Realizing that it is unrealistic to expect the R.B.M.K.'s to be shut down in the near future, organizers called this week's meeting to review Russian documentation that significant steps have been taken or are planned by Russian administrators to make the reactors safer. James Guppy of Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. "All of us here are acutely aware "that another serious nuclear accident could doom nuclear power everywhere, with immense economic consequences for many nations," said Dr. Moreover, the future of nuclear energy itself could be at stake. Millions of Europeans were exposed to fallout from the Chernobyl disaster, possibly suffering long-term health effects, and many Western experts believe that it could happen again. The R.B.M.K.'s are seen as threats not only to their operating crews and nearby communities, but also to much of Western Europe. American experts believe that although some of the older pressurized-water reactors could be made reasonably safe, all 15 of the Chernobyl-style reactors, called R.B.M.K.'s, should be scrapped without delay. Of 62 Soviet-designed reactors operating in the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe, 47 are pressurized-water reactors similar in principle to most American types. Nuclear Experts MeetĪt the meeting sponsored by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency that ended here on Thursday, nuclear experts from nine Western countries conferred with senior nuclear power officials of the former Soviet Union on the safety of Soviet reactors of the Chernobyl type. The official United States position on these reactors has strongly opposed their continued operation, and has sought to discourage or bar financing of measures that would prolong the reactors' lives.īut American and European technical experts acknowledged at the meeting of the watchdog group this week that this position is unrealistic, and that the former Communist countries using the reactors should get all the help the West can afford, since the reactors are essential to the faltering economies of Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic countries. If the West wants to make them safer, it can help to pay for improvements, but in any case, the reactors will not be shut down. Senior Russian nuclear officials have told a watchdog group of Western experts that Russia's notorious graphite-core nuclear reactors - the kind that blew up at Chernobyl in 1986 - will go on operating indefinitely.
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