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• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP94B00280R000700170006-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 25
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 18, 2011
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: May 15, 1986
• Content Type: REPORT

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wt=
q '---i NEW YORK TIMES
ON PACE 2 May 1986
n
?4.
FIRE IN REACTOR MAY BE OUT,
NEW U.S. PICTURES INDI!ATE;'
SOVIET SAYS FALLOUT IS CUT
By BERNARD GWERTZMAN 9Moscow turned down an offer by
Special to The New York Timm President Reagan to supply assistance,
WASHINGTON, May 1- The United but it invited Dr. Robert Gale, chair-
States said today that the Soviet Union man of the International Bone Marrow
might have smothered the fire that Transplant Registry, to fly to the
raged for the last five days at a nuclear Soviet Union to provide medical assiat-
reactor in the Ukraine. ance to the victims of the disaster.
In addition, a French communica. Bone-marrow transplant is used to help
tions satellite took pictures today that victims of severe radiation sickness.
suggested the fire might have ben The Russians have also solicited simi-
smothered, a report from Sweden said, lar non-governmental assistance in Eu-
The accident at the Chernobyl reac-' rope, while declining direct govern-
tor, 70 miles north of Kiev, spewed- ment offers. -
radioactive material into the atmos. qln a highly unusual move, a Soviet
phere that has drifted into many Euro- diplomat appeared before a House
pean countries. committee looking into the affair. The
Only a day after it predicted that the diplomat said that the consequences of
severely damaged reactor might con- the accident were not over and that
tinue to burn for weeks, pan American people both. inside and outside the
interagency panel said this afternoon Soviet Union still faced danger.
that the latest Air Force reconnais- The Soviet Government, facing
sance photos made it "plausible" that worldwide criticism for the paucity
the Soviet Union had put out the fire, as and delay in the information it has
Moscow contended Wednesday after- made available, made undertook a
noon that it had done. But the group major effort to persuade other govern-
said it lacked definitive evidence to ments that the situation was under con-
make a firm conclusion. trvj and that steps were being taken to
Helicopters Sighted at Plant
American officials said special
Soviet civil-defense forces, in helicop-
ters, had been observed dropping ma-
terial, believed to be wet sand, over the
fire into the graphite that encased the
nuclear fuel rods in the reactor.
The task force members also said
they could not confirm speculation that
there was damage to a second reactor
at the Chernobyl plant. They said apos_
sible "hot spot" close to tb' t`g.td
reactor was not at.other reactor but
some other industrial building. 'it-ere
clear up the area near the reactor. A
violent explosion apparently occurred
at,'the reactor last Saturday, but be-
came known to the outside world only
last Monday. .
There continued to be uncertainty
about the number of casualties in-
Vol'ved in the blast and the subsequent
fire and radioactive dispersion. Secre-
tary, of State George P. Shultz, without
'citing exact figures, said in Indonesia
that the United States believed the
casualty total exceeded the official
Soviet figures "by a good measure."
But. the American interagency panel
roAintained that it still had no firm
numbers to cite in contradiction to
those announced by Moscow.
'A Huge Problem'
'When asked if the Soviet Union now
'had-the situation under control, a mem-
ber of the American interagency panel
indicated that the problem was far
'front over.
"Radiation is no doubt deposited on
the, ground, people have been ex-
Oosed," the member, Harold Denton,
said
"The
have a h
.
y
uge problem in re-
re-
talized, of whom 18 were listed today as
Y -bard to cleanup."
in serious condition. It said the amount .Lee M. Thomas, administrator of the
of radiation near the power station had Environmental-' Protection Agency,
declined. who heads the panel, said, "To us, it is
a major accident, probably and possi-
blythe most major accident at a nu-
clear facility that has occurred."
are four reactors at Chernobyl.
The American interagency canai and
European nations said the air :asp.
carrying radioactive particles was now
widely dispersed throughout northern
Europe and Polar regions and should
begin to move east over the next week.
There were these developments:
9The Soviet Government said decon-
tamination teams were cleaning up the
area around Chenrobyl, where it said 2
people were killed and 197 were hospi-
0"It is a significant cause for con-
cbrn," he said.
-'On Wednesday, Mr. Denton, director
'bf the office of reactor regulation in the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a
nierhber of the panel, said the fire in
the damaged reactor, known as unit
fatty, was likely to burn for weeks un-
less it was put out. ,He said then that it
wtrfid be difficult to extinguish.
This morning, Mr. Thomas said on
'television that the fire was continuing
to burn, although the amount of radio-
?dttive material emitted would grow
-pf ogressively smaller as the fire con-
'titilted.
$utaccordIn to several Administfa-
A~-n-ETM-na-g- when interagency
~an~l met with intelligence officials
later t his morning to examine the lat-
est reconnaissance photos, a debate
ensued as to whether there still was a-
fire burning.
Photos taken Wednesday, officials
said, clearly showed white smoke com-
ing from the damaged reactor. The
photos taken today lacked such smoke,
they said, but instead had a kind of
haze over the area, which some ana-
lysts believed might be smoke and
others said was not.
This new intelligence led to a re-
eva uation of what the Unit States
had been saving, one official'said. "It
could be that the Soviet Union has actu-
ally put it out." an officiaTs-
Charles E. Redman, a State Depart-
ment spokesman, said that "concern-
ing the fire, the best.we have is that we
have seen reports that the fire is out."
"We, of course, hope that that's
true," he said, "but we can't confirm
that independently as yet. I can't con-
firm that the fire is out, so conversely.
neither could I confirm that it's still
burning."
If, in fact, it turns out that the fire
has been smothered, it will somewhat
enhance Soviet credibility. Daily, brief
reports from Moscow have been
greeted throughout the week with deep
skepticism.
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Shultz Faults Soviet
This morning, speaking with report-
ers in Indonesia, where he is accompa-
nying President Reagan, Mr. Shultz
castigated the Soviet Union for tailing
to meet its obligations by providing
"full and prompt information" to other
nations that might be contaminated
from the Chernobyl accident.
"I think by this time we have a much
fuller picture than the Soviets are
presenting tc us," Mr. Shultz said, "or,
for that matter, to their own people."
He declined to estimate the number
of casualties, except to say that the
number exceeded the total announced
by the Russians "by a good measure."
Much of the concern on Wednesday
was whether another "hot spot" seen
on satellite photos of the Chenrobyl
plant was that of the adjacent reactor,
unit three. If it had exploded in a way
similar to unit four, it would have led to
more radioactive material being
spewed into the atmosphere.
Mr. Denton said today that "the data
we have today continue to support the
view that unit three is not involved in
this event."
State Dept. Cautions on Travel
The interagency panel noted that the
State Department had recommended
against traveling to the Kiev area, but
had decided not to advise against
travel to the Soviet Union, Scandinavia
and Eastern Europe, the areas hit
hardest by the release of radiation ma-
terials.
But the department urged caution.
"Americans planning travel to the
Soviet Union and adjacent countries,"
the department said, "should carefully
monitor press reports on this rapidly
changing situation to make as fully in-
formed a decision as possible with re-
spect to their travel plans. They should
bear in mind that many of these coun-
tries have reported increased levels of
radiation in the environment."
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STAT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
A?41f+1 ft pfol(t312LagF11 I .,
ON PAGE
9
IF
o W tO29 wo w?' s. 17 2&@ lyr9
"dead zone" off-limits to all
humans, according to one
U.S. government source.
"There's every indication
there's widespread serious
contamination around that
plant (at Chernobyl)," said
Harold Denton, director of
nuclear reactor regulations
at the Nuclear Regulatory
"months and years" to
decontaminate water and
soil laced with deadly
levels of radioactivity,
American experts pre-
dicted yesterday.
The staggering cost and
danger involved in a cleanup
might force the Soviets to
declare some of the region a
WASHINGTON -It
will cost the Soviets
many billions of rubles
to clean up the worst
nuclear reactor disaster
in history and it will take
No- Vko*VMn en
there a long time in the food.
stuffs and in the water."
On NBC-TV's "beet the
Press." Denton said he
thought land near the plant
"would have to remain un-
used for a long time"-a
period he said would be
"months and years."
B9059 imake a eRaeke
One American nuclear ex-
pert put it more bluntly:
"The Soviets will have to go
one of two directions in cop-
ing with the most contamin-
ated part-either they'll use
half-measures to decontamin-
ate and bring it back into
production while lying to
their people, the way they
have so far, or they'll realize
there is no cost-effective way
to bring that land back to life
for many, many years and
will just declare it off-limits
to everybody."
The Soviets reportedly
faced a similar situation 30
years ago when an explosion
contaminated a wide area
near Kyshtym in the eastern
Ural 11Vlountains
Accordi
.\
ng
term nuclides (radioactive
Particles) are to ubhshed re orts from'
going to be.,..,--
e :... an emigre
Commission.
Commission. "A lot of long-
Soviet scientists 30 villages
were abandoned ter tTtat
accident, more than
square miles were declared a
"_dead zone" and a river was
rerouted to avoid con min-
ation.
Weanwhile, officials at the
interagency fast{ force
monitoring the accident and
its fallout said the radioac-
tive plume was spreading
both east and west,--now
straddling half the planet.
It was bringing more toxic
material into Europe and
continuing its journey to the
Pacific Ocean, depositing
higher than normal levels of
radioactivity in a rainfall
about 1011 miles from Tokyo
yesterday morning.
It will not arrive in the
United States for "several
days, if at all."
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WASHINGTON TIMES
5 May 1986
Summit leaders expected to rap
Soviets over Chernobyl secrecy
By Mary Belcher
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
TOKYO - President Reagan and
six other world leaders are expected
today to denounce Soviet secrecy re-
garding the Chernobyl nuclear di-
saster and call for prompt and full
disclosure of any future accidents.
After privately discussing the
power plant accident at a three-hour
dinner last night, the summit lead-
ers ordered their aides to draft a
statement on the disaster that oc-
curred 10 days ago.
White House spokesman Larry
Speakes said the leaders agreed on
the need to strengthen nuclear
safety procedures and to establish
requirements for timely accident re-
ports.
Since the Chernobyl accident
administration officials
April 25,
said they have received more infor-
mation from unnamed intelligence
sources than from the Soviet govern-
ment.
They say they still do not know the
cause or extent of the accident, the
number of dead and injured, and
whether the fire at the power plant
has been extinguished or continues
to smolder.
Mr. Speakes said he did not know
if the seven Western leaders will ap-
peal as a group to Soviet leader Mi-
khail Gorbachev for full disclosure
of the Chernobyl accident. Mr.
Speakes said each of the summit na-
tions - including the United States,
Britain, Canada, Italy, France, West
Germany and Japan - has con-
tacted the Soviets separately.
The leaders last night discussed
making the Vienna-based Interna-
tional Atomic Energy Agency the
enforcement vehicle for interna-
tional cooperation on nuclear safety
and accident reporting.
White House Chief of Staff Don-
ald Regan called Soviet secrecy
about the Chernobyl accident "an
outrage"
"We think that with over a third of
the world's population directly af-
fected by this accident, that they
have a moral obligation to tell the
world what's going on," Mr. Regan
said on NBC-TV.
"To try to stonewall it, to keep the
information themselves and let the
rest of the world try to figure out
whether they're in danger'or not, is
beyond what civilized nations should
do;' Mr. Regan said.
Secretary of State George Shultz
said there is considerable doubt that
only two people died in the accident,
as the Soviets contend.
He said on ABC-TV yesterday that
U.S. photographs show "intense"
heat and radiation levels in the vicin-
ity, as well as fire engines and other
emergency equipment remaining at
the site.
Mr. Speakes said the Soviets
"claimed" to have used helicopters to
drop sand, lead shot and boron on the
fire. He said the United States has
not been able to confirm that the fire
is out.
A team of medical experts was
dispatched over the weekend to the
U.S. Embassy in Moscow to deter-
mine whether the power plant acci-
dent harmed American embassy
employees.
Mr. Speakes said the United States
is also attempting to collect data
from several countries neighboring
the Soviet Union that could prove
essential to evaluating the accident"
in the absence of information from
the Kremlin.
The Soviet Union, which did not
announce the accident until three
days after it occurred, has declined
an offer of U.S. technical and medi-
cal help.
"We have nothing but sympathy
for the Soviet Union. on this;' Mr.
Speakes said on Cable News Net-
work. "We understand that they have
a major problem. If we can be help-
ful, we'd like to be"
Administration officials yester-
day said the U.S. experts sent to Mos-
cow would monitor the health of
embassy employees.
They denied that the move would
allow the Soviets to quietly enlist
American help after publicly declin-
ing it.
In a related development yester-
day, British Prime Minister Marga-
ret Thatcher informed Mr. Reagan
that the Soviets have asked her if the
United States remains open to a U.S.-
Soviet summit this year.
It was the first official message
the United States has received on the
summit since the Soviets abruptly
canceled a presummit planning ses-
sion in protest of the U.S. air strike
on Libya last month.
U.S. officials denied that they had
been "Soviet-bashing" in the wake of
the accident.
But, they agreed, the secrecy sur-
rounding Chernobyl illustrates the
Soviet Union's closed society, and
points up the need for verification
provisions in any U.S.-Soviet arms
control pact.
"This teaches us quite a lesson
that we have to be able to verify
whatever it is that we agree to with
the Soviets," Mr. Regan said.
Mr. Shultz compared the open-
ness of Poland, which has issued
health warnings about radioactive
fallout from the accident, to the si-
lence of Soviet officials.
"Poland has kept people informed
of all the information they have had,"
Mr. Shultz said. "It is an interesting
fact that they have reacted in a dif-
ferent way."
Mr. Speakes said a united allied
position on the Chernobyl incident
could galvanize world opinion
against Soviet secrecy about future
nuclear accidents.
The far-reaching atmospheric ef-
fects of Chernobyl were detected
early yesterday in central Japan,
where rainfall contained higher
than normal levels of iodine.
The Japanese government called
a Cabinet-level meeting to discuss
the matter, which experts said posed
no serious health hazard, and resi-
dents in the area west of lbkyo were
warned not to drink rainwater and to
wash vegetables before eating them.
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ARTICLE
Ei$EL
ON PA L NEW YORK TIMES
4 May 1986
U. S. Panel Calls the Disaster
In- Ukraine the Worst Ever
WASHINGTON, May 3L- Federal of-
ficials
ticials said toda
th
t th
y
a
e latest infor
mation they had received on the Soviet
reactor accident confirmed that it was
the worst such accident in history but
left many' critical questions unan-
swered.
After Federal task force reviewed
the latest data at a two-hour meeting
this morning, Lee M. Thomas, head of
the group, said that "not a lot of new
conclusions" could be drawn about the
accident and its consequences.
But Mr. Thomas added that Amer-
ican estimates that highly lethal radia-
tion must have drenched an area sev-
eral miles around the stricken reactor I
appear to have been confirmed by a
Soviet official interviewed on West
German television Friday.
Area Still Radioactive
That official, Boris N. Yeltsin, the
Moscow Communist Party leader, said
that water reservoirs near the crippled
reactor were contaminated and that
the region around the reactor was too
dangerously radioactive to allow
evacuated people to return.
Mr. Yeltsin said radioactvity in the
area around Chernobyl had fallen con-
siderably since the disaster but that it
was still around 200 roentgen. A roent-
gen is a measure of radioactivitymore;
commonly referred to as a rem in the
United States.
His statement is highly ambiguous,
however.
People who, within a few days, are
exposed to 200 rem would experience
acute illness, suffering from severe
nausea or from bone marrow damage
and infection. At a 200-rem level, a few
people die; at 450, half of the exposed
population dies within 60 days; at 600,
nearly all die within 30 days.
If the 200-rem figure cited by Mr.
Yeltsin referred to an hourly dose, the
standard way of stating such figures,
then virtually all those exposed for
three hours, for example, can be ex-
pected to the within 30 days, having re-
ceived the 600-rem level. If he meant
they were exposed to a 200-rem total
over a few days, say, before evacua-
tion, then only a few deaths would
occur.
Mr. Thomas said his task force was
trying to get a full transcipt of the offi-
cial's remarks because they "con.
firmed what our own experts have been
telling us."
"We have consistently said that it's
By PHILIP M. BOFFEY
the w a t nuclear facility accident in
history, with extensive contamination
both on the cite and in anromding
areas," be said. 'lug confirms it all."
Other ReactsM Appear Soft
Mr. Thomas said that, based an thel
data reviewed today, on which he de-'
dined to give detail, "we would be
more firm in ow conclusion that there
is no problem with the other three reac-
tors" at the Chernobyl site.
hite1111moe officials have suggested
that Unit 3 at . Which is neat
to the stricken Unit 4 reactor. was af-
. fected by ameltdown arfire that would
Mr. 'Thomas
said. "We would say today that we see
no problems with the other units."
to say what evi-
dence ens to make that asser-
tion, the task force includes represent,
atives of the Central jagem am
cv. who classified iMorma
from satellites and other sources
Both Mr. Themes, and another mem-
ber of the task force, Harold Denton,
the top nuclear reactor official for the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
stressed that: there was still very little
information available on most aspects
of the accident.
It has been at least one full week
since the Soviet reactor accident, but
the most critical questions bearing on
reactor safety and public health re-
main largely unanswered.
Western experts still have no idea
.what caused the accident, precisely
how it progressed, what relevance it
has for the United States, what health
damage is likely, what threat the acci-
dent poses to neighboring countries, or
what impact it will have on Soviet agri-
culture, electric power supplies and the 1
economy.
Probably Worst Incident Ever
Experts do know that the accident is
almost certainly the worst in the his- i
wry of nuclear power in several re-.
spects. This can be said primarily be-
cause it released more radioactive ma
terial than any previous accident,
thereby contaminating a great area
and potentially affecting the largest'
number of countries with radioactive
fallout, and also because it seems to
have caused more damage to the power
plant than any other similar incident.
But the details of the accident avail-
able in the West remain fuzzy and
sparse, pieced together from a few
terse Soviet statements and a lot of de-
ductions made by Western experts on
the basis of fallout measurements
made hundreds of miles from the scene
supplemented by satellite photographs
00 expert knowledge of how reactors
Work.
"There is a large range of uncertain-
ty," said Mr. Denton.
The accident is known, from -Soviet
statements and satellite photographs,
to have occurred in the newest reactor
in a complex of four operational nu-
clear power plants at Chernobyl. Al-
though there has been some specula=
tion that the reactor, which started op-
erating in 1963, was used to produce
plutonium for the Soviet nuclear weap-
ons program, Federal officials believe
that is not the case.
Any reactor can be used to produce
weapon-grade material or to generate
electricity, but the best operating con-,
figuration varies depending on the pur-
pose. "The documentation we have on
the Soviet reactor is that it's a true
power producer reactor, optimized for
power production, rather than materi-
als production," Mr. Denton told the
House Energy and Commerce Commit-
tee on Thursday.
"My understanding is that it's an
electrical generating plant," Robert
Sims, the top Pentagon spokesman,
said on Tuesday.
Day of Accident Unknown
Exactly when the accident occurred
is uncertain. Soviet officials have said
it began April 26, while some American
intelligence officials have suggested It
occurred on Friday. The American,!
task forge, using meteorological;
records, has noted when fallout was l
first detected in Sweden, some 6001
miles from the stricken reactor, and!
has calculated how long the fallout!
must have traveled to get there.
The best American guess is that the
main release of radioactive material
started early Saturday, but some task
force members hedge and say Friday
or Saturday. Lester Machta, director
of the air resources laboratory of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-
ministration, a member of the task
force, said he thinks the radioactive re-
lease started around midnight Friday.
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1
The New Yat Thad/May 4. IM
STmCKEN AREA: Three senior
Soviet officials were reported to
have visited the area around the
Chernobyl nuclear plant
I The most important question, from
the standpoint of assuring the safety reactors, is the cause of the accident.
Mr. Yeltsin, the Communist Party
chief, who-is also a nonvoting member
of the Politburo, said in his television
interview with the West German net-
work ARD that human error was to
blame. Whether that is the primary o
.only cause is unknown.
Western experts note that in any
complicated technological accident,
whether failure of a nuclear plant or o
a space shuttle, it is often impossible
determine the true cause until after a
thorough investigation, and sometimes
not even then.
One Plausible Theory
Nor is it certain how the accident
proceeded. Mr. Denton, the top expert
on such matters for the American task
force, has suggested one plausible out-
line of events, in which the reactor lost
its coolant, the nuclear fuel overheated
and both the fuel and the "cladding" in
which it was encased melted, produc-
ing chemical reactions that led to "a
violent explosion" that ruptured all
protective systems and the building it-
self.
Mr. Denton said he believed that the
sequence of reactions also ignited a fire
in the graphite used in the Russian
the nuclear reaction,
pb eby facilitate a blaze that continued
to release radioactive materials.
But others have suggested other pos-
sible sequences, and Mr. Denton as
knowledged today that "we really don't
know the sequence.'. "We have no di-
rect evi d ," he said. "You could
(probably get 50 different scenarios that
would lead to the same end point."
Mr. Denton said he was convinced
that the Soviet reactor suffered a
1"meltdown'* or --partial meltdown" in
,which the fuel and its cladding over-
heated and became molten. He also
said he was convinced by all the evi-
dence he had seen that there was both
an explosion and a fire, although the
latter has not been officially confirmed
by the Russians.
Mr. Denton would not be more spe--
cific, but satellite photographs have
shown that the roof of the reactor build-
ing had been largely blown off, and
other photographs, some shown to
members of Congress at a classified
though some Western press repoitl~
have suggested that the death tail-
might already exceed 2,000, Federal of
facials say there is no evidence to sup.
port those figures, and no evidence to
contradict the Soviet figures.
At a news conference Friday, task
force members estimated that lethal
radiation might spread up to three
miles from the site and doses that could
cause severe health damage might
have reached seven miles. But Mr.
Denton said the task force did not know
how many poeple lived or worked that
close to the plant, how much warning
they had, and how effective any evacu-.
anon procedures might have been. it
his just far too tentative, I think, for us
to try to draw conclusions on how
people were injured or killed as a
of this accident," he said.
The health effects of radiation are
often delayed, Mr. Denton said, and
even many of those exposed to high
doses may not die for a month or even
longer.
Frank Young, the Federal Food and
`Drug Commissioner, said, "The vast
majority of the serious reactions are in
s very local area." He suggested that
the radioactive fallout would have no
significant health effect on the United
briefing, are said to show smoke com-
ing out of the building.
Mr. Thomas said today that it ap-
peared plausible from the latest data
that the reactor continued to smolder,
although that cannot be confirmed un-
equivocally. Mr. Yeltsin said that heli-
copters had dropped lead, sand and
boron onto the plant to suppress the
radiation from the accident.
i Lessons Remain Unknown
Without knowing exactly what went
wrong in the Soviet reactor, most ex-
perts agree, it is impossible to know
whether the accident holds any lessons
for the United States. The Soviet reac-
tors differ greatly from most American
power reactors, chiefly in the graphite,
or carbon-like core, which can burn,
and in lacking effective containment
structures designed to bottle up radio-
active gases in an accident. But if the
accident was triggered by some reac-
tor element that is found in American
plants, or by an operator error that
could occur anywhere, then the disas-
ter at Chernobyl might well be relevant
to other nations, experts say.
The health damage caused, or likely
to be caused, by the accident also re-
mains uncertain. The Soviet Govern-
ment reported that only two people had
died in the accident, that 18 are seri-
ously injured, and.that 197 in all have
been at least briefly hospitalized. Al-
States or western Europe. Other health
experts have suggested that residents
of Sweden, where the fallout was first
detected, are also not seriously threat-
ened. The greatest uncertainty, most
;experts say, is Eastern Europe, where
both Poland and Rumania have taken
major steps to protect their population
.against fallout. But task force mem-
bers say there is such conflicting infor-
mation coming out of Eastern Europe
.that they cannot make a sound assess-
ment about the level of danger.
At a news conference Friday, three
experts from the American College of
Nuclear' Physicians warned against
overreacting to the feared danger of
fallout. Richard Reba, director of nu-
clear medicine at George Washington
University medical center here, said
that if he were invited to go to Kiev, 70
miles south of the reactor site, he
would not only go, but would ask for a
ticket for his wife, as well.
Oscar B. Hunter Jr., a pathologist
who works on radiation, said he doubts
that --anyone outside of a mile" of the
site "would be exposed to any lethal
type of radiation."
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UNITED YKKSS 1NIKKNAT1' \L
2 May 1986
U.S. SATELLITES COULD MONITOR SOVIET DISASTER
BY RICHARD C. GROSS
WASHINGTON
U.S. intelligence agencies depend chiefly on four types of satellites to
collect data about the Soviet Union, which could have monitored the Chernobyl
disaster, defense analysts say.
Despite the presence of the satellites, however,. government spokesmen said
Washington first learned of the Soviet nuclear accident April 25 from an
announcement by the Soviet news agency lass Monday.
All four satellites could return information to the United States about the
explosion, fire, and meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, the defense
analysts said Thursday.
Officials at the intelligence agencies refuse to discuss the operation or
function of their satellites or the interpretation of data collected. The
hardware for intelligence collection is referred to publicly only as "national
techical means."
A primary source of information for U.S. intelligence is the KH-11 photo
reconnaissance satellite, a 30,000-pound vehicle with a $500 million price tag
that passes over the Soviet Union in a polar orbit twice a day. KH aptly stands
for ''keyhole.''
Its high resolution photographs are transmitted electronically to ground
stations, unlike early photo reconnaisiance satellites that ejected packages of
material through the atmosphere to waiting planes that snared them with nets.
Cloudy skies over Chernobyl have prevented the satellite from snapping clear
pictures of the disaster, sources said.
But detection instruments aboard other types of satellites see through
clouds. Those vehicles, all of which routinely pass over the Soviet Union, are:
-The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, or DMSP. Those satellites
essentially are weather orbiters with additional classified functions.
They are in polar orbits and their infrared sensors look for heat sources and
are designed to detect nuclear explosions and 'take temperature readings of the
atmosphere.
-The NUDET Detection System, or NDS, which are concealed in NAVSTAR
navigation satellites in 17,600-mile-high orbits inclined 55 degrees to the
equator. NUDET, which stands for nuclear detonation, detects radiation
emissions.
-Defense Support Program, or DSP. The primary function of these satellites,
which use infrared sensors, are to detect the launch of missiles by picking up
their fiery exhaust trails. Advanced DSP satellites will have the capability to
sense radiation, the defense experts said.
Intelligence agencies -- the CIA, the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence
Agency and the National Security Agency -- supplement information from these
satellites with photographs and infrared data gathered by commercial satellites
such as Landsat.
''The commercial satellites are supportive,'said a defense analyst, who
spoke on condition he not be identified. " Landsat is used to double-check
information and the extra data can help resolve anomalies.''
But the intelligence agencies do their own interpretations and analyses of
photographs and other data in what is called net assessment. The data generally
are reliable, the analyst said.
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AKY-,CLE
ore P _ .:
WASHINGTON TIMES
2 May 1986
Meltdown latest
on list of disasters
By Warren Strobel
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The nuclear catastrophe at a
Ukrainian power station is only the
latest in a staggeringly long line of
Soviet disasters, both civilian and
military, that observers say are
symptomatic of a system that puts
production quotas and prestige be-
fore individual safety.
"Wherever you look ... whatever
health standards are necessary ...
are being ignored:' said Petr Beck-
mann, a Czech-born expert on Soviet
bloc engineering.
"They have good hardware, but
it's done without too much consider-
ation for the safety of the individual;'
said Ernest Weatherall, a retired
journalist familiar with Soviet pro-
grams.
"Life is much dearer here;' he
said.
The apparent lack of a steel-and-
concrete structure around the reac-
tor core exacerbated the disaster at
the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,
which last week underwent a melt-
down that may have killed thousands
and still is releasing radiation. Such
containment structures are re-
quired at commercial power plants
in the United States.
"The reason they don't have a con-
tainment building is because it's
cheaper to make Russians than con-
tainment buildings;' Mr. Beckmann
said.
Both men said the kind of safety
slips that evidently exacerbated the
Chernobyl disaster have led to a
wide array of fatal mishaps over the
last 30 years, from the release of
deadly microorganisms to the sink-
ing of nuclear submarines and the
accidental detonation of a massive
ammunition depot.
The accidents occurred despite -
on paper - rigorous safety stan-
dards, Mr. Beckmann said.
He said, "They always have
window-dressing." But standards in
the Soviet bloc fall by the wayside
when workers must choose between
"They [thIL -
e workers]
are between a rock
and a soft place."
enforcing safety measures against
the unlikely event of an accident and
fulfilling production quotas.
"They [the .workers] are between
a rock and a soft place," Mr. Beck-
mann said. "They always give way to
the more probable thing."
Although accidents, major or mi-
nor, rarely make their way into the
Soviet state-controlled media, re-
ports of catastrophes have reached
the West, often months or years after
they occurred. They include:
? In late 1957 or early 1958, a
chemical explosion tore through a
nuclear waste dump in Chelyabinsk
province on the eastern side of the
Ural Mountains, killing an un-
determined number of people and
and leaving as much as 400 square
miles of land uninhabitable.
The accident, which was brought
to light by an exiled Soviet scientist
in 1976, probably occurred because
of sloppy storage of the nuclear
waste, allowing water to seep into
the dump and, once heated by the
radioactive materials, turn into the
steam which caused the explosion.
? In 1960, many of the Soviet
Union's top-ranked space scientists
were killed when a moon-bound
rocket; its liftoff timed to coincide
with a visit to the United Nations by
then-Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev, exploded on the rocket
pad.
After one of the rocket's boosters
had failed to ignite, project com-
mander Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin
put safety precautions aside in
hopes of saving the timing with Mr.
Khrushchev's visit. He inspected the
troublesome booster himself, but it
ignited and the rocket, held to earth
by ladders, toppled over.
The incident was not revealed un-
til 1976.
? In April 1979, a biological weap-
ons research plant near the city of
Sverdlovsk accidently released
deadly anthrax germs, which cause
disease in cattle and are
transmissible to man.
Although the cause of the acci-
dent is unknown a 1985 classifi d
report detailing Soviet violations of
arms control treaties stated. "The
number of deaths reported ranges
etween 40 and 3,000, with the best
estimates in the 2W to 1,000 ran.'
The report noted that the victims'
symptoms were "inconsistent with
an anthrax outbreak spread through
dissemination of tainted meat - the
official explanation given by the So-
viets."
? In May 1984, a naval ammuni-
tion depot at Severomorsk, 900 miles
north of Moscow, exploded with
such ferocity that intelligence ana-
lysts first believed it was a nuclear
blast. As much as one-third of the
Northern Fleet's surface-to-air mis-
siles were reported destroyed and
200 people killed.
U.S. officials blamed the accident,
which was revealed in June 1984, on
the Soviets' careless storage of the
weapons.
"That was just sheer careless-
ness," Mr. Weatherall said, adding,
"They don't have any lawsuits in the
Soviet Union."
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APPEARED i
eta PA;E &2L.-
WASHINGTON POST
14 May 1986
JACK ANDERSON and DALE VAN ATTA
Nuclear Mishaps Haunt Soviets
T he Soviet government's appallingly cavalier
attitude toward the dangers of nuclear power
came as no surprise to us. Two years ago this
month, when we reported secret details of earlier
Soviet nuclear accidents, the Soviet Embassy here
responded with a smart-aleck letter ridiculing our
revelations.
The wisecracks of the embassy information
officer, Eugene Zykov, must have turned to ashes
in his mouth since the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl
last month. His letter's tone of sarcasm and
braggadocio was inappropriate in light of what now
is confirmed about the Soviets' failure to build and
maintain nuclear reactors with a rudimentary
concern for safety.
One Grim disclosure we made two years ago,
citing secret and too secret CIA reports. was at
`many hairless sailors were in Soviet veterans'
homes, suggesting overexposure to radiation
leaking from faulty nuclear submarine reactors,.,
is evidently tickled the embassy flack's funny
bone. Our story on the "radioactive nightmare" in the
Soviet Union, he wrote, "could cause even those
'hairless sailors' . . . to have their hair stand on end."
Zykov continued: "Being too engrossed in his
macabre narration, the author failed to mention one
more point. No organizations such as 'National
Campaign for Radioactive Waste Energy,'
'Supporters of Silkwood' or 'Musicians United for
Safe Energy' exist in the USSR .... They do not
exist because we have not had the same problem
[as) the nuclear power industry in the U.S."
We suggest that other reasons may explain why
antinuclear protest groups do not exist in the
Soviet Union. Ask Andrei Sakharov or the hapless
monitors of the Helsinki Accords how the KGB
treats outspoken critics of the Soviet regime.
The embassy letter claimed that all Soviet
nuclear power stations must have "at least three or
four fail-safe systems for protection against
radioactivity," and that about half the construction
costs go into the protection systems. The letter
then lists three government agencies responsible
for "overseeing the strictly required safety
measures," and added: "That's why it stands to
reason that Soviet experience in nuclear power
engineering wins recognition among many
prominent foreign experts."
The embassy letter then descends to a flat-out
lie, stating that "within the last 30 years, the
prestige of the Soviet stations has never been
undermined by tragic accidents like the one which
occurred at Three Mile Island in May 1979,"
In fact, the Soviets had two serious reactor
shutdowns in the early 1980s, and a near-holocaust
in 1957, when carelessly stored nuclear wasteq
exploded at a plant near Chelyabinsk, rendering
hundreds of square miles uninhabitable to this day.
Comrade Zykov stated that people living within
two to three miles of Soviet nuclear plants get an
annual dose of radiation equivalent to "a few hours
on the coast of Miami Beach."
He added: "That is why the USSR plans to
construct more stations close to major industrial
cities in the European part of the country, to
provide heat and energy."
The frightening thing is that the Soviet leaders
may do just that.
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fia Z WASHINGTON POST
2 May 1986
Reagan
Angered by
Soviet Delay
Moscow Rejects
U.S. Aid Offer
By David Hoffman
Washington Post Foreign Service
NUSA DUA, Indonesia, May 2
(Friday)-President Reagan and his
top advisers have grown increas-
ingly angry over Soviet delays in
providing details to the world about
the nuclear accident at Chernobyl,
according to senior White House
officials.
Reflecting this annoyance, Sec-
retary of State George P. Shultz
said at a press conference here yes-
terday that the United States al-
ready has "a much fuller picture
than what the Soviets are present-
ing to us or, for that matter, to
their own people."
At the same time, Shultz said the
Soviets had firmly rejected offers of
technical and medical help from the
United States to cope with what
Shultz called a disaster. The Soviets
responded that they are "adequate-
ly equipped" to handle it, he said.
Reagan's first reaction to the nu-
clear accident, once it became
known publicly on Monday, was to
express concern and refrain from
criticizing the Soviets. Late last
night, before a dinner here with
Indonesian President Suharto, Rea-
gan answered, "no" when asked by
reporters if he was annoyed at the
Soviets.
But the White House officials said
the president and other top advisers
have privately become highly crit-
ical of the way Moscow is handling
the accident.
"We took the high road initially,"
said a senior White House official
who was part of the discussions.
"We didn't see any purpose in zap-
ping them." But when the Soviets
refused to provide more details, the
attitude quickly changed, he said.
"The Europeans are incensed,
and we are, too," the official said.
Reagan and his advisers have
grappled with the Soviet nuclear
accident in the relative isolation of
this tropical resort 11,400 miles
from Washington. In between meet-
ings with Southeast Asian foreign
ministers and Suharto, Reagan 'is
asking aides why the Soviets "di,.,i't
tell us sooner and tell us more," one
official said.
Reagan and Shultz yesterday be-
gan to criticize the Soviets openly
for delaying announcement of the
accident for three days and for fail-
ing to disclose more information
about it to the world once radiation
was released into the atmosphere.
"Well, they're usually a little
close-mouthed about these things
and this is no exception," Reagan
told reporters here as he opened a
meeting yesterday with Suharto.
Presidential spokesman Larry
Speakes said the Soviet authorities
are keeping a "close hold" on infor-
mation about the accident. He and
Shultz repeatedly accused the So-
viets of neglecting their responsi-
bility to tell neighboring countries
about the dangers posed by the re-
lease of radiation into the atmos-
phere.
"We're turning up the heat," said
the White House official.
Speakes said the accident began
Friday in one of the power block
rooms at the Chernobyl reactor, but
the United States did not learn of it
until Monday from a report by the
Soviet news agency Tass. Reagan
was then flying here from Hawaii
for the foreign ministers meeting.
He leaves today for Tokyo and the
seven-nation economic summit.
Shultz said information obtained
by the United States, including sat-
ellite Photographs, indicates that the
Soviets have understated the loss of
life resulting from the accident.
"Our own pictur
es give us infor-
tion that sugge
sts the casualty
rates are hi her
nose that have
been announced the Soviet Union
so far by a measure," he sai .
e fact is, from our own
sources we know more 75-5-the
whet Union has told us or of er
countries," Shultz said.
White House officials said Rea-
gan's growing anger at Soviet de-
lays in providing information about
the accident was in part out of con-
cern for the possible hazards of the
spreading radiation. But the officials
also said Reagan believed the So-
viets had demonstrated what he has
described as the failings of a closed
society.
"It's a great contrast to the way
information emerges on something
of that kind, let's say, in the United
States as compared with the Soviet
Union," Shultz said, "because there
would be a tremendous volume of
information available if that acci-
dent had taken place" in the United
States.
. The Soviet rejection of two ear-
lier U.S. offers to help with the ac-
cident came at a State Department
meeting between Soviet charge
d'affaires Oleg, M. Sokolov and Dep-
uty Assistant Secretary of State
Mark Palmer, officials said.
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of ?'
WASHINGTON TIMES
2 May 1986
Soviet official on MR,
?
`Problem not yet over'
Wet sand reported
dumped on plant
By Roger Fontaine
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Soviet Union maintained it had control of the
reactor fire at Chernobyl yesterday, but U.S. official
sources stressed the lack of "conclusive evidence" on
what was happening at the site.
Moscow issued the latest in a series of official state-
ments, the fourth since the situation became public,
claiming that radiation at the plant had dropped sharply.
And one of its diplomats in Washington in unprecedented
testimony before Congress, said radiation from the nu-
clear plant disaster was decreasing, but other countries
should not relax because the "accident is not over."
Intelligence sources here - unsure as to whether the
fire is out or still burning - said Soviet planes "are.
dumping" what is believed to be earth or sand on the
stricken reactor.
But some scientists doubted that technique would
work.
A congressional source said that the Soviets may be
dumping "wet sand" on the fire, a technique the British
recommended. Great Britain experienced a much
smaller graphite fire at its Windscale military reactor
in 1957.
The American interagency task force investigating
the incident stressed the absence of concrete informa-
tion, but said the Soviet claim that the fire is smothered
was plausible. However, the group
said "it is not clear whether the fire
is out or not" and it cannot confirm
reports of "damage at the second
reactor."
Lee Thomas, head of the Environ-
mental Protection Agency and
chairman of the task force, told a
news briefing that the United States
does not know the number of casual-
ties or the extent of the crop and
environmental damage that may
have occurred.
Harold Denton of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, referring
to the initial release of radioactivity,
said it "was so massive that there is
very little [left] to be released."
Official information one week
after the trouble in Chernobyl be-
gan, however, remains scanty on de-
velopments at the site, as Soviet offi-
cials say little and U.S. intelligence
remains apparently thin. Officials
here give the impression of relying
primarily on news accounts.
"There's not that much informa-
tion there," said one State Depart-
ment official. -
Half of Europe was at the mercy
of the weather yesterday as
southerly winds pushed radiation
from the Soviet nuclear power plant
toward Eastern Europe and the Alps,
Swedish meteorologists said.
Meteorologists predict a radioac-
tive cloud will cover half of Europe
- Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Hun-
gary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugo-
slavia, Greece and Albania, and
parts of West Germany and Czecho-
slovakia - in the next two days.
The U.S. Agriculture Department
said shifting winds were carrying a
radioactive plume from the stricken
plant over the rich farmland of the
western Ukraine. Norton D. Strom-
men, chief meteorologist of the U.S.
Agriculture Department's World
Agricultural Outlook Board, said in
Washington that the new wind pat-
tern appeared likely to remain stable
for at least 24 to 48 hours.
That meant there was a potential
for fallout in the western Ukraine
and the other countries affected, he
said, but the possible extent re-
mained unclear.
"At this point, it's very difficult to
pinpoint a percentage, but we can
indicate this is the western end of
some of the prime winter grain
areas. It does include some of their
best areas" in terms of yield, Mr.
Strommen said.
All the department's information
sources, including satellite surveil-
lance, indicated that the flow of ra-
diation from the Chernobyl plant
continued yesterday and had not
been contained, he said.
Radiation levels from the nuclear
reactor fire dropped in Scandinavia
yesterday, and Swedish officials said
that even pregnant women should
not worry about radiation danger.
But radiation has led to higher
levels of radiation in milk, which the
authorities will monitor, said Gun-
nar Bengtsson, head of Sweden's Na-
tional Radiation Protection Institute.
In Copenhagan, the World Health
Organization said representatives
from the Soviet Union and West Eu-
ropean countries had been invited to
meet next week in the Danish capital
to work out recommendations on
how countries should deal with the
fallout.
. The cause of the accident has not
been revealed, but Soviet radiation
expert Pavel Ramzaev said in Mos-
cow when asked yesterday if it was
a meltdown of the reactor core: "I
suppose that is so"
In Stockholm, Gunnar Bentsson
of Sweden's National Radiation Pro-
tection Institute said the Interna-
tional Atomic Energy Agency in Vi-
enna told him the Soviets had
notified it the fire was out.
The agency's chief spokesman
said, however, that he could not con-
firm the fire had been extinguished.
"We have never been informed of-
ficially that there was a fire," Hans-
Friedrich Meyer said.
A picture made by a Swedish-
French satellite showed yesterday
that the fire at the Soviet Union's
Chernobyl nuclear power plant had
decreased, analysts said. Some said
it may be out.
"We cannot see the smoke which
we saw Wednesday," said Lars Bjer-
kesjo of Satellitbild, the company
which received the picture at a land
station in northern Sweden."It ap-
pears the fire has decreased;' he told
the Swedish news agency Tidningar-
nas Telegrambyraa.
"We can see the structure of the
reactor a lot more clearly, and the
picture confirms our earlier conclu-
sions that about one-fourth of the
building is damaged;' he said.
"It's difficult to be 100 percent
sure if the fire is extinguished;' said
Christer Larsson, head of Space Me-
dia Network, an agency handling
rights to the photo. "It's probably
still very hot there, several thousand
degrees. It's difficult to say some-
thing definite on this."
While Soviet leader Mikhail Gor-
bachev attended the traditional May
Day parade in Moscow without mak-
ing a public comment about the acci-
dent, Soviet spokesmen steadfastly
denied that anything was seriously
wrong.
Vladimir Lomeiko, the top Soviet
Foreign Ministry spokesman, said
yesterday that the accident was un-
der control at the Chernobyl site and
that the water there is safe for
drinking.
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2,
"Right now there is a campaign in
the West that does not want to
acknowledge the data the Soviet
government is providing;' he said.
"Who needs to create ... an image of
the lying Russians?
"Why is there no trust in the data
which has been released by the So-
viet government?" asked Mr.
Lomeiko, speaking through in-
terpreters on "ABC Good Morning
America."
Mr. Lomeiko repeated earlier So-
viet announcements of two dead and
197 hospitalized.
"Forty-nine were released after
treatment," he said.
An Israeli amateur radio operator
in Tel Aviv said a Soviet ham radio
operator told him there were 300 ca-
sualties, but how many ware dead
was not clear.
David Ben-Bassat said the Soviet
ham operator told him Wednesday
that he lived 30 miles north of the
reactor and, "Nobody drinks the
water. We are afraid."
Four formal government state-
ments have been published so far,
the sum total of Soviet press cov-
erage to date. But official statements
have not given any details on the
accident nor have they explained
how it happened or how much radi-
ation was released or how the dead
and hurt were injured.
This story is based in part on wire
service reports.
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ARTICLE APPS NEW YORK i IMES
2 May 1986
U. S. Says Intelligence Units
Did Not Detect the Accident
intelligence agencies, despite their
ability to take satellite photographs
and intercept communications,
learned of the accident at the Cherno-
byl nuclear plant only from a Soviet an-
nouncement, according to Reagan Ad-
ministration spokesmen.
An intelligence source said there
were indications of unusual activity. In
the Kiev area by Sunday, but it was not
clear what was happening.
Robert Sims, the Pentagon s kes-
man-""sala a United States
earned of the incident from the first
Soviet Government statement Monday
and had not withheld any prior infor-
mation. He said "the intelligence work
on our part has been excellent."
Any possible delay in identifying the
nature of the problem can be attributed
to several factors, according to intelli-
gence experts.
One way to detect the accident,
1which involved an explosion and par-
tial destruction of the reactor building,
would have been through satellite
photos. But the United States has only
one KH-11 aloft. This is the military
surveillance satellite that takes photo-
graphs of the Soviet Union.
The secret military satellite photo-
By STEPHEN ENGELBERG
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, May 1 - American 1 basis, who cares about power plaants?"
Richelson, a professor at American
University who has studied surveil-
lance satellites. "You would photo-
graph it once every couple of years and
you would not go back. On a day-to-day
graphs, in contrast to the images pub-
licly available from the American
civilian satellites of the Landsat series,
can show detail of striking clarity, in-
cluding trees and small vehicles.
Officials said military satellites
would not routinely take photographs
of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, which
is a civilian utility not involved in nu-
clear weapons manufacture.
"You would not expect a power plant
to be a priority target," said Jeffrey
Senator Malcolm Wallop, a Wyoming
Republican and a former meinljer of
the Senate Select Committee on Intelli-
gence, said military satellite tended to
focus on military targets, particularly
those related to arms treaties,; .
He said failure to detect the'nuclear
accident sooner underscored the, need
for more spies to collect intelligence
within the Soviet Union. 1
Another means of detecting the Cher-
nobyl accident when it occurred could
have been through interception?o/?com-
munications at American listening
posts ringing the Soviet Union,
Officials familiar with the, proce-
dures said that the National Security
Agency, which is charged with this ac-
tivity, recorded and stored the. record-
ings for later translation and analysis.
Any, intercepted communications re-
garding the nuclear accident would not
have been given immediate attention
without a specific reason for doing so,
the experts said.
One possible clue to what was hap-
pening in Chernobyl would have been a
sudden increase in the volume of com-
munications traffic. Professor Richel-
son said the presence of several mili-
tary headquarters in Kiev suggests
that the Americans would be observing
communications in this area for any
unusual upsurge.
Administration officials said that
once it was clear that there had been an
accident, intelligence analysts were
able to go back through the material
gathered from various sources. to piece
together a chronology.
They said the accident began on Fri-
day, followed by the first release of
radioactive material to the atmosphere
on Saturday just after midnigjtt.
It was not announced until Monday,
after monitors in Sweden detected ris-
ing amounts of radioactivity. ,
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WASHINGTON POST
2 May 1986
oho i k? Mflitdj?wiaii
By Fred Hiatt and Philip J. Hilts
Washington Peat Staff Writers
U.S. officials now appear certain
that the Chernobyl nuclear power
plant experienced an extensive core
meltdown. They also said they be-
lieve the nuclear accident was con-
fined to a single reactor and that
the fire at the site in the Ukraine
may have been extinguished.
But a Soviet Embassy official. in
an extraordinary appearance before
a congressional committee here,
made clear that the Soviets' prob-
lems are not over. The problem at
Chernobyl, he testified, has not
been liquidated yet."
Some Reagan administration of-
ficials appeared to back away from
earlier statements that hundreds of
people may have been killed in the
nuclear power plant accident. Im-
mediate casualties were probably
confined to those working at the
plant, and many in the normal work
force of 250 were probably evac-
uated from the site before the cat-
astrophic explosion and fire, some
officials now believe.
But the officials stressed that
they still do not know the level of
radiation around the plant and so
cannot predict how many people
will suffer long-term health dam-
age. One official said that satellite
photographs show tourist boats ply-
ing the river near the plant and soc-
cer games within a few miles of it.
The Reagan administration also
stressed its frustration with Soviet
unwillingness to provide more in-
formation about the accident. Of-
ficials said they remain largely in
the dark about its severity, levels of
radioactivity in the area and the
number of casualties.
But scientists at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in
California, in the most reliable cal-
culations to date, confirmed yester-
day that there had been an exten-
sive meltdown. "The core is gone,"
one Livermore official said. The
calculations were based on an anal-
ysis of emissions at the plant.
The nuclear accident, described as the worst
ever, apparently began last Friday, but the So-
viet Union did not announce it until Sweden de-
tected abnormal levels of airborne radioactivity
on Monday.
An administration task force headed by Lee
M. Thomas, administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency, said that increased monitor-
ing in the United States and Canada shows no
abnormal levels of airborne radioactivity. The air
mass containing radioactivity released during the
initial accident late last week "is now widely dis-
persed throughout northern Europe and polar
regions" and has reached the western coast of
Norway, the task force reported.
U.S. officials continued to say that they do not
believe the accident at the Chernobyl plant, 60
miles north of Kiev, will send dangerous levels of
radioactivity over this country.
"Based on the latest information, there is no
reason to believe that levels reaching this coun-
try pose any threat to the health and safety of
citizens of the United States," Sheldon Myers,
acting director of EPA's office of radiation pro-
grams, said. "It is very unlikely that significant
amounts will reach the United States."
The testimony of Vitaliy Churkin, a second
secretary of the Soviet Embassy here, was given
at a hearing of the House energy, conservation
and power subcommittee. During frequently tes-
ty exchanges with members of the subcommit-
tee, Churkin would not say whether the fire has
been extinguished, but appeared to indicate that
it continues to burn.
"The problem is getting better. It is not out of
hand. It is improving," Churkin said. "But unfor-
tunately, it is not over yet."
Churkin, saying the Soviets have been "very
forthcoming," bristled at suggestions that his
government misled the world about the severity
of the accident and misled its own population
about the danger of radiation. He said two people
were killed in the'accident and 197 injured, 18 of
them seriously.
"It was a horrible tragedy," he said. "All those
who suffered and are suffering will be taken care
of."
One knowledgeable U.S. official said the So-
viet casualty figures are now thought possibly to
be correct, although the administration contin-
ues to harbor considerable skepticism. Shortly
after the world learned of the accident, U.S.
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Direc-
tor Kenneth L. Adelman said the Soviet casualty
figures were "preposterous" and State Depart-
ment spokesman Charles E. Redman said that
hundreds of deaths were possible.
One Defense Department official said that
U.S. officials have no good evidence to contradict
the Soviet statements but neither can they con-
firm them.
Staff writers Michael Weisskopf, Cass Peterson,
Cristine Russell and John M. Gashko contributed
to this report.
EmaemRove
"Our intelligence is as good as it can be with-
out any cooperation from the Soviets," t ire Pen
tagon official said.
Officials sai t ey believe that radiation levels
in the Chernobyl area, given the severity of the
fire and blast, must be high enough to warrant a
greater evacuation than the Soviets appear to
have ordered.
"Either there's nothing seriously wrong, which
we don't believe, or there's something very se-
riously wrong, but to carry out their lie they're
willing to go to the extent of hazarding the lives
of people around the plant," the Pentagon official
added.
But Churkin told the House subcommittee that
all those affected "were well aware of what has
happened."
"They won't even have to pay medical bills,"
he added.
Intelligence experts here also remain divided
aut whether the fire in the reactor-is still b"urn-
ing ,, he question is important because the
'amounts of radioactivity released into the atmos-
phere may iminis once the ire is out.
icia said that Soviet a icop ers were ac-
tively fighting the fire Wednesday, dumping
sand, chemicals or some other substance on the
reactor. Experts said that as long as the levels of
radioactivity were low enough to permit helicop-
ters to hover nearby, the Soviets could have
smothered the fire in the nuclear plant's graphite
rods.
But Les Williams of Boots and Coots, a private
fire-fighting firm in Houston, pointed out that it
would be very difficult to determine from the air
whether the graphite fire is extinguished.
Graphite, if not contaminated by.other mate-
rials, burns without smoke, he said. Early in the
accident, building materials and other debris in-
cluding nuclear fuel would have yielded a dark
smoke, visible in satellite photography. But later,
as the fire became more purely graphite in burn-
ing, the smoke would dissipate.
In addition, satellite heat sensors would detect
a very hot spot as the graphite slowly cools, even
once the fire had stopped.
A second hot spot detected from space Tues-
day had prompted speculation that an adjoining
reactor had caught fire. But U.S. officials said
the second heat source is outside the plant and
apparently unrelated to the nuclear accident,
speculating that it is a construction facility of
some kind.
Thomas of the EPA said U.S. experts "say that
it is plausible the fire could be out" but cannot
confirm that. Harold R. Denton, a Nuclear Re-
gulatory Commission official, said that even if
the fire were extinguished, significant amounts
of radioactivity will remain in the area.
"They have a huge problem with regard to
cleanup," said Denton.
Technical expertise in decontamination was
part of the assistance that President Reagan of-.
fered and the Soviets declined, according to En-
ergy Secretary john S. Herrington.
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wA,) H1NGTUN POST,
2 May 1986
Civilian Satellites Penetrate Soviet
Secrecy, Photograph Plant
Space Competition
Takes New Direction
By Nell Henderson
Waihoigtm Pat stag Writer
A new kind of space competition
was launched this week as the west-
em world turned to two civilian sat-
ellites to penetrate the Soviet cloak
of secrecy and produce photographs
of the damaged nuclear reactor at
Chernobyl.
Unable to obtain aerial photos of
the site within the Soviet Union,
western news agencies gained their
first overhead glimpse of the reac-
tor Tuesday from Landsat, the U.S.
government-owned remote sensing
satellite that has sold space photos
of the Earth since 1972.
Then yesterday a new French
satellite produced a more detailed
view of the reactor, showing dam-
age to the ground next to the re-
actor and breaking Landsat's 14-
year monopoly on such service.
Computer analysis of the photo,
taken from 500 miles above the
earth by the French Spot satellite
and released in Sweden, showed
that smoke had stopped billowing
from the reactor and revealed a
long dark scorch mark on the
ground next to the reactor, said
Robert Lees, an image analyst for
Spot Image Corp., of Reston, the
wholly owned subsidiary of the
French company created to market
Spot's services.
The mark, at least 600 feet long,
is believed to be "the probable re-
sult of a blast," Lees said. Damage
to the building cannot be discerned
from the photo, but it is clear that
the smoke visible on the earlier
Landsat photo is gone, he said. Lees
cautioned, however, that the lack of
smoke does not mean the fire at the
reactor is out.
The Landsat photo revealed less
detail of the plant itself, but covered
a larger area and used infrared
viewing to show, vegetation sur-
rounding the concrete facility.
While feeding an information-
hungry world with images of an in-
accessible site, the two photos il-
lustrated the strengths and weak-
nesses of the only two non-military
satellites that sell their services to
anyone who will pay the price.
Landsat, the old war horse of ci-
vilian space photography, provided
the first photo. Spot, only launched
in February, was slower because
the satellite is so new, but provided
a level of detail previously available
only to the military. Technically not
yet open for business, Spot's capa-
bilities have already thrown earth-
bound news agencies, lawyers and
diplomats into a spin over the pos-
sibilities of a new era in civilian
space-based photography.
The technology is not entirely
new-Soviet and U.S. military sat-
ellites are said to be capable of
reading license plates and newspa-
per headlines from space. What is
new is the detail now available to
the public, and the two local com-
panies now competing to sell it.
Since 1972, farmers, oil compa-
nies, geologists, foresters, foreign
governments and others interested
in land resource management have
bought satellite photos taken by
Landsat. The photos covered broad
expanses of the Earth, showing ero-
sion and vegetation patterns, broad
coastlines and mountain ranges.
The smallest discernible object is
98 by 98 feet.
Spot, by contrast, covers a
smaller area, but offers black and
white photos of 10 meter resolu-
tion, which means an object 33 feet
by 33 feet in size, or about half the
size of a tennis court, can be iden-
tified. The photos show clearly dis-
cernible roads, bridges, airlines,
piers and ships.
Spot represents a $300 million
investment by the. French govern-
ment. Neither satellite actually
takes photographs: Their electronic
sensors record energy reflected off
the Earth's surface. The data is col-
lected on computer tape that can be
used to create a photograph or even
by transferred onto a floppy disk.
Spot's prices range from $155
for a black. and white print to
$2,550 for a top-of-the-line comput-
er-compatible tape. Landsat's data
is marketed by the Earth Observa-
tion Satellite Co. (Eosat), based in
Lanham, a joint venture of Hughes
Aircraft Co. and RCA Corp. Eosat's
prices vary from $50 to $3,300.
Eosat says Landsat has the ad-
vantage of being able to record im-
ages in a wider range of spectral
bands than Spot. Photographs in
some infrared bands are able to
identify certain minerals that Spot
images cannot detect, Eosat Pres-
ident Charles P. Williams said.
Spot, however, has the advan-
tages of being able to view the same
site more frequently than Landsat.
Both Landsat and Spot circle the
globe in near polar orbits. Landsat
covers nearly every location on
earth in 16 days, while Spot takes
26. But while Landsat's sensors
"look" straight down,. Spot's mirrors
allow the sensors to "look" to either
side-thus Landsat can catch a par-
ticular site. once every 16 :days,
while Spot can view the same loca-
tion about twice a week. By viewing
a site from two angles, the satellite
also can generate a stereoscopic
image.
Thus, Landsat, by luck, obtained
the first photo of the Chernobyl re-
actor but will not be able to get an-
other for almost a month, while
Spot may obtain another glimpse
within a week.
Individuals, companies, U.S. gov-
ernment agencies or anybody else
can buy Spot's services from the
Reston-based subsidiary, while the
rest of the world can turn to the
parent company in Toulouse,
France. That company, Spot Image
S.A., is owned primarily by the
French space agency, but also re-
flects investments by French banks
and aerospace concerns, the Bel-
gian and Swedish governments, and
the Belgian telecommunications and
aerospace industries.
Spot expects most of its business
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to come from traditional Landsat
users such as farmers monitoring
their .crops, . geologists looking for
mineral deposits and energy com-
panies searching for oil and gas. But
the company acknowledges . that
new uses are possible-that Iraq
could buy photos of Iran, while Lib-
ya could buy photos of downtown
Washington.
If buyers want a photo of Pres-
ident Reagan's ranch, all they have
to do is provide the latitude and lon-
gitude, said David S. Julyan, direc-
tor of sales and marketing for the
U.S. Spot Image subsidiary. "We
will acquire an image of any place in
the world and make it available to
any and all interested parties ... I
plan to open up every market I
can."
While opening new windows on
the world, the prospect of advanced
satellites for hire also stretches
space law beyond its current limits.
News executives have begun asking
whether the First Amendment will
float. in space if they buy photos of
U.S. or Soviet military movements.
Foreign countries have expressed
concern about other governments
having access to satellite photos of
their territories. Others foresee
satellites as potential tools for cor-
porate spying.
"It's so new-the constitutional
issues are just being raised by the
:echnology," said Robert A. Destro,
a member of the U.S. Civil Rights
Commission and an expert on con-
stitutional law. "It's going to be
tricky, but Spot is going to go a long
way toward bringing First Amend-
ment issues into the 21st century."
One of the keys to news agency
interest is the prospect of obtaining
overhead looks at territory where
aerial photgraphy is not allowed.
ABC News has used Landsat photos
of the Iran-Iraq border, a Libyan mil-
itary airfield and Soviet naval bases.
"We will have access to the world
we wouldn't have otherwise," said
Mark Brender, an ABC News editor
and chairman of the media in space
committee of the Radio-Television
News - Directors Association
(RTNDA). "The time does not ap-
pear to be too far distant when pri-
vately held satellites and other or-
bital facilities will be as indispensible
as the printing press and the camera
to a free society."
News executives and their attor-
neys already have expressed concern
about the possible clash between na-
tional security and space-based news
gathering.
"At some time the government
might start to wonder if [Spot] re-
vealed things they don't want re-
vealed," said Robert Aamoth, a com-
munications attorney representing
RTNDA. "To impose restrictions on
press use of remote sensing satel-
lites would constitute prior restraint
and would have to be justified by de-
monstrating a clear and present dan-
ger to national security." -
RTNDA also has argued that the
1984 Landsat Act, which began the
process of transferring Landsat to
the private sector, grants "unbri-
dled discretion" to the government
to suspend, revoke or withold li-
censes on the basis of national se-
curity. "These provisions would be
unconstitutional under the First
Amendment for being unduly vague
and overbroad, for allowing unjus-
tified prior restraints to be imposed
on the press, and for chilling con-
stitutionally protected activities
without an adequate justification,"
RTNDA's attorneys wrote the
Transportation Department, which
currently is developing rules to im-
plement the act.
Spot, however, is owned by the
French and therefore is "beyond
U.S. jurisdiction," Aamoth said.
"There would be no justification for
preventing U.S. news agencies
from getting pictures that are avail-
able to the rest of the world."
CIA Director William Casey,
commenting on Spot at a recent
meetin g of newspaper executives
said the agency does not plan to
restrict media use of the satellite:
" h. don't think ere 's anything
we can do about it Anybody can go
out and get whatever information
.they can get, the press and any else in any other country I ex-
pect that large news organizations
will have one of those satellites
press has a responsibility to listen
and consider" the overnment when
it argues t at info
rma ins should M
witheld on. national security
grounds, and noted that such coop-
eration occurs frequently
sor at Catholic University, said that
foreign governments may prove
more difficult than our own, and
that the pressure could be indirect.
"What if Mikhail Gorbachev calls
Ronald Reagan and says, 'Put a lid
on ABC or no summit'?"
"If ABC got a U2 to fly over the
Soviet Union, it probably would be
shot down," Destro said. "Foreign
governments might retaliate
[against Spot], or might consider
shooting down the satellite."
State Department official fa-
mi,wr with remote sensing policy
said the agency has no problem with
Spot as long as it makes the data
available on an open, equal, nondis-
criminatory basis. Spot has vowed
to stick with this policy, called
"open skies," which was adopted by
the U.S. government when foreign
governments first expressed ner-
vousness about Landsat.
The open skies approach is cur-
rent U.S. foreign policy, but no in-
ternational law requires other coun-
tries to follow if they launch remote
sensing satellites. Some industry
observers have argued that it would
make business sense to offer exclu-
sive rights to satellite photos, and.
news organizations have argued
that they cannot consider investing
in the technology unless they can
have at least temporary rights to
such photos so they can beat their
competition.
Developing nations, however, are
"not thrilled with open skies," said
Ann Florin, a research director for
the U.N. Association, a private,
nonprofit research organization
based in New York. "The big con-
cern is lack of access to information
about their own territory. They are
worried they won't know what pic-
tures are being taken by whom for
what purpose.
Corporations might use Spot pho-
tos of their competitors' facilities
much as they now use aerial photos,
said Leila Kight, president of Wash-
ington Researchers Ltd, which in-
vestigates companies for other
firms. "There is no reason not to
use it for learning about competi-
tors or acquisiti . targets. As soon
as the knowledge is made available,
there will be companies using it for
that purpose."
Eosat sees the heavenly compe-
tition as a boost for both busi=
nessess. Both satellite companies
plan to spend millions to educate
new customers about the availabil-
ity and quality of their products.
Spot Image foresees a potential
worldwide market of about $100
million for its services, and expects
sales to U.S. customers to generate
almost half of total revenue. Eosat's
sales were $20 million last year.
Canadian and Japanese satellites
are expected to heighten the com-
petition within the next decade.
"The big deal is when you add
together the different attributes of
these systems," said Timothy Al-
exander, a partner in Satellite De-
velopment Services, based in the
District. "We can only barely dis-
cern what we will be able to do."
z
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satellite at 9:45 a.m. local Kiev time on'Tuesday.The plant is located at the
upper left edge of the cooling pond. Below left, an enlargement of the plank=
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL/REUTER
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THE SPOT SATELLITE
he Spot satellite's orbit and adjustable mirrors enable it to produce photos of virtually
T every place on Earth, and to view the same location as often as twice a week. The sat-
ellite orbits the Earth moving from pole to pole as the Earth turns beneath it. taking 26 days
to cover the globe. The mirrors allow Spot to view at an angle, enabling it to photograph
locations directly beneath it and to the sides. Viewing at an angle, Spot can take two images
of the same location within a few days and can produce a stereoscopic, or 'three-dimen-
sionsal" picture.
I
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 ILLEGIB?
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n
MIAMI HERALD
1 Single U.S. spy satellite
sending pictures
By CARL M. CANNON
Herald Washington suromt
WASHINGTON - Less than 24 hours after the
Soviet news agency Tass tersely announced an
accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
near Kiev, high-ranking U.S. officials had in their
possession detailed photographs of the damaged
plant.
Government experts said officials . at the
Pentagon and CIA could tell by looking, at the
pictures that the plant was still burning, that the
fire threatened a second reactor and that the initial
Soviet casualty report - two dead - was absurd.
"We know a lot more about it than the residents
of Kiev," said David Holiday, an official with the
Senate Intelii ence omml ee a ed by the CIA.
"But then, we usually do.
In this case, the Americans know because of a
satellite called the KH-11, code-named "Keyhole."
From an altitude of 150 miles and within
seconds, it can send back to earth telephoto
television signals so detailed that pictures made
from the signals can show a soccer ball on a field
or dividing lines in a parking lot, according to
several intelligence experts.
"This is our only photo satellite up there right
now, but it's the best there is," said Jeffrey
Richelson, an American University professor and
satellite expert.
According to Richelson and other sources, the
electronic signals from the KH-11 are sent to a
relay satellite called Satellite Data System, which
sends the signals to Fort Belvoir, Va. There, the
television images can be made into photographs.
In layman's terms, the KH-11 is similar to a
10-ton camera with a huge telephoto lens. It uses a
series of huge mirrors to magnify item on t e
roun and is perfect fro serving the kind of fire
raging at Chernobyl.
The United States has numerous "early warn-
ing" satellites designed to detect nuclear explo-
sions, but they did not detect the relatively
small-scale chemical explosion at the Chernobyl
plant, according to scientific experts.
U.S. officials won't formally acknowledge the
existence of their spy satellites, but they have had
particular trouble keeping the KH-11 a secret.
In 1975, Christopher Boyce, a $145-a-week code
clerk at TRW in El Segundo, Calif., began selling
the Soviets secrets about the, satellites the
company produced, including the KH-11. Before
Boyce was sentenced to prison, the CIA discovered
that one of its agents, William Kampiles, had sold
the Soviets the KH-11's technical manual.
But this week. U.S. intelligence officials were
said to be pleased at how rapidly they had
provided pictures of the Chernobyl disaster. Right
up until last week, a debate had raged inside the
intelligence community over whether the United
States was undermanned in the field of reconnais-
sance satellites.
Government policy has been to keep two
KH=11's orbiting the earth so that one would
always be covering the Soviet Union, but, as one
intelligence source said Wednesday, "Our rockets
keep blowing up."
'Last August, a second KH-11 satellite fell into
the Pacific shortly after it was launched aboard a
Titan rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in
California. And April 18, intelligence sources said,
another Titan rocket carrying yet another KH-11
exploded at Vandenberg on launch.
"Still, getting these photographs so quickly
demonstrates pretty conclusively that there is nc
crisis in our reconnaissance capabilities," said Johi
Pike, associate director for space policy of the
Federation of American Scientists. "If anybody ha(
concern about our ability to' verify treaties o:
check up on the Russians, this demonstrates tha:
there's not a problem there - even with only one
satellite."
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n
fl
This photo of Chernobyl nuclear plant and surrounding area was taken Tuesday by a civilian satellite - not the
Pentagon's high-powered KH-I i satellite.
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y111'IF" 4 HI I 17ZAI)
& ME
LOS ANGELES TIMES
30 April 1986
Major Blast,
J Meltdown
Seen by U.S.
By JAMES GERSTENZANG
and RUDY ABRAMSON,
Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON-The accident
at a Soviet nuclear power plant
involved "quite an explosion," ap-
parently followed by a meltdown in
the reactor, Administration sources
said Tuesday.
The officials, speaking on the
condition of anonymity and refus-
ing to disclose the precise sources
of their information, said that intel-
ligence data shows a roof blown
away, walls at least partly crum-
bled and evidence of continuing
fire three days after the explosion,
which is believed to have occurred
Saturday.
The officials who studied the
information concluded that there
has been no equivalent accident in
the history of the U.S. nuclear
power industry.
`Quite an Explosion'
"There was quite an explosion,"
said one official, adding that the
site of the blast, the Chernobyl
power complex, was "possibly"
continuing to emit radioactive gas-
es. The plant is about 80 miles
north of Kiev, capital of the
Ukraine.
Officials agreed that there was
no evidence of a nuclear explosion.
"A chemical explosion which led
to a meltdown-that's the way I
understand it to be," a senior
Administration official said. A
meltdown involves the partial or
total melting of a nuclear reactor's
fuel.
Reactor experts speculated that
a chemical leak- allowed a volatile
mixture to form, or that refueling
operations may have caused the
blast.
Lethal Radiation Levels
Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R- Wyo ),
prier a closed G'II~ ing for
senators, said there were
dinarily high levels of radiation,
some of which are h!Lh
eno to
cause instantaneous ea an
others sufficient to bring death
within weeks.
Wallop and Sen. Alan K. Simp-
son (R-Wyo.), who took part in the
Senate investigation of the nuclear
incident at Pennsylvania's Three
Mile Island. plant in 1979, said that
"direct radiation exposure" was
100,000 to 200,000 times greater at
Chernobyl than at Three Mile Is-
land.
"There is so much radioactivity
in the vicinity of the fire that to get
humans anywhere near the fire is
impossible," Wallop said. In addi-
tion, he said that "radioactive io-
dine - falling on pasture grasses
(which feed dairy cows) repre-
sents a high risk to Soviet infants."
"The (radioactive) core is burn-
ing much like charcoal," Simpson
said, adding, "here you have a
completely exposed core" because
there is no vessel to contain it.
The Soviet Union has said that
two people were killed as a result of
the accident. But Kenneth L. Adel-
man, director of the U.S. Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency,
!old a Senate committee that this
account is "frankly preposterous in
':terms of an accident of this magni-
tude."
About 1,000 people were be-
lieved to work at each plant during
each shift. although officials were
'uncertain how many people were
the plant at the time of the blast
whether any warnings were
en before the explosion oc-
urred.
A U.S. nuclear expert who has
limited the Chernobyl reactor com-
plex said that the four reactors
were hared in, sheet metal build-
ings, now of them inside a pressure
vessel. The Soviets have turned to
containment vessels in recent
years, reflecting their ambition to
sell power plants to other coun-
tries.
According to American nuclear
experts, the Soviet decision to build
reactors without containment ves-
sels was less a question of cost
reduction than of design philoso-
phy. Such vessels are intended to
contain radioactivity in the event
of an accident.
Sources said that the Chernobyl
reactors apparently had demon-
strated impressive reliability until
now, and the Soviets have moved
to scale the design up to plants of
1,600-megawatt capacity.
In the United States, the issue of
containment vessels was contro-
versial during early development
of nuclear power reactors. Rep.
Morris K. Udall (D-Ariz.), chair-
man of the House Interior Commit-
tee, said that the U.S. decision to
require vessels around nuclear re-
actors to contain possible radiation
leaks was "very wise," even
though it added enormously to the
cost of atomic power plants.
The Soviet reactors use graphite
to slow the neutrons escaping from
the atoms of nuclear fuel, normally
preventing explosions and regulat-
ing the chain reaction that gener-
ates electricity. Most U.S. reactors,
by contrast? use water as modera-
tors.
Although graphite is a highly
effective moderator, it is also high-
ly volatile, and U.S. reactor experts
speculated that a water leak, al-
lowing water and super-heated
graphite to form an explosive mix-
ture, may have caused a chemical
blast.
It was also thought possible that
refueling operations may have
caused the accident. Unlike U.S.
reactors, which are shut down for
weeks for refueling, the Soviets
replace expended fuel rods while
the reactor operates.
Wallop, reporting a possible sce-
nario for the er that- was
raised in the CIA briefing, said that
a o spo may have developed
on one or more o the fuel rods anff
that an exp osion may have fol-
lowed from a leak that brought
about a buildup of hydrogen, Simp-
son said there was "obviously. a _
failure of-Me cooling system."
In addition to the unknown num-
ber of injuries caused by the acci-
dent, the long-term financial toll
on the Soviet Union, which relies
heavily on civilian nuclear power,
is expected to be enormous.
Replacing the destroyed plant is
only the first cost. "You're talking
about a facility of billions of dol-
lars," one official said.
Beyond that, other plants of
similar design may require modifi-
cations if the accident is deter-
mined to have been caused by a
design flaw. If other nuclear plants
must be shut even temporarily,
officials predicted, the reduction of
electrical -generating capacity
could danwge overall Soviet eco-
~dw
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A
nomic production.
"It's going to run into a lot of
rubles," a Reagan Administration
official said.
The United States formally of-
fered technical and humanitarian
aid to the Soviet Union to help deal
with the accident, but the Soviets
made no response to the offer, State
Department officials said.
The offer of assistance, an-
nounced by a spokesman for Presi-
dent Reagan during his visit to Bali,
was formally given to Soviet
charge d'affaires Oleg M. Sokolov
by Assistant Secretary of State
Rozanne Ridgway. Ridgway told
Sokolov that Reagan and the Unit -
ed States feel "deep regret" over
the accident, State Department
spokesman Charles Redman said.
"We hope the Soviet Union will
provide information about the acci-
dent in a timely manner," he added.
Advice, Measurement
State Department officials said
that the United States offered five
specific types of assistance, the
Associated Press reported. These
include:
-Technical advice on predicting
radioactive-material dispersion
based on geography, weather and
the type of radioactive material
released.
-An aerial measuring system
that can map the spread of radioac-
tive contamination.
-Radiological assistance teams
to measure radioactivity in water,
air and soil, and technical assist-
ance in assessing environmental
effects of the radioactive materials
released.
-Medical personnel experienced
in diagnosing and treating radioac-
tive exposure.
-Technical assistance in radio-
logical decontamination, in recov-
ery from nuclear reactor accidents,
and in minimization of environ -
mental effects.
State Department officials said
they have no reports that any
Americans were injured in the
disaster.
The State Department issued a
formal travel advisory for "Kiev
and adjacent areas," urging Ameri-
cans not to go to the area. An
official said that the advisory does
not include the Soviet Baltic Sea
coast, Finland or Sweden, where
radiation from the accident has
been detected.
Times staff writers Doyle
McManus and Karen Tumulty con-
tributed to this story.
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'4'
WASHINGTON POST
4 May 1986
'Kremlin Aides Visit Area of Reactor
Accident
Scope of Cleanup
Believed Unmatched
By Casa Peterson
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Soviet Union faces an in-
credibly expensive cleanup opera-
tion in the wake of the accident at
its nuclear station in Chernobyl and
may be forced to declare some ar-
eas off-limits indefinitely, according
to U.S. experts in decontaminating
radioactive sites.
While the Soviets have released
little information on the extent or
severity of radioactive fallout from
the reactor explosion and apparent
meltdown, a U.S. interagency task
force has estimated that lethal lev-
els of radioactivity extended as
much as three miles from the plant
immediately after the accident and
that extremely dangerous levels
extended as far as seven miles.
"I don't think anybody has ever
handled anything this size," said
Wayne Bliss, director of the Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency's ra-
diation division in Las Vegas, which
mainly assists in cleanups of mili-
tary sites. "This is the worst acute
contaminating event anybody has
ever had."
The U.S. task force is seeking
additional information on Cherno-
byl, partly in an effort to reassure
Americans that they are in no dan-
ger from a similar disaster but also
because of .the wealth of data that
the accident is expected to gener-
ate.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
official Harold Denton, a member of
the task force who directed the
cleanup at the Three Mile Island
commercial reactor near Harris-
burg, Pa., after its partial meltdown
in March 1979, said the Chernobyl
accident could provide the best les-
sons so far in how to cope with a
serious nuclear accident. "This is
not the absolute worst case," he
said, "but it ranks right up there as
to what you could expect."
No environmental cleanup was
required in the area surrounding
TMI, where a steel-and-concrete
containment vessel held in most
radioactive emissions. Nonetheless,
it was three years before operators
could lower a television camera into
the contaminated reactor and an-
other year before the first techni-
ciags, equipped with special tools,
entered the crippled reactor to be-
gin decontamination.
"You can go in TMI now," Denton
said. "Workmen are standing above
the core, which is underwater, us-
ing special robot tools to scoop up
the radioactive material for disposal
.... This one [Chernobyl] has the
core open to the air, with the same
level of destruction. This is a major,
major cleanup."
The United States has some ex-
perience in similar cleanups, with
mixed success. A major effort on
the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Is-
lands, contaminated by fallout from
an atomic bomb test in 1954, has
not reduced radioactivity enough to
permit the return of residents.
Islanders returned briefly in
1969 but were evacuated again
when it was discovered that food
crops on the island were taking up
radioactivity at dangerous levels.
Two years ago, a scientific commit-
tee estimated it would take another
$40 million to remove 11 inches of
topsoil and revegetate the island.
Bikini Atoll is less than two
square miles in size. The area
thought to have sustained signifi-
cant environmental damage around
Chernobyl, by contrast, is a mini-
mum of 40 square miles and prob-
ably far larger.
The largest areas treated in the
United States for radioactive con-
tamination are the nuclear test sites
in Nevada, which are neither pop-
ulated nor suitable for agriculture.
Bliss estimated that about 80 acres
have been coated with ordinary
road oil to prevent radioactive par-
ticles from being wafted into the
atmosphere.
The Soviets' task will be compli-
cated by the fact that Chernobyl is
situated in the Ukraine, the nation's
breadbasket, which together with
four smaller republics just north of
the nuclear station produces more
than one-third of the nation's winter
wheat and dairy products, as well as
substantial amounts of sugar beets,
vegetables and fruits.
The plant also sits near the Dnie-
per River, which supplies, agricul-
tural irrigation water as well as
drinking water for Kiev, a city of
2.4 million, and other Soviet cities
on its way south to the Black Sea.
"We've never had anything con-
taminated so widely and with such
high levels of radioactivity," Denton
said.
At the worst, heavily contami-
nated soils might have to . be
dredged up and disposed of
where, stripping the land of its most
productive topsoil, or abandoned for
crop and grazing purposes for dec-
ades while radioactive particles de-
cay to safe levels.
Less drastic measures may be
possible in less severely damaged
areas, such as the use of chelating
agents to bind some isotopes and
prevent plants from taking them up,
or deep plowing to mix and dilute
radioactive materials in the soil.
"But there are points where you
don't want to use pastures or fields
for anything," Bliss said.
The Soviets reportedly faced a
similar situation 30 years ago when
an explosion contaminated a wide
area near Kyshtym in the eastern
Ural Mountains. According to pub-
lished reports from CIA documents
and emigre Soviet scientists, 30
villages were abandoned after that
accident, more than 100 square
miles were declared a "dead zone"
and a river was rerouted to avoid
contamination.
A far less severe accident hap-
pened in 1966, when an American
B52 collided with its refueling plane
near the coast of Spain and spilled
four hydrogen bombs. Two of the
bombs ruptured on impact, spread-
ing plutonium and uranium over two
areas several hundred feet in diam-
eter. U.S. officials dredged up more
than 1,000 tons of topsoil and veg-
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etation and took it back to the Unit-
ed States for disposal.
Just how far dangerous levels of
radioactive particles from Cherno-
byl might have spread is a matter of
speculation.
According to the U.S. task force,
areas within seven miles of the
plant clearly will require long-term
decontamination, but without data
on local weather conditions and ter-
rain, it is not possible to know how
much additional land has been dam-
aged.
The only experience at all com-
parable to Chernobyl in the United
States was a deliberate test by the
Atomic Energy Commission in
1965. The commission hauled a
small reactor on a flatbed railroad
car to a site near Jackass Flats,
Nev., and dropped.the fuel rods out
in an effort to determine the effects
of a runaway nuclear reactor.
The reactor exploded, releasing
lethal levels of radioactiviy in the
immediate vicinity. Cesium and
strontium 90 isotopes were de-
tected in samples of milk from cows
grazing near Bakersfield, Calif., 175
miles away, but not at levels con-
sidered dangerous.
The Chernobyl accident would
have released much higher doses,
because of the size of the reactor,
but just how much more would de-
pend on the amount of fuel in the
reactor, how long the fuel had been
in use and the power level at the
time of the accident.
In a television interview Friday
from West Germany, a Soviet of-
ficial said water reservoirs near the
plant were contaminated, an occur-
rence that U.S. officials considered
unavoidable. The plant sits near the
Pripyat River, a tributary of the
Dnieper.
But water contamination may
pose less difficulty than soil contam-
ination, according to Bliss, who said
initial doses of radiation have prob-
ably been flushed downriver and
diluted, and standard city water
treatment facilities remove much
radioactivity through carbon filters.
Some isotopes may settle in river
or reservoir sediment or be taken
up quickly by algae and other veg-
etation, where they can enter the
food chain through fish and other
animals, he said. "These compounds
very likely will dissolve easily, like
table salt, and they will move quite
a ways," he said.
Rooftop cisterns, used in many
countries to collect rainwater for
household use, could be heavily con-
taminated, but well water "should
not be contaminated if people have
reasonable wellheads," he said.
As for food products, Bliss said
that leafy vegetables and grasses
will probably have to be destroyed
or disposed of in some manner.
"Root vegetables are probably all
right if they are washed and
checked," he said. "Uptake won't
occur rapidly and there are safe
levels of radioactivity in consumer
products without subjecting the
public to great risks."
For future crops, however, the
soil might have to be treated with
agents to prevent plants from tak-
ing up excessive quantities of radio-
active materials. Potassium fertil-
izers, for example, can restrict the
uptake of radioactive cesium by
plants in much the same way potas-
sium iodide protects humans from
radioactive iodine.
While it is impossible to estimate
the overall cost of any cleanup op-
eration at Chernobyl, Bliss noted
that the United States spent $15
million in just a few days seeking
the radioactive remains of a Soviet
spy satellite that crashed in Canada
in 1978.
"This is going to make that look a
trip to the candy store," he said.
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