By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — If a nuclear accident on the scale of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster were to occur in Russia, would the population be told immediately of the catastrophe and acquainted with the dangers?
If the accident occurred in one of the secret centres of Russia's nuclear industry, the answer might well be "no". This is the conclusion of many environmental activists here after an explosion occurred in a plutonium processing plant in the Urals on July 17, radiation was released — and the public were told nothing for two days.
Only on the third day did officials of the Atomic Energy Ministry and the State Inspectorate of Nuclear and Radiation Safety, responding to a chorus of demands from the mass media, issue brief and uninformative statements. By this time, journalists already had on their desks many details of the accident obtained from unofficial sources by the environmental organisation Greenpeace Russia.
The accident occurred in Plant 45 of the Mayak Production Combine in the closed city of Chelyabinsk-65 in the southern Urals. Until recently so secret that it was not even marked on maps, Chelyabinsk-65 is still off limits to foreigners. The Mayak combine recycles used reactor fuel rods, extracting plutonium and using it to prepare fresh nuclear fuel. Early in 1993 Mayak concluded a contract to supply plutonium for use in the US space industry; Plant 45 is believed to be involved in filling this contract.
According to statements by the nuclear authorities, the accident resulted from an "irregular situation" in a 20-litre absorption column used for the separation of plutonium. A mixture of hydrogen and oxygen accumulated and ignited, and the explosion partially destroyed the vessel. The deputy director of Mayak reported "local contamination of a small area surrounding the installation". No personnel were exposed to radiation.
Officials stated that a total of 0.2 millicuries of radiation in the form of alpha particles was released into the atmosphere via the plant's ventilation system. This was only 3% of the maximum permissible daily release of radiation, leading the Atomic Energy Ministry to claim that the accident should be rated at one on the International Atomic Energy Agency's seven-point scale — that is, as a minor, basically insignificant mishap.
Greenpeace was not so sure. Spokespeople for the organisation noted a series of cases in which nuclear industry officials had gravely understated the scale of accidents. One of the most striking examples occurred on April 6, when an explosion and fire occurred in a fuel reprocessing plant near the city of Tomsk-7 in Siberia.
In that case, the Atomic Energy Ministry claimed initially that no more than about 1000 square metres had been contaminated, and that the were "limited to the territory of the plant". Within days, however, it became clear that the area contaminated was as much as 200 square kilometres.
Also at Tomsk-7, official statements at first denied that the accident had involved the release of plutonium. However, plutonium salts were indeed among the debris — and a large area of forest will now remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.
After the July 17 accident, the officials avoided the dissimulations of April; they said nothing. Secrecy at Chelyabinsk-65, however, is not what it was, and Russian environmentalist networks were soon abuzz with information. The authorities maintained a glum silence. Even after finally admitting that an accident had occurred, officials would say only that "a commission has begun work" and that "we will report in full on the findings of the investigation".
Three days after the release of radioactivity, journalists for the Moscow daily Izvestia were still complaining that they "could not obtain detailed, clear, exhaustive information from the Russian nuclear authorities" on what had happened. A journalist for Nezavisimaya Gazeta complained that it had taken him "three hours to get half a page of minimal information from the State Inspectorate of Nuclear and Radiation Safety".
The sensitivity of the authorities to the topic of accidents at Chelyabinsk-65 is understandable. In 1957, the area was the site of history's second-worst nuclear accident, surpassed only by Chernobyl. An explosion blasted between 70 and 80 tons of radioactive material into the environment, contaminating 217 towns and villages and forcing the evacuation of nearly 11,000 people. The Soviet government only admitted 30 years later that the disaster had occurred.
Accidents, ranging from the minor but unnerving to the catastrophic, are likely to become an increasingly common feature of the nuclear fuel cycle in Russia as state funding dwindles, ageing equipment is not replaced and employees become demoralised. The officials' habit of secrecy and of issuing falsely reassuring statements means that environmentalists have to treat every rumour of an accident with rigorous seriousness.
Meanwhile, the folly of continuing to process plutonium was summed up after the July 17 accident by Greenpeace Russia Coordinator Dmitri Litvinov: "There is absolutely no need for this production to be occurring at all. Russia is overloaded with plutonium. We are talking about accidents in the production of material the world doesn't need."