mirror of
https://github.com/nhammer514/textfiles-politics.git
synced 2024-12-28 16:59:25 -05:00
58 lines
3.7 KiB
Plaintext
58 lines
3.7 KiB
Plaintext
|
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.
|
|||
|
|
|