U.S., Soviets Sign Accord on Nuclear Power Safety

The United States and the Soviet Union marked the second anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster Tuesday by signing an agreement that provides for the first formal cooperation in nuclear safety between Moscow and Washington in a decade.

The chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Adm. Lando W. Zech Jr., called the memorandum of understanding a “historic agreement” between the two countries that should lead to a new flow of information on regulatory policies, safety research and the design, construction and management of civilian nuclear power plants.

The agreement, which is to be administered by a six-member commission on each side, was signed at the State Department by Zech and the chairman of the Soviet State Committee for the Utilization of Atomic Energy, Alexander N. Protsenko.

Harold R. Denton, a senior NRC official, said the five-year agreement “holds the possibility of normalizing our relationship” in the area of civilian nuclear safety. Although the Soviets allowed a U.S. team to visit Chernobyl after the accident, regular exchange visits ended in 1978, a year before the less severe nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

In a briefing before the signing ceremony, Zech said it was a coincidence, “but a very significant” one, that the agreement was concluded exactly two years after operators at the Chernobyl plant near Kiev deliberately disabled safety systems during a safety experiment, then lost control of the reactor. The ensuing explosion and fire--at a plant Western experts later concluded was inherently unstable--led to at least 31 deaths, the evacuation of 135,000 people and a cloud of radioactive fallout that dusted much of the Northern Hemisphere.

The new agreement comes amid reports in the official Soviet press of continuing problems at the three surviving Chernobyl reactor units, including faulty work in installing new safety systems. A senior Soviet nuclear safety official, Victor A. Sidorenko, confirmed that deficiencies have continued to plague the Chernobyl plant over the last two years.

In a brief conversation at the State Department ceremony, Sidorenko, who is deputy chairman of a newly created State Committee on Supervision of Nuclear Power Safety, said the problems involve defects in the newly installed safety systems as well as weaknesses in the plant’s management.

He said the plant’s top management was replaced “a few months ago” and that Chernobyl remains under observation by a special government commission that was set up after the accident.