Stop the Cuban ‘Chernobyl’

By FRANK J. GAFFNEY JR. and ROGER W.
ROBINSON JR.
The Wall Street Journal, 13 January 1997

Yesterday William Jefferson Clinton
was sworn in as president for a second
term, which will last into the 21st
century. But the president who set out to
emulate John F. Kennedy now confronts a
nuclear test from Moscow and Havana
that’s a throwback to the early 1960s.
Barring prompt and effective action by
the U.S., the Western Hemisphere will
soon face the likelihood of a potentially
lethal radioactive plume emanating from
Cuban shores.

Fidel Castro is constructing two
Soviet-designed nuclear power reactors in
the Cuban city of Juragua, 180 miles off
the coast of Florida. A senior Cuban
Foreign Ministry official, Carlos
Fernandez de Cossio, declared on Nov. 28
that “the first reactor is almost
done.” The trouble is that even when
properly constructed and competently
operated, these VVER-440 reactors are
deficient by Western safety standards.
Indeed, one of Germany’s first acts after
reunification was to shut down the four
East German VVER-440 reactors.

Time Bombs
Worse yet, the Cuban reactors at
Juragua have not been properly
constructed, even by Soviet standards. As
Cuban defectors, the U.S. General
Accounting Office, a congressional
committee and NBC News have documented,
these reactors will be ticking time bombs
if allowed to come on-line. For one
thing, X-rays of weld sites in the
auxiliary plumbing system — a key part
of the safety backup cooling system —
showed that 10% to 15% of the sites were
defective. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission does not permit American
nuclear plants to operate if it suspects
that even one weld in the cooling system
is defective. And since the Cuban
intelligence service reportedly destroyed
the X-rays that would reveal which welds
are unreliable, corrective action short
of a fresh start is impossible.

Compounding the problem, the Cuban
reactors’ containment domes are too weak
to withstand pressure levels that might
realistically be reached in an accident.
Some key parts have been jury-rigged to
perform jobs for which they were not
designed. Russian officials have
acknowledged to the Cubans that other
Soviet-supplied parts did not work. In
addition, sensitive equipment has been
improperly stored for four years in the
corrosive sea air. To add to the
reactors’ woes, Cuba lacks a well-trained
cadre of nuclear technicians. The danger
is especially acute because the site is
seismically active: In May 1992, the
nearby Caribbean Plate shifted to produce
a powerful earthquake registering 7.0 on
the Richter scale.

All of these flaws present a very real
prospect of another Chernobyl. According
to congressional testimony, a nuclear
catastrophe in one or both of these
reactors could expose as many as 80
million Americans living downwind to
debilitating, if not lethal, levels of
radiation akin to those that swept
through Ukraine after the 1986 Chernobyl
explosion.

Mr. Castro nonetheless remains
committed to the early start-up of the
Juragua reactors. He has invested the
equivalent of roughly one year’s worth of
Cuba’s hard currency income, not to
mention immense personal prestige, in
this project. He is also desperate to
increase the availability of low-cost
energy to power the tourism, mineral
extraction and other industries providing
his regime with life support since the
collapse of the Soviet Union.

Mr. Castro clearly believes that the
way out of this jam is to get the
Europeans, Canadians, Latin Americans and
Russians to rescue the Juragua nuclear
complex with technical and material
assistance, as well as
government-guaranteed financial support.
Companies from, and the governments of,
Germany, Italy and France appear
interested in helping Cuba, and the
previously suspended construction effort
has resumed in earnest. But no amount of
Western aid will correct the structural
problems with these reactors.

A Cuban nuclear catastrophe in one or
both of these reactors could expose as
many as 80 million Americans.

Why does Mr. Castro keep his
commitment to this doomed project? First,
it’s possible that the Cuban leader has
been deluded into thinking his nuclear
program can be salvaged. He has been
aided in this delusion by the
International Atomic Energy Agency, which
continues to provide millions of dollars
in funding for the Cuban nuclear program.
The IAEA’s sympathetic treatment of the
Juragua initiative may have had something
to do with the presence of a high-ranking
Cuban official on the regulatory
organization’s governing body for a
number of years.

Alternatively, Mr. Castro may hope
that — failing a turnaround of the
Juragua program — the U.S. or other
nations can be euchred into providing the
same sort of “safe” nuclear
plants or free oil supplies that his
comrades in North Korea are now getting.
Either way, he will drive an enormous
hole in the U.S. embargo against Cuba at
the expense of our vital security
interests.

Unfortunately, there is no dearth of
American organizations and prominent
individuals willing to help advance Mr.
Castro’s nuclear gambit. To take only the
latest example: A delegation sponsored by
the Association of Former Members of
Congress visited Cuba and on Jan. 10
issued a report calling for the U.S. to
provide, as the Washington Post put it,
“technical assistance in the
construction of Cuba’s first nuclear
power plant.”

Russia, too, has gotten into the game.
According to the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, Moscow has
committed $349 million to help underwrite
completion of this nuclear complex. On
Feb. 23, 1996, Russian Minister for
Atomic Energy Viktor Mikhaylov declared,
“Resources and possibilities should
be found to put in operation at least the
first [Juragua] power unit by the end of
this decade.” The Kremlin appears
determined to demonstrate to other
prospective customers (Iran, China,
India) that it can deliver on lucrative
contracts to export nuclear power plants.
A second, and perhaps an even more
important, consideration is Mr. Castro’s
insistence that Moscow complete his
reactor complex if it wants to continue
operating a massive signals intelligence
facility located around Lourdes, Cuba.
(The Russians prize this facility for its
capacity to intercept vast quantities of
sensitive American telecommunications.)

Clear and Present Danger
Whether or not one supports the U.S.
embargo on Cuba, the clear and present
danger that the completion of even one of
the Juragua nuclear reactors would pose
to the American mainland requires that
Washington inform Havana, Moscow and
allied capitals that the U.S. will not
permit either Cuban reactor to come
on-line. The administration should serve
notice to foreign companies and
organizations that any support for the
Juragua complex will subject them to the
automatic imposition of U.S. import
controls, denying them access to the
American market. Foreign government
entities, such as European export credit
guarantee agencies and Russia’s Ministry
of Atomic Energy, should be subjected to
correspondingly harsh penalties.

If all else fails, the U.S. must not
hesitate to take discriminate military
action to prevent the Juragua complex
from being fueled by Russia or other
parties. The Israelis set a wise
precedent when they destroyed Iraq’s
Osirak reactor in 1981. Their air strike
spared American and allied troops a
nuclear menace in Operation Desert Storm
nearly a decade later. It behooves
President Clinton and Congress to do no
less to prevent a new nuclear threat from
emerging in our own front yard. wp=”br1″>

Mr. Gaffney was an acting
assistant secretary of defense and Mr.
Robinson was senior director of
international economic affairs at the
National Security Council during the
Reagan administration.