‘HAPPY’ ANNIVERSARY: IS THERE ANOTHER CHERNOBYL IN OUR FUTURE — AND OUR BACK YARD?

(Washington, D.C.): Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of
the worst nuclear accident in history — the explosion of the
Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former Soviet Union. The
Chernobyl disaster caused incalculable damage to life, property
and the environment. The catastrophe continues to this day amid
revelations of ongoing radiation leaks and destructive fires in
nearby villages that spread radioactive materials into the
atmosphere. Worse yet, the repercussions of the Chernobyl
disaster — including increased cancer rates in humans and
livestock and the long-term contamination of once-fertile soil —
are likely to be felt by the people of the region for generations
to come.

Fortunately, few Americans were directly affected by the
explosive end to a fatally flawed Soviet nuclear reactor. If
the folks who brought you Chernobyl — the Kremlin’s Ministry of
Atomic Energy (MinAtom) — have their way, however the United
States may not be so lucky the next time.

As the Center for Security Policy has repeatedly noted, href=”96-D40.html#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾ Cuban dictator Fidel
Castro is anxious to complete work — evidently with financial
and/or technical help from his friends in Moscow and Europe — on
a troubled nuclear reactor complex 180 miles off the U.S.
coast. Although the two Soviet-designed VVER-440
reactors under construction near Cienfuegos, Cuba, are not
precisely of the same type as the one that exploded at Chernobyl,
for various reasons, they are virtually certain to meet the same
fate or worse. In fact, experts familiar with the
Juragua nuclear complex at Cienfuegos — including defectors
previously involved in what passed for a “quality
control” program at the site — have identified the
following, fatal defects.

• 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.
• 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
  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.
• 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.
• Finally, there is reason to believe that the
  Cienfuegos area is seismically active — a
  reckless place to put even a well-designed and
  -constructed nuclear reactor.

Should any one of these defects (let alone some combination of
them) cause a failure of the cooling system at the Juragua
complex, there would likely be a reactor meltdown that would
release substantial quantities of radioactivity into the
atmosphere. Worse yet, such fallout would not be confined to
Cuba. According to a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
Agency analysis:

“Based on climatological data …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…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.”

According to estimates by U.S. government agencies, the
casualties associated with such a widespread dissemination of
lethal radiation could be as high as 50-80 million
Americans.

The Bottom Line

The Clinton Administration should be doing everything in its
power to prevent these Cuban Chernobyls from ever coming on-line.
Toward that end, legislation recently signed into law by
President Clinton — the Helms-Burton Libertad Act —
requires the executive branch to secure information from Moscow
concerning the extent and nature of Russia’s continuing
cooperation in the construction of the Juragua complex.

The Center has learned, however, that Russian interlocutors
from MinAtom have contemptuously rebuffed U.S. inquiries made
pursuant to the Libertad Act.⁽²⁾
Congress owes it to the memory of those who have paid the
price for MinAtom’s past incompetence — if not to those millions
of Americans who may be its next victims — to ensure that the
Cuban Chernobyls never come on-line. And European and
Russian efforts at cross-purposes with that policy must be
strongly resisted.

1. See, for example, the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Cuban Chernobyl: Congress
Must Send a Message to Moscow, Allies — Not in Our Backyard!
(No. 95-D 40, 26 June 1995).

2. See the Center’s Decision Brief
entitled The Dumbing-Down of U.S. Foreign Policy:
What Will Be Left in the Wake of the Clinton-Christopher
Debacles? (No. 96-D 39,
24 April 1996).