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

DATE: FRIDAY, December 3, 1993                   TAG: 9312030118
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PARIS                                LENGTH: Short

FRENCH `TEST' A NUCLEAR MELTDOWN

Nuclear researchers caused a meltdown Thursday in a reactor in southern France to test safety measures. Environmentalists called the experiment costly, dangerous and unnecessary.

French nuclear officials said the radioactive gases given off by the meltdown, a virtual recreation of the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pa., would not get outside the reactor building.

Live closed-circuit TV showed an increasingly bright bluish glow inside the Phebus reactor's pool - radioactive gamma rays given off by the hidden core as its fuel rods melted and ruptured under intense heat.

The experiment, projected to last five hours, was shut down early when all the objectives were reached, said Michel Livolant, co-director of the Institute for Nuclear Security and Protection, which ran the experiment in Cadarache, 30 miles northeast of Aix-en-Provence. He insisted the test was a success.

Leaving the reactor in operation any longer could have caused the core to breach the first of three protective alloy tubes surrounding it, officials said.

"We didn't want to be accused of endangering security," said Michel Livolant, co-director of the Institute for Nuclear Security and Protection, which ran the test.

by CNB