Emergency Similar to One in Japan Less Likely in U.S.

As the Clinton administration scrambled Thursday to help Japan cope with a radiation leak at a nuclear fuel processing facility, U.S. industry and watchdog groups said that a similar accident is highly unlikely in the United States because of technical improvements and safeguards imposed during the past 35 years.

In addition, several U.S. scientists criticized Japan’s nuclear industry for sloppy procedures and a notoriously poor safety record.

At the White House, President Clinton pledged to “do whatever we possibly can that will be helpful” to Japan. “We will try to be as comprehensive and prompt about it as possible.

“This is going to be a very hard day for the people of Japan,” Clinton said.

Stuart Nagurka, an Energy Department spokesman, said nuclear experts at the department had spoken by telephone with their Japanese counterparts to offer advice about radiation exposure and how best to stop the runaway chain reaction, called a “criticality,” which reportedly had been halted today in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo.

“We are putting together a list of our assets, things we can do to help, whether it’s use of robots or some sort of response team,” Nagurka said. High-tech robots are deployed in areas deemed unsafe for human workers.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson told CNN in a telephone interview from Russia that the U.S. and Moscow were prepared to send a joint emergency response team to help alleviate the crisis. Japan later requested information and research on dealing with nuclear disasters.

U.S. government and industry records show that 21 nuclear fuel processing accidents occurred in the United States between August 1945, shortly after the dawn of the Atomic Age, and July 1964, when a technician died of a massive overdose of radiation at a then-new facility at Wood River Junction in Rhode Island. In 1964, better safety procedures were implemented.

French nuclear authorities insist that the U.S. has had 33 such incidents. They said Thursday’s accident in Japan marked the 60th “criticality” in the world since 1945.

The lone recorded incident in California occurred in 1963 at the University of California’s Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore. According to a government report of the incident, 55 pounds of enriched uranium was mishandled, but no one was injured.

Since the mid-1960s, U.S. officials argue, new designs and safety procedures have sharply reduced the danger of such accidents.

“You just don’t see them in the United States anymore,” said Thomas Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the National Resources Defense Council, a privately funded, Washington-based environmental watchdog group.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, said the Tokaimura incident was “extremely serious” because several workers received potentially fatal doses of radiation and because scientists were initially unable to stop the chain reaction.

But he added, “This is not Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.” Tiny amounts of radiation may get into the jet stream that flows in the upper atmosphere, “but it’s nothing to lose any sleep over. This is very localized.”

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission outlines four methods for reducing the likelihood of a self-sustaining chain reaction during production of nuclear reactor fuel and requires facilities to employ at least two of them.

Chambers that hold uranium have been redesigned to prevent overloading, for example. Initial reports from Japan suggest that workers placed 35.2 pounds of enriched uranium powder into an acid-filled tank, rather than 5.2 pounds. That apparently set off the accident Thursday.

“Every nuclear engineer understands criticality and how it happens, so typically, fuel plants are designed so this can’t occur,” Cochran said.

Felix Killar, a scientist at the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents the nuclear industry in Washington, said U.S. regulations also require two employees to be present to double-check each other. “We do what we call a double contingency factor,” he said.

But David Lochbaum, a nuclear science engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog group, said the U.S. industry is complacent about the danger at home. “It wasn’t the Keystone Kops in Japan,” he said. “They had rules. They had controls.”

The U.S. has seven commercial fuel fabrication facilities, according to the Energy Department. They comprise a plant in Hematite, Mo., owned by ABB Combustion Engineering; another in Wilmington, N.C., owned by General Electric; another in Columbia, S.C., owned by Westinghouse; two in Lynchburg, Va., one of which is owned by Framatome Cogema Fuels and the other by BWX Technologies; one in Richland, Wash., owned by Siemens Power Corp.; and one in Erwin, Tenn., owned by Nuclear Fuel Services.

Several nuclear critics portrayed the Japanese nuclear industry as especially unsafe, arguing that it faces extreme political and economic pressure at home from a public that fears nuclear power.

“This may turn out to be another example of corner-cutting in the Japanese nuclear industry,” said Damon Moglin, a Washington-based nuclear specialist at Greenpeace International.

“It sounds like they were under pressure to produce fuel, and it was being done in a very dangerous fashion,” Moglin said.

Times staff writer Eric Slater in Chicago contributed to this story.

News updates relating to the nuclear accident in Japan are available on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com.

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Nuclear Glossary

Nuclear reaction: a change in the structure of a nucleus, involving fission, fusion or radioactive decay.

Nuclear radiation: particles and rays given off during a nuclear reaction.

Criticality: fission’s uncontrolled release, which occurs when a nuclear chain reaction becomes self-sustaining.

U-235: form of uranium that is used as nuclear fuel because it easily undergoes fission.

Isotopes: different forms of the same element. The atoms that make up the different forms are also called isotopes.