CUBAN CHERNOBYL: CONGRESS MUST SEND A MESSAGE TO MOSCOW, ALLIES — NOT IN OUR BACKYARD!

(Washington, D.C.): Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is at it
again: With at least $800 million in help from his friends in
Moscow and Europe, he hopes at last to bring on-line a troubled
nuclear reactor 180 miles off the U.S. coast. It has been clear
for several years ⁽¹⁾
that, should he succeed in doing so, it is just a matter of
time before this reactor melts down with catastrophic
Chernobyl-style consequences for much of the United States.
Tomorrow, concerned Members of Congress led by Reps. Robert
Menendez (D-NJ) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) will offer the
first of possibly numerous legislative initiatives aimed at
blocking efforts to complete the Juragua reactor complex — and
at penalizing those who propose to assist Havana in doing so.

The Only ‘Fix’ for the Juragua Reactors: Start Over

Among the most lethal detritus left behind by the collapsed
Soviet empire are a string of poorly designed, ill-constructed
and/or incompetently operated nuclear reactors that pose a risk
of human and environmental calamity. Most of these are within the
former Soviet Union itself and Eastern Europe and have been
subject to chronic, unscheduled shut-downs for safety reasons.
Many are regarded as nothing less than ticking time-bombs.
Indeed, the German government was so concerned about the four
VVER 440 reactors it inherited from East Germany that it shut
them down within days of reunification.

The two partially completed VVER 440 reactors near
Cienfuegos, Cuba are in a class by themselves, however. Experts,
including defectors previously involved in what passed for a
“quality control” program at the construction site,
have identified the following, fatal defects:

• Sixty-percent of the Soviet-supplied materials used in
  these reactors is defective. Soviet advisors
  reportedly told Cuban officials they could not guarantee
  that valves installed in the first reactor’s emergency
  cooling system would function under certain conditions.
• Worse yet, much of the reactor’s equipment —
  including the reactor vessel, six steam generators, five
  primary coolant pumps, twelve isolation valves and other
  sensitive gear — was left exposed to the elements and
  sea air for as much as eighteen months. In tropical
  areas, such machinery must be stored in climate-
  controlled facilities to avoid serious corrosion and
  other damage.
• In a number of cases, equipment designed for one
  specific function has been used for other purposes when
  the appropriate components were unavailable. This
  sort of jerry-rigging increases the chances of systemic
  failures.
• Construction supporting primary reactor components
  contains numerous structural defects.
• The first reactor’s dome would not be able to
  contain overpressures associated with meltdown
  conditions. The upper portion of the containment dome
  has been designed to withstand pressures of seven
  pounds-per-square-inch — versus some 50
  pounds-per-square-inch required of U.S. reactors.
• As many as fifteen percent of the 5,000 welds
  joining pipes used in the reactors’ auxiliary plumbing
  system, containment dome and spent fuel-cooling system
  are known to be flawed. According to Vladimir
  Cervera, the senior engineer responsible for overseeing
  quality control at the Juragua reactor, X-rays showed
  welded pipe joints weakened by air pockets, bad soldering
  and heat damage.
• Bear in mind that, if a single weld in a U.S.
  reactor were suspected of being defective, the
  Nuclear Regulatory Commission would suspend its
  operations. What is more, Cuban intelligence services
  are reported to have destroyed x-ray imagery and other
  documentation concerning safety violations, making
  corrective action problematic.
• Cuba’s human and technological infrastructure is
  vastly inferior to that of the former Soviet Union —
  an infrastructure which itself proved inadequate to
  design, construct and operate nuclear plants safely.
• Finally, there is reason to believe that the
  Cienfuegos area is seismically active — a reckless
  place to put even well-designed and -constructed nuclear
  reactors.

Taken together, these defects make it impossible to create
safe nuclear power plants out of the partially constructed
Juragua facilities. No amount of sophisticated Western
instrumentation, know-how or training will rectify fatal physical
deficiencies that can, as a practical matter, only be corrected
by razing the site and starting afresh.

A Cuban Melt-down Would Be An American Problem,
Too

Should one or more of these defects cause a failure of the
cooling system in a Juragua reactor, there would likely be a
nuclear meltdown and release of substantial quantities of
radioactivity. Such fallout would not be confined to Cuba,
though. Indeed, according to a National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Agency analysis:

“Based on climatological data for summer 1991 and
winter ’91-’92, the summer east- to-west trade winds would
carry radioactive pollutants over all Florida and portions of
Gulf states as far west as Texas in about four days. In
winter when trade-winds are weaker and less persistent,
pollutants would encounter strong westerly winds that could
move the pollutants toward the east, possibly as far north as
Virginia and Washington, D.C., in about four days.“

Damage to human life would be further exacerbated by the
pollution of many thousands of square miles of rich ocean fishing
grounds in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, pollution that would
ultimately affect the Gulf Stream and the productive waters of
the Georges Banks. The result for millions around the world will
likely be significant food shortages and/or consumption of
contaminated fish.

With Friends Like These…

Against this backdrop, it seems inconceivable that Russia,
Germany, Italy or France — nations that purport to value their
relationship with the United States — could even consider
contributing to conditions that would likely produce such a
disaster. Yet, according to Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL),
Russia has recently provided $30 million in credits to help
restore the first facility and supplied its reactor and turbine,
which are now on site.

In addition, an “international joint stock company”
has reportedly been formed to provide Castro with $800 million to
complete the first reactor. Georgy Kaurov, chief spokesman for
the Russian Atomic Ministry (MinAtom), says the plant will be
generating profits and nuclear-powered electricity by 1997,
thanks to help from Germany’s Siemans AG, Italy’s Ansaldo SpA,
and the French government-owned Electricite de France. The
Europeans have, to varying degrees, denied that any deal has yet
been done or would be until after the U.S. embargo on Cuba is
lifted. Still, suspicions abound that Siemans, at least, would be
willing to install upwind from the United States parts
cannibalized from the VVER reactors Bonn thought to be too
dangerous to operate on German soil.

Former NSC chief economist and Center for Security Policy
Board of Advisors member Roger W. Robinson, Jr. — who will be
testifying on this subject before the House International
Relations Committee, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere next
month — believes there are several possible explanations for why
Russia and these European companies might be undertaking such an
unfriendly act:

1. It’s a shakedown: Recent Clinton Administration
   diplo-financial gambits aimed at heading off the North
   Korean and Iranian nuclear programs may have prompted
   Russia to conclude that the United States would be
   prepared to pay dearly to prevent the completion of a
   Cuban Chernobyl.
2. It’s Russia’s only hope to recoup some of the $30
   billion Castro owes the Kremlin: The prospect of a
   go-ahead on the Juragua reactor, particularly with the
   help of a large European investment could foster an
   otherwise unwarranted impression of stability and
   economic opportunity in Castro’s Cuba. This could, in
   turn, encourage other investment despite Fidel’s standing
   as the worst credit risk in the world according to
   Euromoney’s 1994 Country Risk report and create a
   positive cash flow to Moscow.
3. It’s a way to give the embargo-lifters additional
   leverage: At a moment when the congressional
   leadership is actively pursuing legislation designed to
   close loopholes and otherwise tighten the U.S. embargo on
   Cuba, the threat that Fidel could be handed a nuclear
   time-bomb might just help dissuade such initiatives, if
   not greatly help Morton Halperin and other Clinton
   Administration officials in their bid to normalize
   relations with Castro.
4. It’s no skin off the European companies’ noses: Thanks
   to generous taxpayer-underwriting of risky foreign
   investments, European businesses like those reportedly
   prepared to help on the Juragua reactors have little to
   lose. If they actually realize a return on their
   investment, fine; if not, the German, Italian or French
   government will make them whole. Either way, employment
   can be kept high and balance sheets profitable. The same
   disregard for the consequences of such exports-uber
   alles policies have produced chemical weapons plants
   in Libya, deep underground command centers in Iraq and
   Russia and weapons of mass destruction programs in places
   like Iran.

The Bottom Line

If ever there were a vital U.S. interest, preventing Fidel
Castro from turning his rusting reactor sites at Juragua into
Chernobyls qualifies. Fortunately, many key legislators
recognize this reality — even if the Clinton Administration does
not appear to do so. In a strong letter to the President dated 8
June 1995, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and over 140 other Members
of Congress told him “the [Cienfuegos] nuclear plant will
pose a serious threat to the safety of the United States, Central
America and the Caribbean” and urged him “to use all
the instruments at [his] disposal to pressure the Russian
government” to abandon any effort to complete construction
of this reactor complex. The congressional signatories concluded:
“We cannot allow this type of threat to the security of
the United States to be present just a few hundred miles from our
shores.” There has yet to be a reply from the
Administration.

The Center for Security Policy believes that under no
circumstances should the United States be euchred into paying for
such a dire outcome — either directly or indirectly. Reps.
Menendez and Ros-Lehtinen are right to seek in an amendment they
will offer on the House floor tomorrow to dock Moscow’s foreign
aid account by one dollar for every dollar it sends to Castro’s
nuclear program to demonstrate U.S. resolve on this matter. They
are also right to pursue every other avenue — from blocking
launches of U.S. satellites on Russian rockets to deferring
rescheduling Moscow’s international debt to suspending American
taxpayer-guarantees for energy development in Russia — to bring
pressure to bear on the Kremlin to stop this transaction at
once.

Congress should also squarely address the malevolent
behavior of companies based in allied nations. Much as Sen.
Alfonse D’Amato and Rep. Peter King propose to do in legislation
aimed at stopping dangerous trade with Iran, such companies
should be offered a choice: You can do business with Fidel or do
business in the U.S. market, but not both. The threat of import
controls on European companies involved in bringing the Juragua
reactors on-line would almost certainly dry up capital and
technology from Europe, without which it seems unlikely that
Russians could go forward.

Finally, Members of Congress need to make it unmistakably
clear to the Clinton Administration that its sub rosa bid
to improve relations with Fidel Castro’s Cuba is at an end. A
despotic government that is determinedly trying to create a
nuclear time-bomb — in utter disregard of the safety of its own
citizens, to say nothing of the detested Americanos 180
miles to the north — is not one with whom the United States can
or should do business.

(1) See for example, Cienfuegos —
‘A Hundred Fires’: Muchas Gracias Moscow, But No American
Chernobyls (No. 91-P 44,
31 May 1991); A ‘Ticking’ Anniversary Present: Will Russia
Give Us a Chernobyl Ninety Miles Off the U.S. Shore? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=92-D_41″>No. 92-D 41, 23 April 1992); ‘Hear
Us Now and Believe Us Later’: Business Done with Fidel Means Big
Losses When Communists Fall, ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=92-D_51″>No. 92-D 51, 8 May 1992); and Castro’s
Potemkin Shut-Down: Chernobyl at Cienfuegos Still In Prospect
(No. 92-D 108, 10 September
1992).