Cleaning Up the Nuclear Mess

The international community may not be able to organize itself to reduce the possibility of catastrophic nuclear-reactor accidents similar to that at Chernobyl, and to deal with the consequences if safeguards fail. But there are encouraging signs that it will try, even against formidable odds.

Soviet authorities, who issued inadequate and sometimes misleading information in the days immediately following the accident at Chernobyl, are now more forthcoming. The Soviet government has promised to make a full report to Western experts at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency this summer.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, has proposed an international “legal order” providing for compensation, medical care and emergency housing for victims of reactor accidents of international scope. The atomic agency itself is pondering new international rules that would require immediate information about any nuclear accident that could affect other countries, and would involve the agency more directly in international safety inspections.

In Western Europe the European Commission, a key organ of the Common Market, has proposed a five-point action program that would establish communitywide radioactive-emission limits and supranational inspection squads to check compliance with nuclear-safety standards.

There is considerable reason for skepticism that all this bold talk will be translated into meaningful action.

Gorbachev’s talk about compensation is in sharp contradiction to the Soviet unwillingness, so far, to entertain the idea of paying compensation to West Europeans for injuries or damages resulting from the Chernobyl accident. And, considering the deeply rooted Soviet paranoia about foreign spying, it is hard to imagine the Kremlin’s agreeing to allow foreign safety inspectors to go poking about their nuclear-power plants.

For that matter, the European Commission’s proposal for communitywide safety enforcement will remain no more than talk unless it is approved by the 12 member governments--and close observers expect the French and British to balk. The U.S. nuclear industry itself is unlikely to welcome the prospect of having to cope with still another level of regulation.

The fact remains that, as the Chernobyl accident so vividly demonstrated, nuclear-reactor accidents can have ramifications far beyond the borders of the country in which they occur. The case for international rules aimed at guaranteeing an acceptable level of nuclear safety is obvious.

The United States, as a major source of nuclear technology and safety expertise, should be in the forefront of the movement to establish international nuclear-safety rules and a mechanism for enforcing them.