Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

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335
ES, TUESDAY. JUNE 3. 1986
NEW YORK TIMES
Letters
Don't Let Chernobyl Cripple U.S. Nuclear Industry
To the Editar:
With reganl to your May 1» frontpage
report that the Oternobyl nuclear
reactor had more safety features
and was closer to American design
than was assumed immediately
after the plant accident, we would
like to malie it dear that we are not
among the "experts" who have
changed our minds about the structure
of the Chernobyl reactor. We
have had accurate informatioD and
have been attempting to describe It to
the public and the press.
The Chernobyl reactor has no cootainment
in the sense we and other
safety analysts in the U.S. use the
word. In ordinary operation, the core
and graphite moderator are anTuied
behiixl barriers and covered by an
inert nitrogen gas; but these barriers
can be easily breached as they clearly
were on April 26. The difference between
confinement under favorable
circumstances and containment under
unfavorable ones is crudal.
In commercial U.S. reactors, there
is a large, strong, tested containment
to be the problem at Chernobyl.
The Chernobyl reactor is of the
RMBK 1,000 type, the most easily
available drawing of which is for one
built at Leningrad. But we recently
learned that the accident at unit 4 at
Chernobyl took place in a reactor
where a pressure-suppression pool had
been added under the reactor, as well
as strong structure around the steam
collectors and headers. This should reduce
pressure rise in case one of the
water pipes under the reaaor breaks
— one of the four most obvious accident
scenarios. It seems to have
played oo part in the April 26 accident
until cleanup, when the pool was emptied
of water. The reactor core was not
inside a strong containment, although
there is a thick biological shield above
the reactor. The building is oot filled
with inert gas, as are the containments
of reactors such as Sborefaam.
There are many lessons to be
learned from this accident: the importance
of containment and the danger
of fire, both of which we alrea4y
knew ; the slowness of accident devolopment,
which allowed time for an
unrehearsed, but orderly evmcuatica.
and that even downwind in Sweden
the effects were smaller than might
have been feared. We want to find cot
exactly what happened and further
insure that it was not a sequence of
events that we have forgotten. We
want to learn from the Russian* thetr
L' — '— »
—~^ _i— .. S ^Hit ; !0
cleamq) procedures, which we hope
never to be forced to use flrsthand.
It would be ironic If unreasonable
fear caused us to cripple our nuclear
electric capeblUty as a result of this
Russian accident, which caused us no
harm and would not have occurred in
LinnDrapek
Eowm L. Zebroski
RjCHAiiD Wilson
Cambridge, Mass., May 20, 1986
DieU,S.
The writers art, respectively, president
of Gul/ State Utilities ; a nuclear
gdentist with Electric Power Retearch
Institute, and a professor of
physics at Harvard University.
What the Figures Mean
To the Editor:
Your article on concern over Eastem
European cancers as a result of
the Cheroobyl accident (May 16)
quoted "tenutive and highly inexact"
estimates by Dr. Thomas B. Cochran
and myself of the long-term health implications
of radioactive pollution by
the nuclear-plant accident.
structure designed to withstand the We stressed that although the estimates
of thousands of extra caiKer
rise in pressure for days in case of accident.
II should hold in the event of Are deaths and tens of thousands of thyroid
problems over the next decades
and station blackout, which appeared
seem large, the risk to any individuals
other than those near the plant
would be low. The large numbers are
the result of adding very small individual
risks over a very large population.
This was not made explicit, and
we are concerned that the article may
feed rather than reduce the extraorxiinary
fear of radioactivity from Chernobyl
so evident in Europe.
Even 10,000 cancer deaths among a
population of 100 million in Eastern
Oa«la> Flcflaa
Europe wtwld raise the risk of cancer
death of the average person by coly
about .06 percent, e.g., from 20 percent
to 20.01 percent. The extra cancer
deaths from Chernobyl will therefore
be lost in the sea of cancer deaths
that would have occurred in any case.
The increased incideiKe of nonfatal
thyroid problems from inhalation
and ingestion of radioactive Iodine
131 is likely to be greater, but
even if there are 100,000 extra thyroid
cases, the average individual will
have only one extra chance in 1,000 of
developing a Cbemobyl-induced thyroid
problem.
Of course, the anonymity of most of
the victims of Chernobyl does not
make the accident any less of « disaster.
Like the equally catastrophic
chemical accident at Union Carbide's
Bhopal plant, the Chernobyl accident
tells us that we have to improve tite
designs of faciUties containing such
huge quai'.tities of volatile toxic materials.
This is why the reaction of the
U.S. and Western European nuclear
industries and their r^ulators, "It
couldn't happen here," is so disturtv
ing.
Frank von Hi ppel
Pnrf. of Public and International
Affairs, Princeton University
Princeton, N.J., May 17. 1966
•
Construction Problems
To the Editor:
An interesting article has come to
tight about conditions at the Chernobyl
plant, published in the Ukrainianlanguage
Literatuma Ukraina March
27, 1986, almost a month before the
nuclear accident. The author, Lyubov
Kovalevska, probably an engineer at
Chernobyl, recited shortcomings, excerpts
of which include:
"The time allocated for Its construction
was reduced from three
years to two, and building work began
in 19SS witb minimal supplies . .
With the tightening of plans that were
already tight, it turned out that no one
was ready — neither the designers,
nor the suppUers, nor the builders
themselves . . . The low quality of design
and costing documentation . .
caused additional labor expenditure
and caUed for reworlong, and great
material and moral efforts ... In a
word, all the shortcomings of the
building process, which are unfortunately
typical, became acute and apparent
... In 1385 some 45,500 cubic
meters of prefabricated reinforced
concrete was ordered; 3,200 were
missing, and of the C300 cubic
meters received, 6,000 were faulty."
A fuller quotation and discussion is
in the May 14 issue of Soviet Analyst
(London). Eluot R. Goodman
Providence, R.I., May 23, 1986
The writer is professor of political
science at Brown University.
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