The Soviet Syndrome

...Three Mile Island has come to the East...

...Their quarrel, however, is not with nuclear power per se...

...The A. 1. power station in Jaslovska Bohunice, in southwestern Czechoslovakia, subsequently suffered two mishaps...

...Thus the documents being circulated by Soviet bloc dissidents are the first stirrings of a nuclear-power debate that could have profound implications...

...We consider it urgent that the population of the areas surrounding nuclear power stations be informed of the nature of the operation as well as safety aspects, and that information on previous accidents-their causes and effects-be immediately published...

...Both honors, according to Zhores Medvedev, belong to an immense nuclear explosion that occurred in late 1957 or the beginning of 1958 in the southern Ural Mountains...

...There the media gave detailed accounts of the Harrisburg incident, while continually emphasizing the safety and necessity of nuclear power...

...In the Soviet Union, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania, where the secret police has a strong grip on the life of society there is little prospect for any kind of public opposition beyond that of the dissident movement...

...And the East Germans, who receive West German radio and television, cannot help knowing of the anti-nuclear movement in the Federal Republic...

...Romania similarly avoided discussion of the accident, no doubt to prevent increased apprehension over construction of the two Canadian reactors it has purchased...

...In fact, opposition to the plant has been so strong that last year the Communal Assembly of the city of Zadar had to eliminate the plant from its long-term development plan...

...In Czechoslovakia, the Czech press briefly mentioned the event...

...But the East is not the West, and the chances of no-nuke groups arising ultimately depends on the degree of political control in particular nations...

...The reaction in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to the Harrisburg accident also provides indirect evidence of widespread unease over nuclear energy...

...Should the West find itself in a position of "humiliating political dependence," it will have to make concessions, the physicist cautions, and "in politics, one concession always leads to another, and where it will finally end is hard to foresee...

...it is an obvious response to a growing worry among Soviet citizens...

...It is difficult to explain to a nonspecialist (though it is actually true) that the nuclear reactor of a nuclear power station is nothing like an atomic bomb, that the power station burning coal or oil poses a much greater danger to the environment, as well as a biological threat to individuals, than does a nuclear station or breeder reactor of the same capacity rating...

...They conclude: "Only on the basis of public opinion, possibly in the form of a plebiscite, is it possible to decide the basic problem...

...Western attention to human rights violations in the East has given strength to the human rights movement in the Soviet bloc and made the issue of no small interest to the entire population...

...The basic reason for anti-nuclear feelings among people," argues Sakharov, "is probably the fact that they do not have sufficient information about the complex and very specialized problems involved...

...Romania has recently contracted to buy two reactors from Canada-A move that is a sign not only of Romania's foreign policy independence, but also of its doubts about the quality of Sov i-et nuclear technology...

...Two interesting documents are currently making the rounds in the East: one by the Russian dissident leader and nuclear physicist, Andrei Sakharov, and the other by nuclear energy experts from the Czech Charter 77 group...

...Add to this the fact that Western stations like Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty keep the East European public well-informed on the issues (not failing to remind them that Soviet nuclear power plants lack the steel-reinforced concrete domes all experts consider vital), and that the Soviet bloc's own press must occasionally report about such events as Harrisburg, and one has, by Western standards, all the ingredients for an anti-nuclear movement...

...Although such protests are unlikely to "fan out" to other European Communist countries, there are signs of rising popular concern about nuclear energy...

...As these examples show, the Soviet bloc faces the same nuclear energy problems as the West...

...and Great Britain, but there is independent evidence that the disaster occurred...

...Unlike the West, nuclear energy has not run into serious public opposition in the East-with the exception of Yugoslavia...

...In a speech earlier this year, for example, former British Energy Secretary Tony Benn revealed that the accident "was known at the time...

...two technicians were killed...

...What the magazine neglects to note is that open discussion of most policy questions is forbidden in the Soviet bloc...

...Moreover, says Sakharov, nuclear energy is indispensable to preserving the "economic and political independence of every country...

...But it was a closed affair and its conclusions have not been made known...

...Of the nondissident nuclear protests in the East, the loudest and clearest has surfaced in Yugoslavia, the country with the loosest ties to the Kremlin...

...to the Atomic Energy Authority...

...There is no technology, however, which is infallible and without fault...

...A commission from Moscow comes to investigate the accident...

...Nuclear waste stored in underground shelters close to the first Soviet military reactors, exploded somehow," writes the exiled Russian scientist and dissident in his book, Soviet Science...

...This is the lesson of Harrisburg...

...Medvedev's report has been questioned by a number of eminent scientists in the U.S...

...Thermal pollution from a nuclear station in Rheinsberg, East Germany, is also known to have occurred...

...Western attention to the problem of nuclear energy may have a corresponding impact...

...Izvestia, the USSR's official government daily, reported in a 40-word article only that some radioactive steam had escaped into the atmosphere following a malfunction in the cooling system...

...In Hungary, where public discontent is usually skillfully channeled into state-approved modes of expression, opposition to nuclear energy will probably be confined to the media and official organizations...

...The Yugoslavs went so far as to criticize the Soviet press for delaying its reports, and for a failure of objectivity...

...But the free world in particular has cause for concern, since "there exists a political interest on the part of the USSR in exploiting energy shortages in the West...

...In Poland, where workers strike, intellectuals publish dozens of underground journals and millions flock to hear the Pope, anything, even a no-nuke rally, is possible...

...In February of this year, the Belgrade daily Politika observed that the action was taken because the public "was afraid of all the possible dangers stemming from a nuclear bugbear, and now it seems that the fire of resistance has fanned out...

...We are justified," they write, "in suggesting that experts in various fields should put forward their views on the need for the development of nuclear energy and its risks in a public discussion, supported by state institutions and social organizations, and assured by the mass media...

...Times attributes the lack of a public debate on the subject to the fact that "in the Socialist world the safety of the people and of the environment is an essential precondition for nuclear development": in other words, that the peoples of the Soviet bloc simply trust their governments implicitly...

...the latter demand public discussion of the issue...

...In these circumstances, it is the dissidents who have monopolized what there is of a nuclear debate...

...As for the East European countries, East Germany has four reactors, Czechoslovakia two and Bulgaria two, while Hungary and Yugoslavia are building their first...

...Belgrade's decision to build a power plant on the Dalmatian coast, with the help of Westinghouse, has met fierce resistance from the local citizenry...

...The Czech dissidents are far less apprehensive...

...For instance, a recently released Soviet film, The Investigations Commission, an Eastern precursor of The China Syndrome, deals with a breakdown at a Soviet nuclear power station...

...In 1973, a malfunction in the cooling system caused an accident at the Shevchenko breeder reactor on the Mangyshlak Peninsula in the Caspian Sea...

...The former comes out squarely for nuclear energy...

...it focuses on current practices, the lack of adequate safety measures and secrecy...

...And this not only contaminated some 1,000 square miles but resulted in several hundred radiation deaths...

...The Soviet magazine Sew Alexander Motvi and Adrian Kar-ainvckv, both previous contributors to the Nl . are freelance writers who specialize in East European affairs...

...Staunchly pro-Soviet Bulgaria, which is currently constructing a new reactor, broadcast two reports of the incident at 2 a.m., when there are presumably few listeners, especially in a country with no nightlife...

...In time, this may no longer be the case...

...Will a "no-nuke" movement develop in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union...

...The Communist media usually trumpet the West's failures, yet this time silence prevailed in most Soviet bloc countries...

...This should not be surprising...

...Should the Soviet bloc regimes then refuse to respond to the legitimate fears of their citizenry, they may face a massive popular reaction to nuclear energy...

...The first, on January 5, 1976, involved radioactive gas emissions...

...The second, on February 24, 1977, involved radioactive waste water...

...Ostensibly the theme is adherence to Party spirit and principles, but the setting is not incidental...

...Typical was the journalist in a popular Polish daily who wrote: "Thus far nuclear technology has been amazingly clean and safe...

...all the Slovak media were silent...

...A few years later, either in 1960 or 1961, a mishap of unknown proportions took place at the nuclear reactor in Kyshlyn, east of the Urals...

...The situation was different in Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia, the three most liberal Eastern European countries...

...Last year, for example, a conference on the safety and reliability of nuclear reactors and atomic power stations was held in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, with about 180 specialists and scientists in attendance from all 10 comecon countries...

...According to Politika, a consensus had arisen among Dalmatian citizens: "We do not need any nuclear reactors, since we live quite well from tourism and from our hotels...

...Six days later, a national television news show blamed the Pennsylvania accident not on the technology, but on the "power monopolies whose main goal is profit and who fail to take the necessary safety measures...

...The Charter 77 group's statement on the nuclear issue, for example, is thought to have been partially inspired by the November 1978 referendum in Austria, which resulted in the closing of the country's only reactor...

...Further, an unprecedented Politika editorial, after noting that "nuclear energy is the need of our time," suggested holding a national referendum because of the understandable fears of the populace and cited the examples of referendums on nuclear power held in Western Europe...

...At present, their concern assumes few public forms...

...The USSR has been building nuclear reactors since the early '50s and currently possesses 27 (in the five-year period ending in 1980, Soviet nuclear megawatt capacity is to increase fourfold...

...The preconditions certainly exist: rapid nuclear plant proliferations, occasional accidents, official secrecy, widespread mistrust of government intentions, popular knowledge (albeit scant) of nuclear mishaps in the West, the stirrings of a discussion among the intelligentsia...

...The Hungarian media carried detailed accounts of the accident, buttressed by supplementary information on foreign relations...

...Nevertheless, change comes even in the most repressive nations...

...Was it due to oversight by the designer, improper operation, or errors in calculation...

...Eastern Europeans, in short, are hardly ignorant of the nuclear energy question...

...Hungarians, who travel to Vienna almost at will, are also becoming aware of the nuclear hazards...