Safety cameras ’not working’

Press, 11 May 1977, Page 9

Safety cameras ’not working’

In Vienna, well-informed ] sources have said that cam- s eras used at a nuclear reac-,£ tor station in Bulgaria to A guard against any theft of t material required for making <! atomic bombs had not worked properly since the v plfmt opened 18 months ago. i .The remote control cam-it eras were set up by thejr Iriternational Atomic Energy ;i Agency in a watchdog sys- 1 tern designed to prevent ura- c nium or plutonium, by-prod- e ucts of reactors, from being diverted for military pur-]a poses. a They cover four strategic ( points at the Kozlodui reac- c tor, north of Sofia, and were s installed in February, 1976. r Since then. say the; sources, they have been pla- I gued by electrical and, t mechanical faults which ■ have resulted in under-ex-] posed or over-exposed films. A or no films at all. i

Dr Rudolf Rometsch, in-spector-general of the safeguards section of the Vienna-based 1.A.E.A., said that he could not confirm or deny the reported faults. He said that if cameras were faulty, a complete physical inventory would have to be made of plutonium and uranium at the plant to see if any material had been removed, and the camera would probably be exchanged. LA.E.A. sources said that an inventory had been taken at the Kozlodui plant last October, but Dr Rometsch did not say whether this had shown that any material was missing. However, he said that the LA.E.A. had detected no diversion of nuclear material from civilian nuclear plants with a view to military use in its 20 years of existence.