Soviets Admit Experiments at Chernobyl : Reactor Exploded While Unidentified Tests Were Running

A nuclear safety official said today that experiments were being conducted on the Chernobyl reactor when the explosion and fire occurred April 26 but would not say whether they were related to the disaster.

Viktor Sidorenko also said Moscow was notified of the trouble in less than three hours. The Kremlin did not acknowledge the accident until nearly three days later, after high levels of radiation had been detected in Scandinavia and Sweden demanded an explanation.

The 92,000 people evacuated from an 18-mile radius of the Ukrainian power plant apparently will not return until at least next year. The Communist Party newspaper Pravda said today that 10,000 winterized homes and many barns will be built for evacuees and their livestock, and thousands have been sent to new jobs.

Each person evacuated will receive compensation of 200 rubles, the equivalent of $283, Pravda said.

Bureaucratic Indifference

It complained that hundreds of evacuated mothers with small children had not yet been sent to summer camps because of bureaucratic indifference, and many families still were separated.

Mothers with preschool children and the youngest school pupils were to have been sent to camps and rest homes at such resort areas as the Black Sea.

No new official casualty figures were issued. The unofficial death toll is 13, two in the reactor accident at the power plant 80 miles north of Kiev and 11 of radiation poisoning. About 300 people have been reported hospitalized.

Sidorenko, deputy chairman of the state committee for nuclear inspection, met with a few Western journalists in one of several interviews with government experts that have been arranged in the last two weeks.

No Detailed Explanation

According to a transcript provided by one of the reporters, Sidorenko refused to offer a detailed explanation of what caused the accident in Chernobyl’s No. 4 reactor.

He repeated earlier official statements that the reactor’s heat output had been lowered to 6% or 7% of capacity for “planned annual repairs.”

“We planned to hold some experiments, research work, when the reactor was on this level,” Sidorenko said. “The accident took place in the stage of experimental work.”

The safety official would not describe the experiments or reveal what relation they might have to the accident, saying only that they were “connected with the checking up of some of the systems of the station.”

“Technical details” will be in the report of the government panel investigating the disaster at the four-reactor plant, Sidorenko said.

Kremlin Criticized

Western governments have criticized the Kremlin severely for delaying its first report of the accident for three days while the huge invisible cloud of radiation spread over Europe.

Soviet officials have said they released the first reliable information that was available.

Sidorenko said today, however, that members of his committee were on the way to Chernobyl three hours after the accident occured at 1:23 a.m. April 26. He confirmed that official investigators were on the spot that afternoon.

Asked why the initial report was delayed, he said: “This information was given by competent government bodies which were authorized to do so. The information was given, that is all.”