Russia Creates Agency to Oversee Nuclear Facilities

To prevent nuclear accidents like the 1986 Chernobyl power plant catastrophe, the Russian government has created a watchdog committee to oversee the country’s vast civilian and military nuclear facilities and the disposal of radioactive wastes, officials said Wednesday.

The announcement came even as Russian news agencies reported that a fire, caused by a short circuit, had prompted the early Wednesday shutdown of the Balakov nuclear power plant near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan. Authorities said the fire was extinguished quickly and no radiation was released.

But to avert nuclear mishaps that might threaten people and the environment, the Russian government created the new State Committee for Control Over Nuclear Facilities, analogous to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Alexander T. Gutsalov, committee deputy chairman, told a news conference.

The new committee’s existence is significant because, during the Soviet period, the Atomic Energy Ministry alone was charged with designing, building and controlling the safety of atomic reactors and disposing of nuclear wastes.

Now the powerful ministry--whose credibility and standing with the public was gravely damaged during the Chernobyl crisis--will be accountable to the new committee. The committee will also assist in drafting new laws and regulations for the country’s nuclear facilities and for the disposal of radioactive wastes in keeping with international standards.

During 1991, nine nuclear plants with a total of 28 reactors were in operation in Russia. Four of the reactors have recently been shut down for various reasons, especially safety, said Sergei A. Adamchik, who heads the committee’s atomic energy stations division.

The new committee is now investigating the nuclear power stations to judge their effect on the environment and local populations. Committee members are also researching how radioactive wastes are stored and disposed of.

Gutsalov said the committee members hope to extend research to include nuclear sites run by the military.

The committee plans to analyze the safety of all nuclear facilities and decide whether they can continue to exist as they are or if they need to be modernized or shut completely. “We are preparing to license all objects, civilian and military, new and existing,” Gutsalov said.

It is especially important to inspect nuclear facilities used by the military and the military-industrial complex because many of them are older than even the first-generation atomic energy stations, and thereby pose a greater potential danger, he said.

Special attention will also be given to the RBMK-1000 reactors, such as the one that exploded at Chernobyl in April, 1986, causing the world’s worst nuclear accident.

Two nuclear power stations with old RBMK-1000 reactors--one in Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, and another near the western Russian city of Kursk--have been ordered to cut their energy output, Adamchik said.