Soviets to open N-plants

Press, 10 August 1985, Page 11

Soviets to open N-plants

NZPA-Reuter Vienna The Soviet Union would open two civilian nuclear plants to international inspection this month, sources in the International Atomic Energy Agency said yesterdav. It would be the first time that Moscow had allowed the Vienna-based United Nations agency to inspect any of its nuclear installations, they said. The inspection would coincide with the opening on August 27 of a month-long conference of 128 countries in Geneva to review the working of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,

which came into force 15 years ago. It will assess measures to restrict the spread of nuclear weapons. Western diplomats said that the move was a political gesture to demonstrate Moscow’s support for the non-proliferation agreement. The I.A.E.A. sources said that the installations to be opened to inspection were a pressurised-water reactor at Novo-Voronezh, near Moscow, and a research reactor at a so far undisclosed location. The pressurised-water reactor is used in electricity generation and research reactors are used for experiments in medicine and agri-

culture. Both reactors were designed for export as well as domestic use, the sources said. Under the safeguard arrangements of the non-pro-liferation treaty, I.A.E.A. inspectors can monitor civilian nuclear facilities to verify how they work and to make sure nuclear fuel is not being diverted for military purposes. Apart from the original three nuclear Powers — the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain — signatories to the treaty agreed to renounce the use of nuclear weapons. The three nuclear Powers pledged to

work for nuclear disarmament. France and China, which have also publicly developed nuclear weapons have not signed the agreement. France, and the United States and Britain, has opened civilian nuclear plants to inspection to support the treaty. The Soviet Union said in February that it would do the same. Western diplomats said that it was likely both super-Powers would face criticism by Third World nations and others at Geneva that they had not done enough to fulfil their treaty commitment to promote nuclear disarmament.