Chernobyl Plant

* Ludmilla Thorne’s article “No Peace for Chernobyl’s Victims” (Commentary, April 29) misses an important point. The problem was not the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and is not the 15 other Chernobyl-type reactors in the former Soviet Union, however obsolete they may be.

Grigori Medvedev’s meticulous chronology (“The Truth About Chernobyl”) showed that the disaster was not due to the reactor but to the damn fool people running the plant. The supervisor deliberately pushed the reactor to its limits to see what would happen, like a kid playing chicken on a trestle in front of an onrushing locomotive.

The report of 20,000 “safety” violations in 1993 shows that the damn fools are still in charge.

V. B. KNIGHT

Dana Point

* After reading the column on the lasting damage from the Chernobyl disaster, I think that we should be especially concerned that our tax dollars do not go toward creating another similar disaster. The U.S. Export-Import Bank has developed a financing scheme to complete the Temelin nuclear power plant in the Czech Republic, using American tax dollars.

Temelin--which relies on the same flawed, outdated technology that caused the disaster at Chernobyl eight years ago--will cost around $420 million to complete.

The project has widespread opposition within the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria. In the U.S., Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House subcommittee, along with several other members, has expressed deep concerns.

We need to write to our congressmen now to urge them to block the funding completion of the Temelin reactor with our tax dollars.

CAROL J. TARBELL

Brea