Fire May Spur Calls to Close Chernobyl

A fire that destroyed part of the roof of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant Friday night did not cause injuries or a radiation leak, the government said Saturday. But the incident is certain to intensify calls to shut down the plant.

The blaze, which also forced the shutdown of a nuclear reactor, was the worst accident at the Ukrainian plant since the 1986 disaster that spewed radiation throughout Europe.

“We cannot sit on this powder keg any longer,” Vladimir Yavorivsky, head of a Ukrainian parliamentary commission on Chernobyl, told reporters in Kiev, 80 miles south of the plant.

Whether to close the plant quickly, or wait for a replacement to be built, already is a major campaign issue in the Ukraine’s first popular presidential election, scheduled for Dec. 1.

Public sentiment against nuclear energy is strong--a legacy of the April 26, 1986, explosion and fire at Chernobyl that spewed radiation around the world and caused at least 32 deaths in the worst disaster in the history of nuclear power.

Three of the power plant’s four reactors have continued operating since then.

Yevgeny Ignatenko, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Atomic Power Industry in Moscow, said Friday’s fire broke out as a turbine driven by the plant’s No. 2 reactor was being idled for repairs. The 1986 disaster involved the No. 4 reactor, now permanently out of commission.

Ignatenko said that in the midst of the planned shutdown, “an automatic switch turned the reactor on again,” producing a surge of current that ignited the insulating material on some electric cables.

His statement, carried by Tass, said the initial fire was extinguished within a minute. However, some hydrogen leaked into the turbine room and burst into flames, setting the roof ablaze and destroying a truss, the statement said. About 390 square feet of roof collapsed.

The fire was put out within 3 1/2 hours late Friday, before it could spread into the reactor room, Tass said.

The reactor was shut down as a precaution.