Nuclear Reactor Fire Out; 250,000 Pupils Leaving Kiev : Concrete Put Under Burned Unit

An International Atomic Energy Agency official said today that the fire at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor has been put out. The mayor of Kiev said a quarter of a million children will be let out of school early this year because of the devastating accident.

The agency official, Morris Rosen, told a news conference in Moscow that an adjacent reactor at the Ukrainian facility was not damaged by the fire and was not in danger of releasing radiation.

In Stockholm, a Swedish official said satellite photos taken today show no smoke coming from the damaged reactor.

Kiev Mayor Valentin Sgursky said schools attended by 250,000 of the city’s children will close May 15, several weeks early, because of the power plant accident. He said the move was not an emergency measure.

“We are simply advancing the normal school holiday a little bit,” Sgursky told a group of foreign reporters.

Nation’s 3rd-Largest City

Ukrainian Health Minister Anatoly Romanenko was quoted earlier as saying on Kiev radio that schoolchildren would be moved out of the area as a precaution. Kiev, the nation’s third-largest city, is 60 miles south of the nuclear plant.

British Broadcasting Corp. monitors in London quoted Romanenko as saying children from Kiev will be taken to “work and leisure camps and Pioneer camps” in the southern Ukraine.

At the Moscow news conference, Rosen said workers were trying to seal off the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl facility where a chemical explosion occurred April 26, setting off a fire and spewing radiation over Europe.

“The aim is to encase the whole fourth unit in concrete, and work has begun to place a concrete foundation under the reactor,” he said.

Ukrainian Premier Alexander Lyashko had said Thursday that crews were still trying to put out the reactor fire.

Flight Over Reactor

The director of the U.N.-affiliated IAEA, Hans Blix, flew over the reactor Thursday and said that smoke was coming from it.

But Rosen, an American who is director of the agency’s division of nuclear safety, said today that the smoke was light gray and appeared to come from smoldering sand, lead, boron and dolomite thrown over the reactor to smother the fire. He said smoke was thicker and darker when the fire was burning.

“The fire is out,” he said, specifying that he referred to a fire in graphite in the reactor core. The graphite is used to slow nuclear reactions.

Rosen also said Soviet officials reported that the reactor core temperature had fallen to a degree that indicated that the fire was out.

Lyashko had said Thursday that the reactor temperature had fallen to 300 degrees Celsius, or 572 degrees Fahrenheit. “This means that the burning has practically stopped,” he said.

Working on Concrete Shield

Rosen said a meltdown never occurred, but a statement by his agency said the reactor core was extensively damaged. Rosen said workers are trying to build a concrete shield under the reactor in case a nuclear reaction should resume, sending radioactivity into the earth.

Blix said today: “It is clear the radioactive consequences of this accident are far more serious than in any accident so far.”