Russia's secret atom holocaust

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Charter 77 calls for full deal with the problem of the Czechoslovakia, topping out a public discussion and possibly bureaucracy's growing depen series of three experimental a plebiscite on the nuclear dence on nuclear power, which question. They also call for a is exactly parallel to the capitOverturned truck carrying Uranium across US Last week saw the publication of Nuclear Disaster in the Urals' by Zhores Medvedev, one of the joint translators of Kruschev's secret speech, and a leading biochemist now working in London.

Over recent years Medvedev has been at the centre of a controversy over reports of a major nuclear explosion in the Soviet Union at the end of 1957. Medvedev first brought the story to light in a New Scientist article, published on 4 November 1976.

The explosion was a result of the underground storage of nuclear waste materials from several industrial sites in the Urals, where the Soviet nuclear industry is concentrated.

Volcano

Eventually the buried of material overheated and blew up like a violent volcano'.

The radioactive cloud was carried for hundreds of miles, causing enormous damage. Tens of thousands were affected and hundreds died Despite its tragic consequences the incident had some positive effects. One of these was the end of atmospheric testing of Soviet nuclear weaponry. Another was the final removal of Lysenko from positions of power in Soviet science-when it became clear Soviet power workers that Lysenko's brand of 'genetics' was powerless to understand, still less treat, radiobiological damage.

Medvedev was astonished at the reaction to his article, which was widely denounced as 'science-fiction'.

Windscale

One of the loudest of his critics was Sir John Hill, chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, at that time busily preparing for the Windscale enquiry. This was the same Sir John Hill who recently insisted that the Three Mile Island accident gave "no cause for concern" about British reactor safety).

However, more evidence was soon forthcoming, including an eye-witness account by Professor Lev Tumerman, former head of the biophysics laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Moscow, who had visited the sealed off area after the blast.

In fact there had been very little effort to cover up the explosion story at the time, and a number of papers had been translated for the UKAEA.

Ignorant

It is clearly a matter of some concern that the chairman of the UKAEA should either be ignorant of the event or else had deliberately sought to misinform the public about it.

TUBBINS reviews "Nuclear D the Urals" by Zhores Medvedev In addition, Medvedev found over 100 published Soviet studies on the effects of Stronnatural plant and animal popi- _ and Caesium 137 in lations.

Most of these studies made no reference to the source of the contamination they dealt with, and were silent on the question of location (with a single exception which mentions the location-Cheliabinsk -claimed by Medvedev).

From this mass of material it is clear that Soviet scientists are conducting large. scale studies of the contaminated area, but it is also clear that enormous research opportunities were lost in delays, doubtless related to attempts to cover up the event.

The published material also provides information on the kinds of nuclear contamination encountered, and confirms that what happened was the explosion of a waste dump.

A reactor explosion or a bomb would have produced a quite different mixture of radioactive contaminants.

Medvedev has produced great deal of other interesting material on the development of science under Stalin and Kruschev and later.

Not much of it will stick in the reader's mind quite as vividly as the story of the Cheliabinsk explosion.

Many of the incorrect practices in the Soviet nuclear industry can be interpreted as the result of political pressure to produce nuclear weaponry in the period immediately following World War IL Narrowly averted At the Hanford Nuclear Centre in the US a similar event to the Cheliabinsk explosion was only narrowly averted in the 1960s.

Charter 77 has recently produced documentation of two serious accidents at the gascooled heavy water reactor called Al, at Bohvnice, near Bratislava in Czechoslovakia.

Czechoslovakia has a larger nuclear programme than any of the Eastern European states, and the Soviet designed Al is crucial to the bureaucracy's expansion plans.

It is the first operational nuclear power station in prototype reactors.

The reactor began operation. in December 1973, but even during construction alarming stories were in circulation about inadequate technical preparations and lack of safety procedures.

The first accident occurred in January 1976, during the loading of new fuel elements.

A gas escape valve jammed and the resulting pressure build up blew the highly radioactive element out of the reactor, releasing a cloud of radioactive coolant gas.

Exit locked The site had to be evacuated during which two workers were asphyxiated when they found an emergency exit locked "to prevent thefts".

The second accident also took place during fuel element insertion, in February 1977.

A fuel element had not been correctly prepared and eventually overheated, which damaged the cooling system and forced the operators to shut the generator down.

Radioactive steam escaped from the cooling circuits into the atmosphere, and there was further contamination during the cleaning up process.

Since the second accident Á1 has not been in use. Despite early attempts at denial, the Czech authorities have recently confirmed that the accidents did occur, but have not con- system of safety monitoring firmed the details published by and greatly improved work the Chartists. conditions for operators in the nuclear generators.

course reasonable, they fail to alists' need in the West cheap nuclear power.

Internal While these demands are of An ti-nuclear protestors of both capitalist and Stalinist states must learn that their states are driven by internal needs which override consideratíons of safety and quality of life.

So far, the world has not experienced •any nuclear accident of the really large scale sort which are possible.

Harrisburg, Bohvnice, Cheliabinsk, etc., are tiny compared. to the type of disasters that might happen, and are increasingly likely to happen.

Workers management Real safety and environmental protection will not be achieved without the final overthrow of the state-whether capitalist or Stalinist, which subjects its citizens lives to the priorities of profit or privilege and the imposition of workers management over the planning and operation of energy production.

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DUSIRIAL NEVES