The lasting Soviet nuclear menace.

• Author: Schorr, Jonathan
• Position: Continuation of nuclear operations in Commonwealth of Independent States

It must have been hard for President Clinton to keep a straight face. At the Tokyo G-7 economic summit this summer, a journalist asked Clinton what was going to happen to the aging Soviet-made nuclear reactors--the kind that blew up in 1986 at Chernobyl in the worst nuclear power accident in history. Blithely, Clinton repeated what Boris Yeltsin had told him: Russia had "virtually completed" the task of "trying to decommission" its first generation nuclear plants.

This is a ludicrous claim. "I don't quite know what he's talking about," says Ivan Selin, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). "When I talk about the first generation, I'm talking about the earlier Chernobyl reactors, and those are still operating." None of the Chernobyl-type reactors--seen as the most dangerous--has been shut down since the fall of the Soviet Union, except for two in Chernobyl itself. Worse, the Russians are upgrading the earliest reactors, a sign that they will keep them running at least until 2010. So why would Clinton repeat the Russian fib? Strobe Talbott, the ambassador-at-large for the republics of the former Soviet Union, may be hinting at the reason when he says, "We consider it to be in our interest to do everything we can to see to it that reform survives and prevails in Russia and the other former Soviet republics."

Events in the past few months have underscored the importance of treating democracy in Russia gently. But at what cost does the United States sanction a whitewash of the ex-Soviet nuclear danger? The notion of nuclear warheads falling into the hands of a terrorist or dictator has been the stuff of wild western nightmares since the fall of the USSR. But at the same time, 15 Chernobyl-type reactors are still chugging along in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and in Eastern Europe. At best, they are a quiet reminder of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, who died in the infamous 1986 explosion, and of the estimated 300,000 people being treated for radiation-related diseases from that and other disasters. At worst, they are a warning that the risk of nuclear catastrophe may be even higher now than it was in 1986.

Of the 63 reactors in the CIS, 43 are so unsafe that Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt says, "if they were in the United States or Sweden, we'd close them down by yesterday." In October, the Ukranian government voted to keep Chernobyl itself up and running; in November, security at Chernobyl was so lax that t h i e v e s were able to break into the plant and steal $1 m i l l i o n worth of uranium-filled reactor rods. While the West has made a piecemeal effort to improve the design and operation of CIS and Eastern European reactors, Moscow has called home its resources, leaving some republics without the experts or even the blueprints necessary to run their plants. Nevertheless, Russia, strapped for cash and anxious to export energy, plans to build still another 23 new reactors in the next two decades. But the evidence is that the bureaucracy and lack of attention to safety that produced Chernobyl hasn't changed a bit since 1986--despite Clinton and Yeltsin's cheery claims to the contrary. Consider these examples of life inside the former Soviet nuclear culture:

* In April in Siberia, a tank exploded, poisoning the air over a 46-square-mile area. According to Valery Soyfer, a Russian biophysicist who studied the effects of the Chernobyl disaster, plant personnel initially ignored requirements to inform the central government, only complying when it was clear that the radiation would be detected anyway. He describes the incident as the "same scenario" as Chernobyl: The government severely underestimated the radiation released, then increased the estimate "several times."

* In July at the nuclear plant at Chelyabinsk--one of the most radioactive places on e a r t h - a s t o r a g e tank ruptured, leaking radioactive gas. While the R u s s i a n government claimed the leak was insignificant, plant workers told a different s t o r y , declaring that they could not guarantee n u c l e a r safety. And the government's announcement--delayed until two days after the accident--ominously resembled traditional Soviet denials and delays. As early...