Western experts rule out N-accident

Press, 30 August 1986, Page 11

Western experts rule out N-accident

NZPA-Reuter Vienna Western experts were ending today week-long talks on the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear accident in April convinced that it could never happen in their own countries. The 500 technical experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency say they now have a good grasp of the human and design errors that led to the explosion in the Soviet Union, which killed 31 people and spewed radiation across Europe. They say that an accident like that at Chernobyl could not be repeated in Western nuclear reactors and that the Soviet RBMK-type reactor of the kind used at Chernobyl needs serious safety improvements. Pierre Tanguy, head of nuclear safety at Electricite de France, who led

discussions of engineering aspects of the catastrophe, said: “The lessons are specific to the Chernobyl reactor type, but contribute to the general improvement of our knowledge of physical and chemical phenomenon which are important for the safety of all nuclear plants.” Medical experts have praised Soviet participants for enabling them to draw lessons on decontamination, evacuation, and other emergency measures in case of another nuclear accident. Western radiological experts said yesterday that their earlier estimate of about 24,000 potential cancer deaths in the Soviet Union as a result of Chernobyl may have been 10 times too high. An Argentinian doctor, Dan Bennison, chairing the talks on medical consequences, said the ex-

perts now predicted some 2000 cancer deaths. This would be in addition to the expected 9.5 million other cancer deaths among the 75 million people living in the European region of the Soviet Union over the next 70 years. Dr Bennison, of Argentina’s National Atomic Energy Commission, said experts had reduced their forecast after Soviet colleagues explained that Moscow’s collective radiation dose had been a maximum projection. Leonid Ilyin, of the Soviet Academy of Science, said, “In the Soviet Union, it is the firm practice to take the maximum probability for the occurrence of any event.

“If we had given information based on a minimum dose, we would have been accused of trying to hide something.”