Bonn Urges Soviets to Shut Similar Plants

The West German government Wednesday called on the Soviet Union to shut down all nuclear power stations similar to the one that exploded and caught fire in the Ukraine.

Reflecting the increasing concern and anger in Western Europe over Soviet secrecy, the Bonn government also asked Moscow to allow international scientists immediate access to the area around the Chernobyl plant. Other nations joined in the plea.

In Venice, Italy, ministers of the seven-nation West European Union demanded full information from the Soviet Union on the details of the Chernobyl accident, in which the nuclear plant experienced an apparent meltdown of at least one of its reactor cores.

Ministers from Britain, Belgium, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, France and Luxembourg called on Moscow to give the world a full explanation of the events at Chernobyl, north of Kiev.

British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe declared: “There is a deep concern at the Soviet Union’s failure to give early warning of this. It is a serious lack in European good neighborliness. The Soviet Union has an obligation to give a full account of what happened and why.”

And Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti, in criticizing Soviet secrecy surrounding the disaster, said, “Issues of national sovereignty do not exist in this area because there are no frontiers that will stop radiation.”

At the same time, several Western European countries ordered their nationals who are working in the Soviet Ukraine to evacuate the city of Kiev and the surrounding area.

Technicians from several Western countries are building a metallurgical plant and working on other projects in the northern Ukraine, government sources reported.

Britain, France, Finland, Austria and Yugoslavia were among the nations that ordered their nationals from Kiev, which is 60 miles south of the Chernobyl plant.

The West German government said the water supply in Kiev, a city of 2.4 million, might be contaminated by the radioactive particles released by fire. The blaze, believed to be in its fourth day Wednesday, followed an apparent explosion at one of the Chernobyl plant’s four reactors.

On Wednesday, anti-nuclear protesters in several Western European countries declared that the Chernobyl disaster has proved the accuracy of their worst fears about atomic plants.

And political experts said the incident is bound to give added impetus to those political and environmental groups, such as the Greens party in West Germany and Greenpeace in Britain and France, that oppose the use of nuclear energy.

For instance, the Greens demanded an immediate shutdown of all nuclear power stations around the world.

And one Greens leader, Jutta Ditfurth, referring to the party’s stand against nuclear power, declared, “There are times when you wish you had not been proved right.”

West Germany’s national nuclear agency, Atomic Forum, reported Wednesday that it has had no further contact with Soviet sources who on Tuesday asked for advice about fighting a graphite fire in a nuclear plant. Graphite is a key element in Soviet nuclear plants.

But Soviet Ambassador Yuli A. Kvitsinsky told Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann that radiation had contaminated areas north, south and west of the plant and that people living nearby had been evacuated.

“Radioactivity measured in a wider area around Chernobyl was higher than normal but not considerably,” the Interior Ministry quoted Kvitsinsky as saying. “Further measures to protect the population are, therefore, not necessary.”

Kvitsinsky admitted that part of the building housing one of the four reactors at Chernobyl was destroyed, releasing the radioactivity, West German officials said.

But a leading West German scientist, Prof. Jens Scheer, accused the Soviet government of concealing the danger and said that thousands of people could be endangered if the wind and weather changed.

Scheer said he believes that as many as 600 people could die of cancer in Sweden by next year as a result of the radioactive cloud whose particles fell in the Scandinavian country--and that even more could succumb in West Germany if the weather brings the radioactive mists directly toward that country.

And nuclear scientist Lothar Hanh, who appeared at a news conference with Scheer, said the fire at Chernobyl might continue for weeks despite efforts to control it.

In Switzerland, the No. 2 official at the Foreign Ministry quoted the Soviet ambassador to Switzerland, Ivan Ivanovich Ippolitov, as saying Wednesday that the fire was still “out of control.” In Paris, however, the Soviet ambassador echoed most other Soviet diplomats’ contention that the situation was stable.

Swiss authorities Wednesday reported 10 times the normal level of radiation in Davos and three times normal levels in Zurich. They said, however, that those levels are not high enough to require residents to take precautions.

In Bonn, Prof. Adolf Birkhofer, head of the German Society for Reactor Safety, told the Bild newspaper: “This was different from a simple accident that could no longer be mastered. According to the information available to me, it was a super accident . . . the biggest accident that can be imagined.”

In Bavaria, other West German officials said slightly higher radiation levels were reported in the southern state Wednesday but were not high enough to constitute a danger to the population.

In Austria, authorities said that higher levels of radioactivity were also reported and that some local officials were advising mothers to keep their babies indoors.

And Austrian officials, like those in Poland and Sweden, warned people to be careful of the water they drink.

France, which next to the United States and the Soviet Union is the largest producer of nuclear energy, offered technical assistance to the Soviets in checking the disaster at Chernobyl.