Money For Red Nukes

THE SOVIET BLOC IS DEAD, BUT ITS NUCLEAR MENace lives on -- not so much now in missiles as in about 60 unsafe power plants. Officials of the Group of Seven major industrial countries -- all cold war enemies of the ex-communists -- have agreed in principle to set up a fund that would lend money to nations of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to fix up their nuclear dinosaurs. The U.S. and Japan overcame their skepticism about multilateral rather than bilateral funding, and will make small initial contributions. Though the fund is eventually supposed to total $700 million, it will start with $75 million, all but $14 million put up by Germany and France -- the G-7 nations most likely to breathe fallout borne by the winds from a reactor accident in Eastern Europe. One problem: what to do with 19 Chernobyl-style reactors that cannot be made safe and should be shut down altogether -- which would deprive their surrounding areas of needed electricity.