TRACKING DOWN A RUSSIAN NUCLEAR ACCIDENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200140006-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 20, 2004
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: July 27, 1979
• Content Type: NSPR

---"" THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Approved For Inj~2Q 10/13 : CIA-RDP88-0135OR00020
Article appeared
on page l2
_
A&nt
Tracking Down a Russian - clear
By SHRitY E. BISHOP The miffed Russian set about to prove
In the late 1960s there began appearing his story and "Nuclear Disaster in the Ur-
in Russian scientific journals occasional. als" is the result. To those of us who some-
reports of experiments involving the "ar- how missed the b~k1976acoit rovers a ho the
forests with radioactive isotopes. The re- ---.---
parts described the ecological effects of the that one wonders not whether it happened U.S., the Soviets began producing pluto-
radiation on a wide variety of plants and but how and why news of the accident was mum before they had worked out the tech-?i
animals, from bacteria in the soil up to kept secret for so long and why, when it nology of handling the highly radioactive !
and including treest deer and migratory' was mentioned publicly, there were official wastes from the. reactors. They simply
birds. attempts in the West to discount It. poured the liquid wastes into trenches. The {
on soil and water conditions permitted the
n't rel
t d
i
y
oes
s
If the reports were noticed by Western The Russian biochem
scientists at all, they apparently attracted eyewitness accounts or leaked classified in- residue plutonium to accumulate until an
formation for his evidence of the Urals dis- atomic chain reaction., started under-
r ", ,She aster. Instead, he turns to research reports ground, producing a tremendous amount of
published openly in Soviet scientific jour- heat.
"Nuclear Disaster. in the Urals" nals. Like Sherlock Holmes, who found the The result was an eruptforr similar to a
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