2 A-Plants in Cuba Arouse U.S. Concern : Wants Safety Plans, Assurance Facilities Won’t Make Weapons

Energy Secretary John S. Herrington said today that the United States will press Moscow for details of two Soviet nuclear power plants being built in Cuba and for safeguards against their use for weapons production.

Herrington said the Soviet Union had promised to provide Washington with details of the plants’ safety standards and structural characteristics at a meeting in Vienna in September of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“We do not have it yet,” Herrington told a Senate hearing. “We need to press for it. As a neighbor of Cuba, we have a right to know.”

Herrington also told the Governmental Affairs subcommittee on energy, nuclear proliferation and government processes that Washington will insist on receiving safeguards that Cuba’s two new Soviet-made reactors will not be used to develop weapons.

180 Miles From Key West

The two reactors are being built near Cienfuegos, Cuba, 180 miles from Key West, Fla.

“We need to make sure that those safeguards are in place--not just in Cuba but other countries too,” he said.

U.S. concern over the Cuban reactors was heightened by last April’s disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near Kiev, in the Soviet Ukraine. The accident, which sent a radioactive cloud over much of Europe, was the worst of its kind in history.

At the September meeting in Vienna, the 114-nation IAEA produced two conventions in the wake of Chernobyl. One calls for early notification of a nuclear accident with potential trans-boundary effects, the second calls for international assistance for nuclear emergencies.

Need for Compensation

But Herrington, who said the Administration plans to send the two conventions to the Senate early next year for ratification, said more needs to be done, particularly in the area of compensation to countries suffering from the effects of a nuclear accident in another nation.

He also said the Soviet Union is probably operating nuclear plants without the safety improvements promised in the wake of the Chernobyl accident.

“We are reasonably sure they are operating reactors today without the upgrades they promised,” Herrington said.

He said that major improvements were promised after the Chernobyl accident in April but that reactors similar to that one were restarted too soon for them to be completed.