Gorbachev tours Chernobyl

Press, 25 February 1989, Page 12

Gorbachev tours Chernobyl

NZPA-Reuter Moscow The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is in trouble again, Soviet officials told Mikhail Gorbachev on the day he visited the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident. The Kremlin leader and his wife, Raisa, donned white protective smocks on Thursday for their first tour of the plant where a reactor caught fire and exploded in 1986, killing at least 31 people and spreading radioactivity across Europe. The plant director, Mikhail Umanyets, told Mr Gorbachev that one of Chernobyl’s three surviving reactors had been shut down because of an electrical fault. “There was an electrical part not functioning normally. The block stopped without any consequences,” Mr Umanyets said as he showed Mr Gorbachev around the power station. The scene was shown on Soviet television. The April, 1986, accident involved

reactor No. 4. It has been entombed in concrete and there are no plans to use it again. Outside the plant, the television camera showed a fleeting glimpse of the wrecked fourth reactor before switching to workers waiting for Mr Gorbachev. The Soviet leader said he shared growing public concern about the environment and said a Chernobyltype disaster must not be allowed to happen again. Before his tour, the newspaper “Selskaya Zhizn” reported that nearly three years after the accident, food around Chernobyl was still contaminated and official action to deal with the aftermath of the disaster had proved inadequate. It said officials had failed to ensure proper conditions for people living in areas affected by fallout from the plant in , the Ukraine. Nearly one-fifth of milk production and 1.7 per cent of meat production from farms near the power station

but outside the 30-km (18-mile) evacuation zone exceeded permitted radioactivity levels. The workers complained to Mr Gorbachev that Soviet newspapers should write more about nuclear power and its importance to Soviet society. ‘ Work on six Soviet atomic power stations has been stopped after the Chernobyl accident and public opposition to nuclear power has grown. In a speech to several thousand workers in Kiev, Mr Gorbachev said he welcomed the concern over the environment. The Soviet Union is facing a surge of environmental problems following massive Government industrial and irrigation projects. The Volga River, the Aral Sea and Siberia’s Lake Baikal are under threat while air pollution has caused outbreaks of illness in several cities.