and weathermen around the
world tried to track the fallout.
    Reports drew a picture of a hurried exodus from the Chernobyl area,
but seeming unconcern in Kiev. Michael Moss, a University of
Washington student in Kiev, said in a telephone interview today that
life in Kiev was normal. ''Nobody in the city is terribly worried
about it,'' he said.
    The State Department said the embassy in Moscow was in contact with
Americans in the Kiev area, and that there was no indication any had
been injured.
    Swedish radio, citing unidentified sources in the Soviet Union, said
truck convoys were streaming north from the area near the Dnepr River
in the Soviet industrial heartland.
    A West German technician working at the Chernobyl facility said an
18-mile security zone had been established around the damaged plant,
Danish state radio reported.
    In its first report on casualties, the Soviet news agency Tass said
two people had been killed, and a Soviet official visiting Washington
said less than a hundred had been injured.
    A Soviet government statement, distributed by the official Tass news
agency, said in part:
    ''The radiation situation at the electric power station and the
adjacent territory has now been stabilized and the necessary medical
aid is being given to those affected. The inhabitants of the nuclear
power station's settlement and three nearby populated localities have
been evacuated.''
    It did not say how or where the two people died, or how many others
had been exposed to radiation.
    Mikhail Timofeev, Soviet deputy minister for civil aviation, told
reporters in Washington Tuesday that ''tens of people'' had been
injured.
    The power station's ''settlement,'' referred to by Tass, is Pripyat,
a town with a population of about 25,000. The three other evacuated
towns were not identified. Danish radio quoted Moscow diplomats as
saying tens of thousands had been evacuated.
    The Soviet statement said the accident occurred in the fourth of
Chernobyl's four power generating units - apparently meaning the
newest, completed in 1983 - and that the reactor was damaged,
destroying its housing and producing ''a certain leak of radioactive
substances.''
    Western experts said serious health hazards - many of them not
showing up until years from now - are unlikely beyond a 30-mile range
of the site.
    Some scientists abroad noted that Kiev's drinking water, drawn from
the Dnepr River, could become contaminated. The Ukraine is also a
major grain-growing region for the Soviets.
    U.S. arms control administrator Kenneth Adelman in Washington said
the Soviet report of two deaths ''frankly preposterous,'' and called
the incident ''the most catastrophic nuclear disaster in history.''
    Emerging from a CIA briefing, Sen. Malcolm Wallop, R-Wyo., told
reporters there were extensive levels of radiation, ''some of which
are high enough to cause instantaneous death, some of which will
cause death in days or weeks.''
    ''There is a hot fire burning and no ready way of putting it out,''
he said.
    In Bali, White House spokesman Larry Speakes, traveling with
President Reagan, called on the Soviet Union to provide more
information about the incident, and repeated an offer of technical
help.
    ''Fighting the fire will be very difficult due to the extremely high
levels of radiation near the reactor,'' Speakes said. ''No one in the
world has experience in dealing with a situation like this.''
    The White House established a special task force to coordinate the
government's response to the accident.
    Poland banned the sale of milk from cows that feed on fresh grass
and said children would be treated with potassium iodine solution for
possible radioactive contamination, but state television said the
general public was not endangered because of the ''temporary
character'' of the fallout.
    European political leaders angrily demanded that Moscow explain why
it had not quickly alerted the rest of the world to the disaster,
with some calling on the Soviets to shut down all their nuclear
plants until international inspections could be carried out their
estimated 45 operating reactors.
    Adelman said reactor temperatures had reached 7,000 degrees
Fahrenheit, more than enough to have caused a calamitous meltdown of
reactor fuel. But other scientists disagreed.
    Manfred Petroll, a West German nuclear industry spokesman, told The
Associated Press that diplomats at the Soviet Embassy in Bonn had
asked for advice in combating a graphite fire in a nuclear reactor.
He said other Soviet diplomats were trying to arrange assistance from
West German anti-radiation experts and the possible delivery of
medicine.
    In a meltdown, the heat of the nuclear fuel core builds up faster
than it can be released, and radioactive material is boiled off into
the atmosphere. It is a particularly dangerous accident when the
reactor, as apparently is the case at Chernobyl, is not housed in a
concrete-and-steel containment.
    Specialists interviewed in the United States on Tuesday suggested
that the fire might have started when air came in contact with
superheated graphite, th...
(End missing.)
***************

a222  1309  30 Apr 86
AM-West Europe, Bjt,0627
West European Countries Attack Soviet Handling of Accident
By STEPHEN H. MILLER
Associated Press Writer
    COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - North and West European countries,
confronted with drifting radioactivity,on Wednesday sharply attacked
Soviet secrecy about the nuclear reactor accident in the Ukraine.
    ''Soviet society is far too primitive to use such a sophisticated
technique as nuclear power,'' wrote the daily Svenska Dagbladet
newspaper in Stockholm, Sweden.
    Radiation in Sweden from the accident at the Chernobyl reactor was
disclosed hours before the Soviet Union admitted anything had gone
wrong.
    Svenska Dagbladet said Soviet authorities ''showed a nonchalance
bordering on the unbelievable'' by failing to warn other countries.
    ''What kind of people govern the Soiet Union?'' asked the
conservative newspaper Die Welt in West Germany. ''What happened in
the Ukraine is not a tragedy. It is a crime.''
    West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, attending a
meeting of ministers of seven West European nations in Venice, Italy,
demanded that all similar Soviet power plants be closed until the
cause of the Chernobyl accident was known.
    ''There is no question of national sovereignty in this field,'' said
Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti of Italy, who was at the same
meeting. ''There are no frontiers to stop atomic radiation.''
    Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe of Britain said the meeting's
participants ''expressed deep concern at the Soviets' failure of
giving early warning or intimation - a serious lapse in European
good-neighborliness.''
    As winds shifted Wednesday, the radioactivity was reported to have
stopped drifting into Scandinavia and to have begun appearing in
Austria and Switzerland.
    Switzerland's second-ranking Foreign Ministry official, Edouard
Brunner, said it was astounding that the Soviets confirmed the
accident only after Scandinavian countries asked for information.
    ''The new reactor catastrophe demonstrates not only the weaknesses
and deficiencies of the Soviet system, but also especially the
incredible danger that arises from the isolation of a nation,
especially a superpower,'' said the Zurich newspaper Tages Anzeiger.
    In Austria, where some grocers were being told not to display
vegetables and fruit outside, the conservative daily Die Presse
complained that for ''two unbelievable days the Soviet Union left the
world in the dark about the mishap near Kiev.''
    Even in Finland, which has a delicate political relationship with
the neighboring Soviet Union, newspapers criticized Moscow's handling
of the accident.
    Finland's biggest newspaper, the Helsingin Sanomat, said it was
''likely the Soviet Union would have tried to keep quiet about the
accident altogether if the radiation had not reached Scandinavia.''
    The Finnish government was restrained in its response to the
incident, but said it was sending a plane to evacuate about 100 Finns
from Kiev.
    Soviet ambassadors assured the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish
governments Wednesday that the situation had stabilized, but
Scandinavian officials said they were told little not already
contained in sparse Soviet news reports.
    The office of Norwegian Prime Minister Kaare Willoch said it had
given Soviet Ambassador Dimitry S. Polyansky a list of questions the
government wanted answered.
    There also were critical reactions in West European countries not
affected by the radioactivity.
    In Italy, lawmakers used a special session of the legislature to
condemn Soviet handling of the incident. A Communist senator, Andrea
Margheri, said Moscow's silence on the accident was ''a black hole in
Soviet information of utmost gravity.''
    In London, the environmental group Greenpeace predicted that the
accident would cause 10,000 cases of cancer in the Soviet Union over
the next 20 years and up to 4,000 in Sweden over the next 30 years.
    In Paris, the leftist newspaper Liberation said, ''Communists make
electricity like they make war - without worrying too much about
victims and by eliminating observers.''
    
AP-NY-04-30-86 1609EDT
***************

a227  1356  30 Apr 86
AM-Soviet Reaction,0589
Muscovites React With Public Caution, Private Concern
By ALISON SMALE
Associated Press Writer
    MOSCOW (AP) - The Soviet Union issued a few more details about the
Chernobyl nuclear accident on Wednesday, but several Soviets
expressed concern that they did not know much about the disaster.
    Some residents of Moscow mentioned a lack of news in Soviet media
and pressed Westerners for information.
    'Oh, we thought you were going to tell us all about it,'' sighed one
disappointed woman to a Western reporter. She said she thought
foreigners would have some official knowledge of the extent of
injuries and damage at the accident site, in the area of the Ukraine
near Kiev.
    On Wednesday night the Soviet government for the first time
announced that 197 people had been hospitalized because of the
accident and said there was no radiation danger in the Kiev area.
    Wednesday night's television commentary, which pledged to keep
people informed about the accident, plus government assurances that
there was no danger seemed designed to quiet the concerns of the
people.
    On Monday night the Soviet government issued a four-sentence
statement acknowledging there had been an accident. There was another
statement Tuesday night that said two people died and that the
immediate area had been evacuated. On Wednesday night, television
showed the first picture of the damaged reactor. It showed a tall
tower with a building behind it. On the right side, the walls and
roof of the structure had caved in, twisted wreckage could be seen
and it appeared charred.
    Both a commentary accompanying the photograph and a 300-word Soviet
government statement distributed by the official news agency Tass
were critical of what it called ''rumors'' in the West that thousands
had been killed.
    Many Moscow residents approached on the street reacted with a
traditional reluctance to discuss sensitive matters with strangers.
Some said they had not even heard about the accident.
    ''Of course, as any Soviet citizen, I am concerned,'' said a young
woman at a bus stop near the Ukraine hotel in central Moscow.
    ''But I'm quite sure everything will be taken care of, and the
Soviet government will do all that is necessary,'' she said.
    Like others interviewed, she declined to give her name.
    Information has been released gradually, recalling the way
information was given after the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Air
Lines jet with 269 people on board in September 1983. It was six days
before the Soviets acknowledged that Soviet jets shot down the
passenger plane.
    The Soviet Union has kept reports to a minimum, in keeping with a
policy of playing down bad news about the Soviet Union.
    By contrast, catastrophes in the West often are covered quickly and
fully by the Soviet press. When the U.S. space shuttle Challenger
exploded in January, Soviet television ran film of the explosion just
two hours later.
    It took several days for Soviet television to run a picture of the
damaged Chernobyl plant and the Tass news agency, which could have
offered the picture for distribution worldwide, said it did not have
the picture.
    Tass earlier offered a year-old archive photograph of Chernobyl,
then suggested Wednesday that Western agencies might like three
pictures of happy Kiev citizens preparing for May Day celebrations.
    The Communist Party daily Pravda on Wednesday carried no pictures of
Chernobyl, but did run seven pictures on three different pages of
smiling people enjoying spring weather in the Ukraine.
    
AP-NY-04-30-86 1655EDT
***************

a245  1650  30 Apr 86
AM-TMI-Disclosure,0800
Facts About TMI Accident Leaked Out Slowly
With AM-Nuclear Disaster Bjt
By BOB DVORCHAK
Associated Press Writer
    HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A nuclear reactor has gone haywire. Officials
who built it minimize the dangers and issue misleading statements on
radioactive releases. Experts complain they are being kept in the
dark.
    If this sounds like a description of the current Soviet nuclear
disaster, it also applies to what happened seven years ago at Three
Mile Island, where the government is open, the press is free and
industry is accountable.
    ''It's routine to cover up the dangers of these accidents. It's not
only endemic to the Soviet Union. It happened here,'' Eric Epstein of
the anti-nuclear Three Mile Island Alert, said Wednesday.
    ''The utility intentionally misinformed state and federal officials
to the severity of the accident. There should be no back-patting
because we live in an open society. They've misled us about what went
on here,'' Epstein said.
    Metropolitan Edison Co., the operator of Three Mile Island,
dispersed a steady stream of optimism about the safety of its plant
during the first days of the worst accident in U.S. commercial
nuclear power history on March 28, 1979.
    The company has denied misleading the public, but officials were
critical of the utility's comments.
    ''Met Ed's handling of information during the first three days of
the accident resulted in the loss of its credibility as an
information source with state and local officials, as well as with
the news media,'' according to a presidential commission that studied
the accident.
    ''Part of the problem was that the utility was slow to confirm
'pessimistic' news about the accident,'' the report said.
    The credibility problem surfaced soon after radioactive releases
were measured outside the plant, located on an island in the
Susquehanna River near Harrisburg.
    A series of mechanical breakdowns and human errors robbed a uranium
core of its cooling water, causing some of the fuel to melt and
releasing radioactivity to the environment. A federal study later
said the reactor came within 30 to 60 minutes of a meltdown.
    At an 11 a.m. briefing on that first day, Lt. Gov. William Scranton
held a briefing and told reporters, ''Everything is under control.''
But at about the same time, the utility was venting radioactive steam
from the crippled plant.
    Later in the day, a testy Scranton held another briefing to tell
reporters, ''Metropolitan Edison has given you and us conflicting
information.''
    John Herbein, vice president for generation for the utility, told
reporters who had gathered at TMI that morning that ''the plant is in
a safe condition.''
    Asked later by Scranton why he didn't tell reporters about the
radioactive releases, Herbein replied: ''It didn't come up.''
    Meanwhile, about 18 to 20 engineers from Babcock & Wilcox Corp.,
which built Three Mile Island, met at 9 a.m. in Lynchburg, Va., to
discuss the accident. ''B&W's most prevalent feeling was we're just
in the dark,'' one of those present told federal regulators later.
    The utility's first statement at 10 a.m., by information director
Blaine Fabian in Reading, said, ''There has been no recordings of any
significant levels of radiation, and none are expected outside the
plant.''
    Two hours later, spokesman David Klusick said, ''There is absolutely
no danger of a meltdown.''
    Robert Reid, mayor of Middletown, a community three miles from the
plant, said he was told at 8:45 a.m. by a Met Ed official that the
incident was not serious and no radiation escaped.
    ''Twenty seconds later, I walked out to my car and the announcer
told me on the radio there were radioactive particles released. Now,
how are we to believe anything?'' Reid said.
    On Thursday, company spokesman Don Curry told a reporter, ''We
concede it's not just a little thing.''
    Later that day, the company began discharging slightly radioactive
water into the river because its holding tanks were filled to the
brim. None of the communities downstream or the media were told of
the releases.
    On Friday, a new release of radioactivity triggered an evacuation of
pregnant women and small children from a five-mile radius. When asked
about the events, Herbein said, ''I don't know why we have to tell
you each and every thing we do.''
    That was the company's last news conference. Further statements were
coordinated through the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as
technicians scrambled to bring the accident under control.
    Presidential aide Gene Eidenberg said, ''The magnitude was not
known. There was more that was unkown than known. There was a great
sense of need to have more information.''
    ---
    Editors: Bob Dvorchak was AP correspondent in Harrisburg at the time
of the TMI accident.
    
AP-NY-04-30-86 1949EDT
***************

a010  2243  30 Apr 86
PM-Chernobyl Profile, Bjt,0657
Bustling River Town Is Site Of Soviet Nuclear Accident
By ARNOLD ZEITLIN
Associated Press Writer
    CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - Chernobyl was an old, bustling river town
known for furs and proud of its single wide-screen movie house before
joining Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Three Mile Island as a synonym for
nuclear calamity.
    Lithuanian lords, Polish nobles, Cossacks, White and Red Russians
and Nazis fought over the Ukrainian city since it was first mentioned
in historical documents in 1193.
    The nuclear power plant near Chernobyl, where a still-unknown
disaster has spewed radiation over much of Europe, was begun in 1972,
a high mark in the development of the city.
    Articles and other material giving a picture of the Prypiat River
city and assembled Wednesday by Harvard University's Ukrainian
Research and Russian Research institutes provide little detail about
the city after 1972.
    An article in the Ukrainian Encyclopedia written by emigre scholars
and published in the West report that the Chernobyl plant, 60 miles
north of Kiev, was the region's first. It was completed in 1977 and
scheduled in 1985 to reach a capacity of 4 million kilowatts.
    Not only did the city have 44 physicians, a hospital, three middle
schools with 2,300 students and two libraries, according to the 1971
Soviet edition of the Ukrainian-language ''Towns and Villages of the
Ukraine,'' it also boasted a cinema with a wide screen.
    The edition was the latest in the Harvard University library, said
Lubomyr Hajda, a Ukrainian born in Poland and now teaching at
Harvard.
    The article described Chernobyl as a town of about 10,000 people
with a broad central square and well-laid-out streets built since the
Nazis destroyed the port, sinking 22 ships and vessels, tortured 500
people and shipped others to German labor camps. It had a stadium, a
park and a local newspaper called ''The Banner of Victory.''
    Chernobyl, near the confluence of the Prypiat and the Dnepr rivers,
has been a district capital for centuries. Where serfs once worked up
to five days for their feudal lords before they were allowed to work
their own crops, state and communal farms provide cattle for milk and
meat, flax for linen and potatoes and other vegetables.
    Despite claims in Soviet publications that capitalists brought
insufferable conditions to Chernobyl, its population grew after the
1861 liberation of the serfs. It surpassed 16,000 in the late 19th
century, but as Josef Stalin was gaining victory over Leon Trotsky in
1926, the population was down to 9,300.
    The city thrived in the late 19th century, with guilds for tailors,
smiths and furriers, trade fairs seven times a year, factories making
candles, others employing women skilled in embroidery, and repair
facilities for river boats.
    In 1910, the city had two physicians and three midwives.
    The Soviet publications were silent on what documents first
mentioned Chernobyl. By the end of the 14th century, it had been
conquered by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then Europe's largest
power. By 1569, Polish nobles ruled, provoking a 1648-54 Cossack
rebellion throughout the Ukraine.
    But Chernobyl actually didn't become part of Russia until the
partition of Poland in 1793. The town was mobilized and armed in the
1812 Napoleonic War, but Napoleon never showed up.
    Soviet chronicles describe worker uprisings in Chernobyl during the
1905 revolution. After Russia pulled out of World War I, German
troops occupied Chernobyl in March 1918.
    By December 1918, an independent Ukrainian government held sway.
Soviet troops took the city in February 1919. White Russians, backed
by Russia's World War I allies, held the town in September, but lost
it to the Red Army two months later.
    Poles took the town in April 1920, losing it to the Red Army in
June.
    Little is written in Soviet chronicles of Stalin's policies driving
landowners off their land in the Ukraine and the 1932-33 famine that
killed millions.
    ''Socialist transformations occurred in the lives of the peasants,''
the 1971 account of the period obliquely reported.
    
AP-NY-05-01-86 0142EDT
***************

a009  2231  30 Apr 86
PM-Soviet-Nuclear-Impact Bjt,0764
The Diplomatic Fallout from Chernobyl May Haunt Moscow for Years
Eds: Stands for item slugged Soviet Accident-Impact on the News
Digest
By BRYAN BRUMLEY
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - The Kremlin's failure to answer questions about
the Cherbonyl reactor calamity is not in line with Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev's reputed candor campaign and could thrust Soviet
ties with the outside world into a nuclear winter of many years,
experts predict.
    ''The longer they stonewall, the longer the rest of the world is
going to be hostile,'' said Marshall Goldman, a professor at Harvard
University's Russian Research Institute.
    ''We forget things after a while. But I don't think we will forget
this so easily,'' said Goldman, predicting that the Chernobyl
disaster would damage Soviet ties with the outside world far more
than the downing of a Korean Air Lines jet in 1983 or the invasion of
Afghanistan in 1979.
    ''If the Soviet Union does not open up and make a lot of information
available, it could lead Western nations to be much more skeptical
about cooperation in other areas,'' said Loren Graham, a specialist
on Soviet science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
    ''It's not going to go away,'' said Goldman. ''They cannot take the
traditional Soviet response: 'hunker down, it will go away.' It is
something more than the KAL incident. There is no way they can blame
this on anybody else.''
    In Bali, Indonesia, President Reagan told reporters Gorbachev had
contacted U.S. officials about the nuclear disaster but that there
was no response on an American offer of humanitarian and technical
aid.
    ''We're trying to keep track of what's going on over there but we're
limited in our knowledge,'' the president said.
    Reagan did not say when or how Gorbachev had been in touch with U.S.
officials.
    The meltdown was believed to be most severe crisis faced by
Gorbachev since he rose to power in March 1985, and he did not appear
to be living up to his calls for ''glastnost,'' or candor, said
experts in and out of government.
    The Soviet leader had not answered increasingly sharp demands for
information by Western European nations, which are normally
circumspect in their statements regarding the giant to their east.
    State Department officials said it was too soon to predict whether
the accident would alter Soviet dealings with the United States,
ranging from plans for a summit to arms control talks in Geneva or
U.S. plans to open a consulate in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.
    One State Department official said it appeared ''the Soviets are
involved in a cover-up. ... It may be like Afghanistan. We know there
are atrocities going on but there is nothing we can do.''
    ''We were hoping that they would learn the lesson that cooperation
works better than secrecy. And that might lead them to agreements on
arms control or other issues,'' said the State Department official,
who spoke on condition of anonymity.
    Nations throughout Western Europe angrily urged Moscow to provide
more information about radiation from the crippled reactor, which was
first detected by Swedish workers Monday, before the Soviet Union
acknowledged the accident had occurred.
    ''Soviet society is far too primitive to use such a sophisticated
technique as nuclear power,'' thundered the newspaper Svenska
Dagbladet, of neutral Sweden.
    The West German government called for the Soviet Union to shut down
other nuclear plants.
    ''What kind of people govern the Soviet Union?'' demanded Die Welt,
a conservative West German newspaper.
    Poul Schueter, the prime minister of Denmark, said ''it shouldn't be
that way in a modern society. If anything like this would ever happen
again, the Danish and other governments would be notified.''
    Graham, of MIT, held out the hope that the Chernobyl accident would
prompt Moscow to reach a pact to allow international teams to inspect
reactors in Eastern and Western Europe.
    ''Gorbachev has agreed to on-site inspections for arms control,''
said Graham. ''Surely, he could allow foreigners in their reactor
plants'' for safety inspections.
    While the Soviet media carried only sketchy reports on the disaster,
Polish authorities warned of radioactive contamination along the
border, prompting some U.S. experts to predict strained relations
between Moscow and its satellite neighbors over the accident.
    The failure of Soviet media to carry similar precautions about
radiation warnings for the population could raise the casualty count
from the accident and make it hard for Kremlin leaders to accuse
other nations of human rights abuse, experts said.
    
AP-NY-05-01-86 0130EDT
***************

a006  2204  30 Apr 86
PM-US-Soviet Accident Rdp, Bjt,1035
Kremlin Stonewalling, U.S. Officials Complain
Laserphoto WX5
By GUY DARST
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - A prominent senator, citing Kremlin efforts to
''conceal the magnitude'' of the nuclear disaster in Cherbonyl, is
calling on the State Department to provide aircraft for American
tourists who ''wish to be evacuated'' from the Soviet Union.
    U.S. officials say stonewalling from Moscow is making it difficult
to advise American travelers about radiation hazards in the Soviet
Union.
    Noting that other countries such as France and Finland had taken
steps to evacuate citizens from Kiev, 60 miles from the Chernobyl
reactors, one U.S. official said the United States would take every
step to protect its citizens.
    ''We want some indication of the radiation intensity,'' the official
said. ''They are not being helpful.''
    The official, who would discuss the new strain in relations only on
grounds he not be identified, said this country had been deliberately
soft-pedaling its criticism of Soviet responsiveness, partly out of
concern the Kremlin might be even less inclined to cooperate in the
face of harsh statements from Washington.
    He said there is a perception in the U.S. government that the
magnitude of the tragedy has ''overwhelmed'' the Kremlin and
''paralyzed the decision-making process, as it could ours.''
    In Bali, Indonesia, President Reagan told reporters that Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev had contacted U.S. officials about the
Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster but that there was no response to an
American offer of humanitarian and technical aid.
    ''We're trying to keep track of what's going on over there but we're
limited in our knowledge,'' the president said.
    Word of contact with Gorbachev came as U.S. officials in Washington
were complaining that the Soviet Union was not providing enough
detail on the power plant accident to allow experts to gauge the
health hazard.
    ''Among the many concerns arising from the disaster in Cherbonyl is
the safety of U.S. travelers in the Soviet Union, particularily
children and pregnant women,'' Sen. Daniel Moynihan said in a letter
Wednesday to the Undersecretary of State John C. Whitehead.
    Moynihan said his staff had ''already been in contact with Finnair,
which has volunteered to help speed the departure'' of American
tourists.
    ''In view of the continuing Soviet effort to conceal the magnitude
of this disaster, I ask that the State Department keep U.S. travelers
fully informed of the health risks confronting them, and that
aircraft be provided for those who wish to be evacuated.''
    Though the nation's intelligence agencies have been able to glean
much information from satellite photos, analysts cannot detect or
measure radiation on the ground.
    That helped explain how a dispute arose among U.S. intelligence
analysts over whether a second of the four Chernobyl reactors had
suffered a meltdown.
    One official said a second meltdown was under way, but another
emerged from an intelligence briefing to say, on the basis of what he
had been told, that such a hypothesis was ''dead wrong.''
    No one, though, disputed this description of the scene as of
Wednesday by an official who spoke under ground rules that prevent
his identification:
    ''The condition of that (reactor) building is that the top was blown
off. There is considerable blast damage and rubble around it. Vapors
and smoke are escaping from a large hole in the roof of the reactor
building. In addition, there is a large generator hall next to the
reactor building. Parts of that roof are also missing. There is
significant damage there.''
    All schools of analysts insisted they had no way to measure
casualties, whether a handful or in the thousands.
    Harold Denton of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told reporters a
still-unexplained loss of coolant flow caused reactor fuel tubes to
overheat and graphite fuel cladding to react with remaining water.
    ''As a result of the metal-water reactions, the pressure tube
cladding began to fail and steam began to attack the graphite.
Graphite will react with water to produce hydrogen and carbon
monoxide and other combustible products. There is every indication
that as a result of this interaction between the cladding and the
steam and air, a violent explosion occurred inside the reactor
core.''
    There were these other developments:
    -Grain and meat prices continued soaring on U.S. commodities
exchanges, and shares of utilities and food processing companies were
prominent among losers on the stock markets.
    -Democrats on the House Interior Committee used the example of the
Soviet accident to win a two-week delay in consideration of a
Republican move to cut the nuclear industry's maximum reactor
accident liability from $8.2 billion to $2 billion. The committee had
voted 21-20 last week to raise the limit from the present $650
million to $8.2 billion.
    -Some travel agents reported cancellations of trips to the Soviet
Union, but the New York office of the Soviet travel agency,
Intourist, said it was too early to tell if a significant drop in
business had occurred.
    -The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America criticized Soviet
safety precautions. Telephone lines to the Soviet Union by U.S.
citizens worried about relatives in the Ukraine and elsewhere were
reported jammed.
    Lee Thomas, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency,
went public with the issue of the Soviet's lack of candor from the
very start of what has become the world's gravest nuclear power plant
accident.
    ''We're very concerned about the notification issue,'' Thomas said.
''And I think that as we get better information about exactly when
the event occurred, when notification could have been made, I think
we'll be able to draw more conclusions about that concern.''
    European countries have been making this point in strong terms from
the beginning.
    The official who discussed the matter anonymously noted that
higher-than-normal radiation levels have been detected in Norway, 900
miles from the accident site. Moscow is only half as far away but the
Soviets have said nothing about the radiation level there, he said.
    Some 278 Americans are posted in the Soviet Union - 190 officials in
Moscow, 24 in the consular office in Leningrad, 25 U.S. businessmen
in Moscow and 39 journalists.
    
AP-NY-05-01-86 0104EDT
 - - - - - -

a008  2217  30 Apr 86
PM-US-Soviet Accident Rdp, SUB, a006,0058
WASHINGTON, to CORRECT to zirconium fuel cladding sted graphite fuel
cladding, SUB for 19th graf, Harold Denton ... remaining water.
    Harold Denton of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told reporters a
still-unexplained loss of coolant flow caused reactor fuel tubes to
overheat and zirconium fuel cladding to react with remaining water.
    ''As a, 20th graf
    
AP-NY-05-01-86 0117EDT
***************

a006  2204  30 Apr 86
PM-US-Soviet Accident Rdp, Bjt,1035
Kremlin Stonewalling, U.S. Officials Complain
Laserphoto WX5
By GUY DARST
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - A prominent senator, citing Kremlin efforts to
''conceal the magnitude'' of the nuclear disaster in Cherbonyl, is
calling on the State Department to provide aircraft for American
tourists who ''wish to be evacuated'' from the Soviet Union.
    U.S. officials say stonewalling from Moscow is making it difficult
to advise American travelers about radiation hazards in the Soviet
Union.
    Noting that other countries such as France and Finland had taken
steps to evacuate citizens from Kiev, 60 miles from the Chernobyl
reactors, one U.S. official said the United States would take every
step to protect its citizens.
    ''We want some indication of the radiation intensity,'' the official
said. ''They are not being helpful.''
    The official, who would discuss the new strain in relations only on
grounds he not be identified, said this country had been deliberately
soft-pedaling its criticism of Soviet responsiveness, partly out of
concern the Kremlin might be even less inclined to cooperate in the
face of harsh statements from Washington.
    He said there is a perception in the U.S. government that the
magnitude of the tragedy has ''overwhelmed'' the Kremlin and
''paralyzed the decision-making process, as it could ours.''
    In Bali, Indonesia, President Reagan told reporters that Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev had contacted U.S. officials about the
Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster but that there was no response to an
American offer of humanitarian and technical aid.
    ''We're trying to keep track of what's going on over there but we're
limited in our knowledge,'' the president said.
    Word of contact with Gorbachev came as U.S. officials in Washington
were complaining that the Soviet Union was not providing enough
detail on the power plant accident to allow experts to gauge the
health hazard.
    ''Among the many concerns arising from the disaster in Cherbonyl is
the safety of U.S. travelers in the Soviet Union, particularily
children and pregnant women,'' Sen. Daniel Moynihan said in a letter
Wednesday to the Undersecretary of State John C. Whitehead.
    Moynihan said his staff had ''already been in contact with Finnair,
which has volunteered to help speed the departure'' of American
tourists.
    ''In view of the continuing Soviet effort to conceal the magnitude
of this disaster, I ask that the State Department keep U.S. travelers
fully informed of the health risks confronting them, and that
aircraft be provided for those who wish to be evacuated.''
    Though the nation's intelligence agencies have been able to glean
much information from satellite photos, analysts cannot detect or
measure radiation on the ground.
    That helped explain how a dispute arose among U.S. intelligence
analysts over whether a second of the four Chernobyl reactors had
suffered a meltdown.
    One official said a second meltdown was under way, but another
emerged from an intelligence briefing to say, on the basis of what he
had been told, that such a hypothesis was ''dead wrong.''
    No one, though, disputed this description of the scene as of
Wednesday by an official who spoke under ground rules that prevent
his identification:
    ''The condition of that (reactor) building is that the top was blown
off. There is considerable blast damage and rubble around it. Vapors
and smoke are escaping from a large hole in the roof of the reactor
building. In addition, there is a large generator hall next to the
reactor building. Parts of that roof are also missing. There is
significant damage there.''
    All schools of analysts insisted they had no way to measure
casualties, whether a handful or in the thousands.
    Harold Denton of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told reporters a
still-unexplained loss of coolant flow caused reactor fuel tubes to
overheat and graphite fuel cladding to react with remaining water.
    ''As a result of the metal-water reactions, the pressure tube
cladding began to fail and steam began to attack the graphite.
Graphite will react with water to produce hydrogen and carbon
monoxide and other combustible products. There is every indication
that as a result of this interaction between the cladding and the
steam and air, a violent explosion occurred inside the reactor
core.''
    There were these other developments:
    -Grain and meat prices continued soaring on U.S. commodities
exchanges, and shares of utilities and food processing companies were
prominent among losers on the stock markets.
    -Democrats on the House Interior Committee used the example of the
Soviet accident to win a two-week delay in consideration of a
Republican move to cut the nuclear industry's maximum reactor
accident liability from $8.2 billion to $2 billion. The committee had
voted 21-20 last week to raise the limit from the present $650
million to $8.2 billion.
    -Some travel agents reported cancellations of trips to the Soviet
Union, but the New York office of the Soviet travel agency,
Intourist, said it was too early to tell if a significant drop in
business had occurred.
    -The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America criticized Soviet
safety precautions. Telephone lines to the Soviet Union by U.S.
citizens worried about relatives in the Ukraine and elsewhere were
reported jammed.
    Lee Thomas, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency,
went public with the issue of the Soviet's lack of candor from the
very start of what has become the world's gravest nuclear power plant
accident.
    ''We're very concerned about the notification issue,'' Thomas said.
''And I think that as we get better information about exactly when
the event occurred, when notification could have been made, I think
we'll be able to draw more conclusions about that concern.''
    European countries have been making this point in strong terms from
the beginning.
    The official who discussed the matter anonymously noted that
higher-than-normal radiation levels have been detected in Norway, 900
miles from the accident site. Moscow is only half as far away but the
Soviets have said nothing about the radiation level there, he said.
    Some 278 Americans are posted in the Soviet Union - 190 officials in
Moscow, 24 in the consular office in Leningrad, 25 U.S. businessmen
in Moscow and 39 journalists.
    
AP-NY-05-01-86 0104EDT
 - - - - - -

a008  2217  30 Apr 86
PM-US-Soviet Accident Rdp, SUB, a006,0058
WASHINGTON, to CORRECT to zirconium fuel cladding sted graphite fuel
cladding, SUB for 19th graf, Harold Denton ... remaining water.
    Harold Denton of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told reporters a
still-unexplained loss of coolant flow caused reactor fuel tubes to
overheat and zirconium fuel cladding to react with remaining water.
    ''As a, 20th graf
    
AP-NY-05-01-86 0117EDT
***************