Nuclear Dutchman?

When the Japanese government announced in 1963 that it planned to build a nuclear-powered ship, there was widespread criticism. Memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much too vivid for the Japanese people to accept even peaceful applications of atomic energy.

But the government went ahead, insisting that there would be no danger. In 1971 the $21 million, 8,214-ton freighter Mutsu, named for its home port in northern Japan, slid down the ways--and into trouble.

First local fishermen, fearing that radioactive discharges from the freighter would contaminate their rich scallop fishing grounds, pressured authorities to keep the ship in its berth for 22 months. Then two weeks ago, the Mutsu was ordered to go on its test run. Shouting "Shinde shimae [Drop dead]!"

at the ship's crew, the fishermen set up a massive blockade of fishing boats to stop the freighter from leaving port.

Finally, after sneaking the Mutsu out to sea late one night last week, the ship's engineers turned on its untried reactor.

Even before nuclear power turned the propeller once, alarms sounded. The reactor shields were leaking minute amounts of radioactivity.

The government embarrassedly ordered the Mutsu to make repairs at sea. Technicians first smeared a paste of rice and boron (an element that absorbs neutrons) over the shields without success. Next polyethylene shields were dispatched from shore that should stop the leak. Meantime, the fishermen vowed to form a barricade of boats to bar the freighter from its home port. Other Japanese cities are no more anxious to receive it. At week's end critics were saying that the Mutsu should become the world's first nuclear Flying Dutchman, condemned to sail ceaselessly without ever putting in to land.

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