‘76 E. German Nuclear Incident Described

East Germany in 1976 narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe on the scale of the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union, the West German magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday.

According to the magazine, a fire at the Lubmin nuclear power station, near Greifswald on the Baltic coast, almost led to a meltdown of the plant’s radioactive core when safety measures failed.