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SECRET DOCUMENTS REVEAL DANGER OF WORLDWIDE NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS
On March 11, 1987, NBC broadcast a documentary, "Nuclear Power:
In France It Works." It could have passed for a lengthy nuclear power
commercial. Missing from anchorman Tom Brokaw's introduction was the
fact that NBC's owner, General Electric, is America's second largest
nuclear power salesman and third largest producer of nuclear weapons
systems.
One month after the NBC documentary, there were accidents at two
French nuclear installations, injuring seven workers. THE CHRISTIAN
SCIENCE MONITOR wrote of a "potentially explosive debate" in France,
with new polls showing a third of the French public opposing nuclear
power. That story was not reported on NBC News.
NBC's policy which produced the "nuclear power works" commercial
and censored the news about two nuclear accidents is typical of the
international silence about reactor incidents which help explain the
industry's undeserved reputation for safety.
The lid to Pandora's nuclear safety box was partially opened last
year when the West German weekly DER SPIEGEL published 48 of over 250
secret nuclear reactor accdient reports compiled by the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The report of previously secret IAEA
documents was translated into English for the first time and published
in David Brower's EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL.
Some of the "incidents" you never heard about: February 1983 --
Bulgaria's Kozluduj nuclear power plant lost pressure in the primary
cooling system; June 1983 -- three of four pumps failed in Argentina's
Embalse nuclear plant; August 1984 -- the primary cooling system in
West Germany's Bruno Leuschner plant in Greifswald burst; October 1984
-- engineers at the Chooz A reactor on the French-Belgian border
discovered numerous "breaks" and "broken welding seams" on the
critical control rods of the 17-year-old reactor; 1984 --
Czechoslovakia's Jaslovska Bohunice reactor spilled radioactive
coolant into two reactor containment units due to the failure of 72
defective bolts in the circulation system; January 1985 -- at
Pakistan's Kanupp reactor, radioactive heavy water leaked while being
transferred through a rubber hose; February 1985 -- during a fuel rod
experiment in East Germany's Rheinsberg reactor, a measuring device
stuck into the center of the reactor caused a leak of radioactive
water; April 1985 -- radioactive water and sludge swamped two rooms of
an auxiliary building at Belgium's Tihange reactor; December 1985 --
emergency power in Canada's Pickerikng reactor failed in three
separate units for five days.
DER SPIEGEL said that in several of these previously unreported
nuclear slip-ups "a meltdown was a real possibility." Worse yet for
Americans, DER SPIEGEL found that human error "is most advanced in
North America ... sometimes with hair-raising results." A survey of
official records since the Three Mile Island reactor meltdown in 1979
shows there have been more than 23,000 mishaps at U.S. reactors -- and
the number are increasing. In 1986, there were more than 3,000
reported incidents -- up 24 percent over 1984. The chilling
conclusion: "Humanity has been sitting on a powderkeg as a result of
reliance on the 'peaceful' use of the atom."
SOURCES: EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL, Summer, 1987, "Secet Documents
Reveal Nuclear Accidents Worldwide," by Gar Smith with Hans
Hollitscher, pp 21-24; EXTRA, June 1987, "Nuclear Broadcasting
Company," p 5.