Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant CIA Files - Paperless Archives

Incidents in Soviet Nuclear Power Plants
Accidents In Soviet nuclear power plants were rarely
discussed before Chernobyl'. The Soviets have consistently
denied that such accidents had occurred. In
part. this is a problem of the Soviet definition of a
nuclear accident, which is so narrow that even the
Chernobyl' accident may not qualify. However, the
Soviets do report "incidents involving the nuclear
plants" to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Some of ihe incidents reported include:
• A leak of primary-cooling water through the
pressure-vessel-heat /lange seal in unit 3 of the
Kola nuclear reactor in 1983.
• Damage to one of the main circulation pumps In
unit I of South Ukraine nuclear plant in 1983.
• Co"osion-erosion damage caused steam-generator
, tubes to leak in unit 3 of Novovoronezh nuclear
power plant in 1983.
• Corrosion-erosion damage sWfered by the reactor
vessel at Kolskaya nuclear power plant in 1983.
• Shutdown of Kalinin's unit I because of malfunction
of pilot-operated relief valve of the pressurizer
in 1985.
• A primary coolant leak into a steam generator at
the Rovno nuclear power plant in 1982, which
damaged the uf1ltss steam generator and shut down
the plant. '
Reportedly these incidents did not involve the reactor
core nor caused any radiation damage:
There have been more serious accidents at Soviet
nuclear powerplants, according to Pyotr Neporozhnyy,
the former Minister of Power and Electrification,
including an explosion and a radiation leak. He
said to a US Congressman in 1987 that one accident
involved a rupturing of a coolant line, and another an
explosion that spread radioactive steam to other
parts of the unit.
Other sources have reported /ires and other accidents
'at plant facilities:
I
• c....
..lthere was afir~ In
the Armenian nuclear power plant in 1980-8;.
• In a series offictional short stories, which appeared
In the November 1986 monthly Journal Neva-but
reportedly were based on the personal experience of
Grigori} Medvedev, a senior engineer at a Soviet
nuclear facility-the author describes slipshod
sa/ety practices, dangerous cleanup techniques, and
a reactor power surge, similar to the one that
actually happened at the Chernobyl' plant, resulting
in several deaths,t:..,
, e/
Medvedev admonished the planners against p~
the Chernobyi' plant near Kiev more than a decade
ago,
On II September 1987, Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya
gave a list of 368 accidents in Soviet nuclear and
conventional plants that happened between 1981 and
1984. They we~e all caused by plant operator error.
according to the paper. It did not say how many
accidents of the total took place In a nuclear plant
and how many 'in a conventional plant, or list other
nonoperator-caused accidents.
force. Soviet sources say some 120,000 persons have
been completely and permanently rehoused (see figure
7). In addition, many fled on their own from nearhv
cities such as Kiev. Chernigov, and Gome~ .
. ..J A samlzdat letterfrom the
Ukraine, which appeared in the Paris emigre paper
Russkaya Mys!', puts the number of those who left
Kiev on their own at 150,000. Housing asshzned to the
Chemobyl refugees have added to the chronic shortages
in Kiev, Chernigov, and other cities. The former
Premier Aleksandr Lyashko said that upward of
13,000 apartments will be needed to be replaced in
the city of Kiev alone
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