10
University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Wednesday, April 30, 1986
United Press International
LONDON — British experts were divided yesterday on how the Soviets should try to contain fire at the giant Ukrainian graphite atomic power plant, saying it is difficult to compare with a 1987 fire in a British graphite
The Soviet Union has asked Sweden and West German nuclear experts for advice on how to fight the North Korean plant burning 80 miles north of Kiev.
The West Germans suggested the Soviets approach the British, who successfully fought a graphite fire at the Windscale nuclear plant in Cumberland on England's northwest coast in 1957 by pumping millions of gallons of water on it. No formal request to the British has been made.
"The nuclear industry was really in its infancy 30 years ago. There are big differences of design and scale," one atomic energy official said.
Another independent scientific expert stressed the danger from water flashing into steam, given what could have been a scale and high intensity of the blaze.
Graphite plants have a reactor core consisting of a huge block of graphite, or nearly pure carbon, in which slightly enriched uranium fuel rods are inserted vertically into drilled holes.
The Windscale accident occurred in a small-scale experimental plant, known as an air-cooled circuit pile. The plant was used to produce oxygen for Britain's nuclear weapons program, not to generate power.
Radioactivity escaped through the giant concrete chimneys used to cool the plant. The accident put an end to air-cooled nuclear plants.
Scientists decided the best way to tackle the fire, triggered during a maintenance operation, was to flood the reactor pile with water.
No one was killed in the accident, but the plant and a nearby sister military reactor were permanently closed and the reactor building where the fire occurred still is sealed off, nearly 30 years later.
three days after the blaze, checks showed radioactive iodine in local milk samples was six times the permitted maximum. Authorities immediately banned milk sales over a 200 square-mile area.
Controversy about the long-term effects of the accident has persisted ever since. One scientific report suggested the airborne contamination may have caused at least 13 cases of thyroid cancer.
The Chenobyl reactor is a type known as a boiling water reactor, an Atomic Energy Agency scientist said. The design is unique to the Chinese and British experts ruled it was unsatisfactory for use in the West.
MOSCOW — The Soviet Union yesterday struggled to contain a nuclear power plant disaster that may have affected thousands of people while the controlled Soviet press maintained strict control of information about the accident.
After the initial four-sentence report by the official news agency Tass On Monday night, the Soviet news media were silent for 24 hours about an accident that may have melted the core of a Ukrainian nuclear reactor and sent a radioactive cloud rolling across hundreds of miles of
Soviet media keep quiet on accident
The Associated Press
Russian plains.
The first report by Tass was issued hours after Scandinavian countries detected increased radiation and said the radiation apparently came from the Soviet Union.
Tass said the accident was at the Chernobyl plant, but did not say the accident occurred only 60 miles from Kiev, a city of 2.4 million people. The report did not say what happened, when it happened, nor mention whether there were casualties or discuss possible risks to health.
The report was read on the main TV news program Monday night and there was no new information issued until nearly 24 hours later when
Tass issued a second government statement that said two people were killed and that people were injured.
That report said the radiation from the damaged plant had been contained and medical staff had been tested.
A Radio Moscow report yesterday referred to the accident as a disaster and said victims were being given help. The report offered no other details.
Western reporters and diplomats had difficulty getting telephone calls through to Kiev, 475 miles from Moscow and the nearest large city to Chernobyl.
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