
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 25, 1992                   TAG: 9203250283
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

RUSSIAN NUCLEAR REACTOR LEAKS

A nuclear power plant outside St. Petersburg was shut Tuesday after a serious leak of radiation, but Russian officials said the incident posed no significant threat to the environment or people.

Russian authorities said radioactive iodine leaked early Tuesday from one of the four reactors, but the only contamination risk was on the plant's premises. Monitoring stations in Austria, Sweden and Finland reported picking up no unusual amounts of radiation.

Yuri Rogozhin, a spokesman for the Russian nuclear energy inspection agency, said the incident was "serious," but in no way comparable to the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant - which killed 31 people immediately; forced the evacuation of thousands more; and spewed radioactivity across Ukraine, Belarus and much of Europe.

Despite the official reassurances, the incident rang alarm bells across Europe, where worries of contamination, or worse, from another Chernobyl run high.

A large number of aging nuclear power plants, many of questionable safety, still operate in Eastern Europe and, especially, in the former Soviet Union.

Some nuclear experts have warned that a combination of design flaws, age and poor maintenance make another major disaster inevitable and have urged that many of these power plants be shut down.

"This accident is yet another example of how aging reactors are threatening the world," said John Willis, a nuclear power expert with the Greenpeace environmental group.

Concerns are strongest over the reactors in the dissolved former Soviet Union, because of the chaotic atmosphere in which many things seem to be crumbling and lack of regulation.

Sixteen of the 45 nuclear reactors in the territory of the former union, including those at St. Petersburg, are based on the Chernobyl model, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. These plants, built without any containment structures that protect against leaks, produce about half of the nuclear power in the former Soviet Union.

After hearing reports of the Leningrad leak, Germany's environment minister, Klaus Toepfer, called for an immediate shutdown of all Chernobyl-type reactors. "They must be switched off as soon as at all possible," he said in Bonn.

Toepfer said the West should provide aid to help countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union develop safer alternative sources of energy.

by CNB