Soviet Union More Fallout From Chernobyl

By John Greenwald.

To a world that received the initial news with shock and foreboding, the explosion and fire at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear plant suddenly became as close as wind and rain could carry it last week--and as menacing as a nightmare. While Soviet authorities insisted that there was little to worry about outside the Ukraine and neighboring regions, the cloud of deadly radioactive dust from Unit No. 4 that first spread over Scandinavia and Eastern Europe now crossed oceans and land masses, falling on an ever widening range of food and water supplies in dozens of countries. It also continued to poison the political and diplomatic atmosphere.

Concerns rose sharply over the safety of residents of Kiev, 80 miles from the disaster, and the surrounding area. Though officials first said the April 26 accident posed no danger to the third largest Soviet city (pop. 2.4 million), Kievans were told last week to wash often and keep their windows closed. They were further warned against eating lettuce and swimming outdoors. In the city, water trucks hosed down streets to wash away radioactive dust, and police conducted spot checks for radiation. Kiev's 250,000 schoolchildren will be let out of classes two weeks early for summer vacation so that they can be evacuated from the area.

Packed trains from the beleaguered Ukrainian capital streamed into Moscow during the week. Many Kiev passengers were arriving to join families for Friday celebrations of Victory Day, a national holiday marking the defeat of Nazi Germany, but many others were fleeing radiation from Chernobyl. Spokesmen at Moscow's Kievsky Station said extra trains had to be added to handle the crush. Said a Kiev passenger who arrived with two young children and identified herself only as Svetlana: "We started to believe that it might be dangerous for our children at home. They can stay with their grandmother until we know whether it will be safe for them to return." She added, "Most of the people are calm, but those with young children and pregnant women are getting concerned."

Evidence of the danger that people in the Kiev area may be facing came from some distant sources. Experts found surprisingly high radiation levels, for example, in members of a Western Michigan University tour group that had visited Kiev two days after the mishap. Tests by health technicians at a Consumers Power nuclear plant near South Haven, Mich., showed that 14 of the tourists had absorbed almost 1,500 millirems of radiation, or 50 times the amount in a chest X ray. Robert English, corporate health physicist for Consumers Power, said that the Americans faced minimal long-term health hazards. However, some people living in the immediate vicinity of the reactor may have risked death or, at the very least, severe radiation burns.

Like a biblical calamity, the impact of the accident seemed to be felt everywhere. Among the countries affected:

ITALY. Border patrols halted 32 freight cars loaded with cattle, sheep and horses from Poland and Austria for nearly a week before forcing them to return. Worried inspectors found abnormally high levels of radiation in many of the 908 animals in the shipment. Italy later banned imports of meat, livestock and vegetables from most of Eastern Europe.

BRITAIN. Radiation fears led members of the London Festival Ballet, a leading British dance company, to vote unanimously to cancel a spring tour of the Soviet Union. The three-week visit would have been the first by a British dance troupe in 25 years. A government unit that monitors radiation reported that "it is perfectly safe to drink milk or tap water, and there is no need to take iodine tablets." Still, whiskymakers in Scotland fretted that concerns about radioactive water could damage sales. Said Alan Rutherford, a water-research officer for Scottish malt distillers: "We take water from lochs and streams and reservoirs as well as springs, but we are watching the levels carefully and think there is no need for concern."

WEST GERMANY. A headline in the newspaper Bild Zeitung proclaimed ATOM ANGST, while authorities issued conflicting orders. In the state of North Rhine- Westphalia, citizens were urged to keep their children out of sandboxes, to avoid touching the ground with anything but their feet and to protect themselves from rain. Yet in Bavaria officials saw no harm in letting children play in sand as long as they kept it out of their mouths. Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann sought to ease fears like those that caused almost 1,000 anxious TV viewers to call a panel of experts with such questions as whether they should jog, play tennis or walk their dogs. Said Zimmermann in a special radio and TV address: "Based on present findings, there was not and is not any danger for us."

JAPAN. Despite assurances that winds would carry the radiation past them, the Japanese found fallout last week throughout their country. Slight amounts were detected in sources ranging from Tokyo rainwater to fresh milk. Though the government advised people that no danger existed, demand for powdered milk soared, and some stores ran out of it. "We are not going to drink milk as long as it is contaminated," said one frightened homemaker. Yet most Japanese showed little concern. "There is no sense of a growing crisis here," said Noriaki Hosokawa, 32, a Tokyo importer of windsurfing equipment. "Not a single friend of mine is worried about radiation."

CANADA. In a startling discovery, health officials found that Ottawa rains carried six times as much radioactive iodine as is considered acceptable for drinking water. But experts said the finding posed no danger to Canadians, since standards are based on the risks over a lifetime's exposure. Meanwhile, federal officials have required all shipments of European fruit, vegetables and herbs to be held and tested. Canada also warned travelers to Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and parts of the Mediterranean to wash all fruit and vegetables and avoid drinking fresh milk.

THE U.S. Minute amounts of radiation were detected from the Pacific Northwest ! to upstate New York. Monitors found the first traces of iodine 131 in rainwater from a car windshield in Richland, Wash. That helped spark a rush to buy iodine-rich kelp tablets to prevent ill effects. Said Irma Silverthorn, 65, of West Seattle, who armed herself with kelp: "If I had kids, I'd line them up and give it to them." While health officials deny that the water is harmful, they advise caution. The Environmental Protection Agency said a quart of such rainwater would contain less than half the radioactivity of a chest X ray. Said Donald Macdonald, Acting Assistant Secretary of Health: "I would drink it, and that's what the guidelines say, but I would prefer not to drink it."

The fallout from Chernobyl was also diplomatic. When U.S. and Soviet negotiators resumed nuclear arms-control talks after a nine-week halt, the highly charged diplomatic atmosphere was made more tense by concerns over the Soviets' delay in notifying the world of the accident. Some members of the American team argued privately that the incident showed anew that the Soviets cannot be trusted to allow precise verification of missile agreements. Said one official: "Imagine what they do to national-security items if they handle themselves like this with just a civilian power plant." In a similar vein, the London Sunday Times asked editorially, "Who would trust the Soviet Union to allow proper international verification of its nuclear missile sites when it does not even tell its own citizens of a fatal accident in one of its own nuclear power stations?" For his part, President Reagan used Chernobyl and the Soviets' less-than-forthcoming behavior to illustrate for fellow leaders at the Tokyo economic summit why his Administration is so concerned about Soviet credibility.

While still keeping many important details secret, Soviet officials last week began to lift the veil on what happened at Chernobyl. But perhaps the clearest picture that came out of the explanations was of a Soviet leadership unprepared to handle a major crisis. The closed Soviet society and tightly managed public information system had left Moscow unable to cope with this kind of situation. Said Marshall Goldman, associate director of Harvard's Russian Research Center: "The leadership has panicked and can't seem to make up its mind as to what to do." Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev has kept a conspicuously low profile and has yet to say anything about the accident. Goldman described him as "the man who is just not there."

In one news conference, Deputy Premier Boris Shcherbina tried to blame the problems on "local experts" who failed to make a "true assessment of the accident" quickly enough. Ukrainian Premier Alexander Lyashko noted later that Moscow was not informed of the seriousness of the situation until two days after the mishap.

The carefully controlled 67-minute session at which Shcherbina spoke was the first formal briefing since the accident began. Officials conceded that while the accident occurred at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, some 36 hours passed before the evacuation of the 49,000 residents in the vicinity of Pripyat, the settlement that houses power station workers, their families and others. Shcherbina said that the accident probably started with a chemical explosion. He also revealed that two fire fighters died battling the blaze in Unit No. 4, and 18 of the 204 people hospitalized with radiation sickness since the accident were in grave condition.

As the story unfolded in the Soviet press, the disaster itself was transformed from the near non-event of early versions into an occasion for heroism. Flames leaped so high after the initial explosion, the newspaper Izvestiya reported, that fire fighters had to climb to the 90-ft.-high roof of an adjoining building to aim their hoses down on the blaze. "Every step taken by the fire fighters in their battle against the flames was incredibly difficult," the account continued, "because of the hell-like heat from the melting surface" of the asphalt roof. The following day a 1,100-bus convoy that stretched 13 miles took 2 hrs. 40 min. to evacuate residents to nearby communities.

On Thursday the Soviets allowed a group of reporters to visit Kiev. They met with Ukrainian Premier Lyashko, who said that a total of 84,000 people had been evacuated from the general vicinity of the plant. The area was cleared in two stages, Lyashko said. The initial move took place within a six-mile zone around the plant that authorities later extended to 18 miles. He added that 230 teams of Soviet medical workers were working outside the cordoned-off sector to aid evacuees.

The clearest picture of the situation was provided by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations-affiliated organization based in Vienna. Its three top officials were allowed to fly over the site of the accident. Morris Rosen, the director of the agency's division of nuclear | safety, declared at week's end that the uncontrolled fire at the plant's No. 4 reactor was out, though the molten mass continued to smolder. He also confirmed that the Soviets were tunneling beneath the reactor in an attempt to seal off the damaged unit from below with concrete, thus protecting the underlying ground and water table. Rosen called the effort the first step in a plan to "entomb" the entire reactor in concrete. He added that the No. 3 unit, which some Western officials had thought might also be on fire two weeks ago, had been damaged but that its cooling system was working.

Rosen confirmed that the accident began with an explosion followed by a severe fire. He said the reactor was undergoing maintenance and operating at only 7% of its power when the mishap occurred. The blast halted all chain reactions in the unit's core, Rosen said, but it remained hot because the radioactive fuel continued to decay.

Whereas last week the Soviets declined a renewed official U.S. offer of help, they turned elsewhere for aid. West Germany shipped two remote- controlled robot vehicles for use at Chernobyl. The machines, which resemble miniature tanks with probing arms, will provide televised glimpses inside the damaged reactor. Dr. Robert Gale, a UCLA specialist in bone-marrow transplants, along with three colleagues, is in Moscow performing operations on Chernobyl victims whose marrow was badly damaged by radiation. Gale, who has already operated on more than a dozen of those injured, expects to remain there for about a month.

By week's end, Soviet discussions of Chernobyl acquired a different tone. Thursday's Izvestiya showed that Soviet observers were profoundly disturbed by several aspects of the disaster. One was the accident itself with its demonstration of the risks of nuclear power. The other was the clear necessity for closer global communication. Wrote News Analyst Stanislav Kondrashov: "Chernobyl laid new emphasis on the need for two different societies, socialist and capitalist, to find a common tongue. This search should be joint and call for restraint, greater mobility and mutual compromise." After the shrill anti-Western rhetoric of previous commentary, the Izvestiya piece was the first sign of official thoughtfulness and self-examination since the accident began.

With reporting by David Aikman and Nancy Traver/ Moscow, with other bureaus