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

DATE: THURSDAY, March 26, 1992                   TAG: 9203260070
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

RUSSIA: RADIATION LEVEL NEAR N-PLANT IS NORMAL

Russia acknowledged Wednesday that a radioactive gas leak has intensified Western fears about the safety of nuclear power plants in the old Soviet Union, but said their electricity is needed too much to shut them down.

Radiation levels at a Chernobyl-style nuclear power reactor near St. Petersburg were normal Wednesday, a day after a small amount of radioactive gas escaped into the atmosphere, Moscow radio said.

But the deputy director of the Finnish Center for Radiation and Nuclear Safety, Hannu Koponen, said the level of radioactive iodine in the atmosphere in the plant area was five times the acceptable level on Wednesday morning.

And Koponen also said that radioactive iodine, in smaller quantities, had entered the atmosphere five days before the leak was reported.

The leak from the No. 3 reactor at the Leningradskaya station in Sosnovy Bor prompted Western officials to step up pressures for the modification or phase-out of similar reactors throughout the old Soviet bloc. Western experts say the plants have unsafe designs and slipshod operation.

The reactor was among 16 in the former Soviet Union of the RMBK-type, the variety at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine that caught fire and spread radiation across much of Europe in 1986.

Despite safety concerns, Russia depends on nuclear power for 40 percent of its electricity, according to the Nuclear Power Ministry. Twenty-five percent comes from its own nine stations, with 24 reactors, and 15 percent is provided by nuclear plants in other former Soviet republics.

"It's impossible to shut them down because we need the power," said Olga Chernova, a spokeswoman for Russia's Nuclear Safety Agency.

On Tuesday, radioactive gas leaked from a defective graphite tube among those used to control the rate of the fission reaction and got into the room housing the reactor. The gas then escaped into the air outside through the building's ventilation system.

by CNB