         SECRET DOCUMENTS REVEAL DANGER OF WORLDWIDE NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS

          On March 11, 1987, NBC broadcast a documentary, "Nuclear Power:
     In France It Works."  It could have passed for a lengthy nuclear power
     commercial. Missing from anchorman Tom Brokaw's introduction was the
     fact that NBC's owner, General Electric, is America's second largest
     nuclear power salesman and third largest producer of nuclear weapons
     systems.
          One month after the NBC documentary, there were accidents at two
     French nuclear installations, injuring seven workers. THE CHRISTIAN
     SCIENCE MONITOR wrote of a "potentially explosive debate" in France,
     with new polls showing a third of the French public opposing nuclear
     power. That story was not reported on NBC News.
          NBC's policy which produced the "nuclear power works" commercial
     and censored the news about two nuclear accidents is typical of the
     international silence about reactor incidents which help explain the
     industry's undeserved reputation for safety.
          The lid to Pandora's nuclear safety box was partially opened last
     year when the West German weekly DER SPIEGEL published 48 of over 250
     secret nuclear reactor accdient reports compiled by the International
     Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The report of previously secret IAEA
     documents was translated into English for the first time and published
     in David Brower's EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL.
          Some of the "incidents" you never heard about: February 1983 --
     Bulgaria's Kozluduj nuclear power plant lost pressure in the primary
     cooling system; June 1983 -- three of four pumps failed in Argentina's
     Embalse nuclear plant; August 1984 -- the primary cooling system in
     West Germany's Bruno Leuschner plant in Greifswald burst; October 1984
     -- engineers at the Chooz A reactor on the French-Belgian border
     discovered numerous "breaks" and "broken welding seams" on the
     critical control rods of the 17-year-old reactor; 1984 --
     Czechoslovakia's Jaslovska Bohunice reactor spilled radioactive
     coolant into two reactor containment units due to the failure of 72
     defective bolts in the circulation system; January 1985 -- at
     Pakistan's Kanupp reactor, radioactive heavy water leaked while being
     transferred through a rubber hose; February 1985 -- during a fuel rod
     experiment in East Germany's Rheinsberg reactor, a measuring device
     stuck into the center of the reactor caused a leak of radioactive
     water; April 1985 -- radioactive water and sludge swamped two rooms of
     an auxiliary building at Belgium's Tihange reactor; December 1985 --
     emergency power in Canada's Pickerikng reactor failed in three
     separate units for five days.
          DER SPIEGEL said that in several of these previously unreported
     nuclear slip-ups "a meltdown was a real possibility." Worse yet for
     Americans, DER SPIEGEL found that human error "is most advanced in
     North America ... sometimes with hair-raising results." A survey of
     official records since the Three Mile Island reactor meltdown in 1979
     shows there have been more than 23,000 mishaps at U.S. reactors -- and
     the number are increasing. In 1986, there  were more than 3,000
     reported incidents -- up 24 percent over 1984. The chilling
     conclusion: "Humanity has been sitting on a powderkeg as a result of
     reliance on the 'peaceful' use of the atom."

          SOURCES: EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL, Summer, 1987, "Secet Documents
     Reveal Nuclear Accidents Worldwide," by Gar Smith with Hans
     Hollitscher, pp 21-24; EXTRA, June 1987, "Nuclear Broadcasting
     Company," p 5.
