Chernobyl Won’t Happen Again, Soviets Vow : But Shadows Cast by World’s Worst Nuclear Accident Remain a Year Later

One year after the Chernobyl disaster, the Soviet Union is voicing official optimism that a similar nuclear power plant accident will not happen again. At the same time, it has offered reassuring opinions on the medical fallout.

Even so, the Chernobyl accident, which began at 1:23 a.m. last April 26, has cast a shadow over Moscow’s ambitious goal of tripling its nuclear power production by 1995.

Soil within a three-mile radius of the entombed Reactor No. 4 is still radioactively “hot,” and the danger to water supplies in the area, from long-lived cesium 137, is still not past. Scores of thousands of people face lifelong medical checks because of exposure to radiation.

In addition, Chernobyl-related information beyond the optimistic official pronouncements is hard to come by. Soviet officials insist that steps have been taken to reduce the risk of accidents at other Chernobyl-type plants, but Western observers have expressed skepticism that all the necessary work has been completed.

Visits Restricted

Only a handful of Westerners have been allowed to visit the site of the explosion and fire that spread clouds of radiation across Europe and beyond, damaging crops and frightening millions.

“Working with information we can get in the press, you have to be a detective to figure out what’s happening,” a scientific attache at a Western embassy here said.

Even a Soviet publication, the outspoken weekly Moscow News, complained about a clampdown on information dealing with the consequences of Chernobyl.

“It has become more and more difficult . . . to obtain information,” the News said. “The formulation ‘not for the press’ is being used more and more often. . . . There are some who do not understand that rumors and hearsay are generated not by summaries and figures but by their absence.”

Delay Not Explained

Moreover, even the Kremlin’s new policy of glasnost , or openness, has not produced any explanation for the delay of nearly three days in announcing the Chernobyl explosion to the world.

This sort of traditional secrecy and reluctance to acknowledge a mistake has caused misgivings among diplomats and others. Some people wonder if they can depend on Moscow’s promise to give notice of any future nuclear accidents.

Not long ago, a West German research station publicly reported a rise in radioactive iodine in the air and said it must have originated in the Soviet Union. But Soviet officials denied that there had been a nuclear accident and said their measuring devices showed no change of the sort reported in West Germany.

“The whole episode showed how Chernobyl has shaped everyone’s thinking,” a diplomat said.

Reporting Cited

He cited the prompt reporting of relatively recent rail, maritime and aviation disasters in the Soviet press as an illustration of reassuring change from traditional secrecy in such instances.

Mutual assurances of prompt disclosure of nuclear accidents were included last fall in a treaty proposed by the Soviet Union and signed by 58 member nations of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Soviet Union later signed a separate nuclear safety agreement with Finland. And Sweden, one of the Scandinavian countries most severely affected by the fallout from Chernobyl, is expected to start negotiations this summer on a similar agreement with the Soviet Union.

“I think they have learned a lesson from Chernobyl,” a Western diplomat said, referring to the worldwide fury directed at Moscow for failing to disclose the accident or to provide details in the first week after it occurred.

Evidence of Cynicism

But ordinary Soviet citizens, who followed the remarkable revelations about mistakes made at Chernobyl with avid interest, cannot be sure that they know the entire story.

“Do you think they will tell you everything?” a cynical Muscovite said, expressing typical suspicion about government statements.

At farmers’ markets in Moscow, customers no longer inquire routinely whether fresh fruits and vegetables are from the Ukraine, which got some of the heaviest fallout from Chernobyl.

“What’s the use?” a woman asked with a shrug. “Radiation is invisible, and it may take years to have any noticeable effect, so there’s not much you can do about it.”

With the approach of the first anniversary of the disaster, Soviet officials have begun a series of soothing announcements.

Reassurances Given

Nikolai F. Lukonin, minister of atomic energy, said measures already taken to improve safety “preclude the technological possibility of another accident similar to the one at Chernobyl.”

Work on modifying reactors, he said, would prevent “radioactive releases outside the reactor enclosure into the environment, even if a melting of the active (reactor) zone occurs for some reason.”

All workers and supervisors at nuclear power stations, he said, have been given special instructions in safety procedures.

Other Soviet officials have said that the number of control rods, which regulate the nuclear reaction, will be increased from 30 to 80 in RBMK-1000 reactors such as the one that blew up at Chernobyl. They have also promised to enrich the fuel supply, to increase stability and to put in a fast-acting emergency shutdown system.

On Saturday, officials announced that construction will be continued on only three more reactors of the Chernobyl type--at Smolensk, Kursk and Ignalina--and that two more reactors originally planned for Chernobyl will not be completed.

‘A Little Skeptical’

“We are a little skeptical that they have done it all,” a Western diplomat who specializes in science said of the modifications. “But the steps they are taking will probably ensure that there won’t be another disaster with the RBMK.”

Still, there is a strong feeling, he said, that the Soviets have not told the entire story of Chernobyl’s effects on public health.

Leonid Ilyin, a vice president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, has appeared on the main television news program and at news conferences in an effort to reassure the public on this score.

“The latest appraisals . . . make it possible to say confidently that the Chernobyl accident will not cause any sizable change in the cancer rate among the population,” Ilyin said the other day. “This refers also to the problem of genetic consequences. I am firmly convinced that we have coped with the situation.”

Casualty Update

He gave the following year-later casualty figures for the Chernobyl accident: 31 dead, 13 invalids unable to work and 196 cured of acute radiation sickness.

Despite Ilyin’s optimism, other Soviet officials have made it plain that they are still worried about the possible ill effects of long-lasting radioactive elements such as cesium 137 and strontium 90.

A report submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna last summer said that high concentrations of cesium 137 are likely to be found for a long time in vegetables grown in the Chernobyl area.

And as long as this material remains in the soil, it could jeopardize water supplies in the area, the report said. The area provides drinking water for the city of Kiev, 80 miles to the south.

Soviet authorities demonstrated their concern about this possibility by building more than 130 underwater dams or other barriers to try to prevent radioactive materials from getting into the Dnieper River.

Dairy Reopens

So far, officials say, the increase in radioactivity caused by soil runoff in spring flooding has been less than 1%.

Tass, the official Soviet news agency, said a dairy that was closed after the Chernobyl accident has recently reopened to provide milk, cottage cheese and sour cream to a village about 30 miles from the reactor site in the southern part of Byelorussia.

Nonetheless, warnings have been issued to the villagers against fishing in the Pripyat River in flood time. Water in the area’s wells is still monitored daily, and school vacations began early so that children could be sent to distant health resorts for the summer.

In Moscow, officials contend that life has returned to normal at the Chernobyl station, with the damaged reactor encased in concrete and two others back in operation. Decontamination work is continuing on Reactor No. 3, but it, too, is scheduled to be put back into operation soon, with safety modifications.

“They’re still very gung-ho on nuclear energy,” a Western scientist said. “They refuse to see our real concern, but they don’t want another embarrassment.”