a236  1448  16 Jun 89
AM-Soviet-Nuclear,0493
Thirty-Two Years Late, Soviets Admit To Huge Radioactive Blast
By ANDREW KATELL
Associated Press Writer
    MOSCOW (AP) - The Soviet Union admitted for the first time Friday
that a tank of radioactive waste exploded at a nuclear weapons plant
nearly 32 years ago, showering particles over nearly 400 square miles
and forcing 10,000 people to evacuate.
    Before the Chernobyl power plant explosion on April 26, 1986,
Western specialists called the disaster in the southern Ural
Mountains the world's worst nuclear accident. A secret CIA file made
public in 1977 quoted Soviet sources as saying hundreds of people
were killed.
    The Western accounts said the explosion created a vast radioactive
wasteland one-third the land area of Rhode Island, or about 400,000
square miles.
    Thirty rural villages vanished from Soviet maps, fishing was banned
in lakes, dams were built to contain radioactive waterways and rivers
were diverted with canals, according to the Western accounts.
    But the official news agency Tass said Friday no casualities had
resulted. It quoted Boris Nikipelov, first deputy minister for medium
machine-building, as telling a news conference a ''chemical
explosion'' occurred in September 1957 near Kasli, about 870 miles
east of Moscow.
    A tank of radioactive waste exploded at a military plant where
atomic weapons were to be built, ''forming a radioactive trail 105
kilometers (65 miles) long and 8 to 9 kilometers (roughly five to 5 1/2
miles) wide,'' said Nikipelov, whose ministry administers
military-related nuclear programs.
    Tass said 2 million curies of radioactive elements were released,
and ''more than 10,000 people were urgently evacuated from the
contaminated zone.'' In comparison, Tass noted that 50 million curies
of radiation were released in the Chernobyl explosion and fire in
which 31 people were killed.
    The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania
released 14 curies, a measure of the amount of radioactivty contained
in a material.
    U.S. analysts have calculated that the Urals accident spewed out
more radiation than that produced by the U.S. atomic bombing of
Japan.
    The effects of the accident lasted for decades, Tass indicated. It
said economic activity resumed in the area only by 1978, and even
then only in 80 percent of the contaminated zone. The remaining
territory was turned into a reserve. Radiation returned to safe
levels in the area only by 1974, and lakes and other waterways remain
contaminated, Tass reported.
    Tass did not say when or where Nikipelov gave the news conference,
nor did it say which radioactive particles were released or whether
the atomic weapons plant is still operating.
    Some Western reports have said the accident happened at the Soviet
Union's first nuclear production facility, in Kyshtym, about 20 miles
south of Kasli. The complex or a replacement is believed to be still
producing plutonium.
    Tass said the accident was kept secret so long in the Soviet Union
because it occurred at a military plant.
    
 
 
AP-NY-06-16-89 1738EDT
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