Soviets Fear Radioactivity Will Contaminate River

The Soviet government said Monday that it is trying to prevent contamination of a major river in the Ukraine from radiation emitted in the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Radiation in the Ukraine and neighboring Byelorussia “continues to decrease,” a government statement distributed by the Tass news agency said, and workers were building up the banks of the adjacent Pripyat River “to prevent its possible contamination.”

The plant is near the confluence of the Pripyat and Uzh rivers. The two rivers feed a reservoir that empties into the Dnieper River, which flows through Kiev, 60 miles south of Chernobyl.

The Soviet media, meanwhile, offered Soviet citizens more details of the disaster. Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, said an explosion blew apart the building housing the reactor, and an ensuing fire sent flames nearly 100 feet into the air. It said the reactor still was burning but that the situation was under control.

The report was for today’s editions and was circulated in advance by Tass.

Pravda said the fire “is extremely difficult” to extinguish, since chemicals and water cannot be used. It said “an explosion destroyed structural elements of the building housing the reactor and a fire broke out.”

“After the explosion, the engine-room coating took fire,” it said. “The firemen were fighting the blaze at a height of 30 meters (nearly 100 feet). Their boots stuck in bitumen (asphalt) that melted because of high temperature. Soot and smoke made it difficult to breathe, but the brave, bold men kept fighting the blaze courageously.”

For the first time since the accident occurred more than a week ago, Soviet television viewers were shown tests for radioactivity on a farm about 50 miles from the damaged reactor at Chernobyl. The readings, on vegetables, were reported to be within normal limits.

A man interviewed for television on a street in Kiev said there is no panic in the Ukrainian capital but added that “people are worried.”

This relatively frank statement, which contrasts sharply with the scant information that has been disclosed officially, came as a team of three top officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. agency headquartered in Vienna, arrived for talks with Soviet experts.

U.N. Agency Experts

Hans Blix, a Swede, the agency’s general director, headed the team, which also includes Leonid Konstantinov, a Soviet aide who is a senior officer with the agency’s nuclear safety and environmental protection department, and Morris Rosen, an American expert on nuclear power plant safety.

“We will discuss questions relating to information and measures that can be taken internationally, through IAEA, to improve safety in nuclear power,” Blix told reporters at the Moscow airport.

The Soviet government still has neither disclosed exact radiation levels nor told its citizens that 49,000 people have been evacuated from the Chernobyl area--a figure used by a top Kremlin official in interviews with Western reporters in West Germany.

But the amount of television time and newspaper space the government is now devoting to the Chernobyl accident and the countermeasures being taken to contain damage from radiation seems to be calculated to reassure the public that the government is doing everything it can.

Go-Ahead for Bicycle Race

In a business-as-usual manner, the Soviets are going ahead with plans to start an international bicycle race through part of the region that received some of the heaviest radiation. Several Western countries, including the United States, canceled plans to take part in the race, but cyclists from eight East Bloc countries and France prepared to compete. The race is to begin today.

The government also indicated, for the first time here, that everyone within a 19-mile radius of the reactor was evacuated after the leak of radioactive gas.

“Temporary employment at other enterprises, construction sites, collective and state farms is being arranged for the population evacuated from the 30-kilometer (19-mile) zone of the nuclear power station,” the statement said.

The reference to temporary employment suggests that the government does not expect the members of this group--estimated at 49,000 by Politburo member Boris N. Yeltsin, who was interviewed in West Germany--to return to their homes very soon.

Yeltsin said Monday in Hanover, West Germany, that the Soviet Union “will allow foreign experts to inspect the site of the accident as soon as the radioactivity has decreased to a point where this is possible . . . even though Moscow does not have the obligation to let them do so.”

Although the official statement provided a few facts beyond what had been disclosed in earlier reports, the Kremlin’s main propaganda theme was that Western governments are trying to exploit the accident for political ends.

“It turns out that the first nuclear power station accident in (Soviet) history . . . can be used for fouling up the international atmosphere with political radioactivity,” said Alexei Grigoryev, a Tass news analyst.

Meanwhile, Dr. Robert P. Gale of Los Angeles said that he and Soviet colleagues are continuing to perform bone marrow transplant operations on Chernobyl victims brought to Moscow.

“We’re busy,” Gale said, but he declined to say how many patients received transplants. Soviet officials have said that 20 to 25 persons were seriously injured in the accident.

Gale, who is head of an international registry of bone marrow donors, said he would not hesitate to seek help from other countries in the event that a suitable transplant was not available from a Soviet donor.

“We would screen donor pools around the world in that case,” he said. “It would be the only alternative.”

Gale, an associate professor of medicine at UCLA, said he or a replacement will be kept busy doing transplant surgery for at least two weeks more.

In another development, two Canadians who have been studying in Kiev arrived in Moscow and showed higher radiation readings than normal on their clothes and shoes, a spokesman at the Canadian Embassy said.

The level of radioactivity was not considered dangerous in itself, but sustained exposure at that level might prove harmful, he said.

Soviet officials put pressure on the two young men to stay in Kiev, the spokesman said, but they decided to leave anyway. Fifteen other Canadian students are still in Kiev and have not decided whether to leave, he said.

Problems seen at reactor near Denver, Page 23. Radioactivity crossing the United States is ‘slightly above’ normal. Page 25.