Banner Graphic, Volume 17, Number 89, Greencastle, Putnam County, 15 December 1986 — Page 3

In the wake of Chernobyl...

Soviets anxious to show they've recovered from disaster

c. 1986 N.Y. Times News Service KIEV, U.S.S.R. A neat yet barren mosaic of small roads and yellow brick homes with corrugated roofs has been laid down amid the expanse of plowed fields 20 miles northeast of the Ukrainian capital, a microcosm of the world Soviet officials are trying to rebuild from the debris of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The 800 new homes in the tiny agricultural village of Borodyanka and two nearby villages are designed to house more than 2,000 of the 135,000 people displaced by the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. They also fit well into the can-do image Soviet officials are working to project after nearly eight months of grappling with the world’s worst nuclear accident. Among the accomplishments the Russians are advertising are the encasement of the damaged reactor in concrete, the successful dike operation they say prevented contamination of the Pripyat and Dnieper Rivers, and the construction of 8,000 free dwellings for the evacuees. Late Saturday the official press agency Tass reported that a government study had shown that “the damaged reactor has ceased to be a source of radioactive contamination to the environment.” The report, by the Communist Party Central Committee and the Soviet Government’s Council of Ministers, said the Soviet Government had paid 800 million rubles in compensation to evacuees. According to officials of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, the evacuees in the Borodyanka region, most of whom now work on the collective farm “Druzhba” (“Friendship”), were given free houses costing 25,000 to 30,000 rubles. The most obvious signal of the Russians’ desire to show their ability to recover from the disaster has been the quick start-up of two un-

Airborne acid threatens Jacksonville car port

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Airborne acid is eating away at the paint on new cars as they pass through this city, endangering Jacksonville’s status as the nation’s No. 1 port for foreign automobiles. “Everybody agrees there is a problem and we need to solve the problem,” Mayor Jake Godbold said Thursday. “It’s sulfuric acid and it’s coming from somewhere,” said Vic McNair, executive vice president and general manager of World Cars Inc., an auto processing firm. “It’s eating the paint right down to the bare metal.” McNair said the problem was for-

Acid controls would hike state rates WASHINGTON (AP) Electricity rates in Indiana would rise by an average of either six or 14 percent under two proposals for acid rain-control being considered in Congress, according to Management Information Services Inc., a Washington-based research company. The first figure following the utility’s name is the estimated percentage increase under House legislation. The second figure is the estimated increase under the principal Senate bill. —lndiana and Michigan Electric Co., 7,18. —lndiana-Kentucky Electric Corp., 5,11. —lndianapolis Power and Light, 19, 27. —Public Service Co. of Indiana, 20, 30. —Northern Indiana Public Service Co., 17,22. —Southern Indiana Gas and Electric, 9,16. —Others, 5,8. —State average, 6,14.

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The number four nuclear reactor at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl power plant has been encased in a sarcophagus of concrete. The reactor was the

damaged reactors in the Chernobyl plant and the assignment to work of more than 600 people, including about 500 who worked at the plant before the explosion and fire April 26. Yet it seemed clear on a recent trip to the area by Western correspondents that firsthand access to the plant and the evacuated area about IBV2 miles around it is still tightly restricted. Moreover, for all the information offered by the Russians about the causes and consequences of the accident, they still appear to find it difficult to confront some aspects of the disaster, particularly the potential long-term consequences to those exposed to the radioactive fallout. Other long-term consequences of the accident are evident in the Ukrainian capital. Nikolai V.

cing him to wash, wax and repaint hundreds of new cars, just off the boat, before turning them over to dealers. BMW has decided no longer to ship its cars through Jacksonville, and other automakers have threatened to make the same move. “We have had nightmares in what we’ve been going through,” said Margie Foster, port representative for BMW. “We need to find a solution to it.” The acid is not a health hazard because the particles are too large to be inhaled, said Patricia Cowdery, director of the Jacksonville Depart-

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Lavrukhin, a Kiev city official, said that, while cold weather prevents washing the city streets, they are still being vacuumed to keep them free of radioactive dust. The fall leaves have been buried in nuclear waste dumps. For three months the city did not draw water from the Dnieper, its age-old water source, but from its secondary source, the Desna, and from a network of hastily dug artesian wells. Lavrukhin said that in December Dnieper water was again flowing through city pipes. A United States government study issued in September estimated that the Chernobyl accident sent as much long-term radiation into the environment as all previous nuclear tests and bombs combined. Anatoly Y. Romanenko, Health Minister of

ment of Health, Welfare and BioEnvironmental Services. “It is not the kind of particles that can cause cardio-respiratory kinds of problems,” she said, but added that the pollution might cause minor nasal and skin irritation for brief periods of time. The problem has been around since the late 19705, but seemed to worsen this year, said C. Cliff Mendoza of the Jacksonville Port Authority. An estimated 6 percent to 8 percent of the 520,000 vehicles entering the port each year are affected, forcing auto companies to spend $4 million over the past 10 years

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cause of a major nuclear accident last April when a fire broke out at the site. (AP Laserphoto)

the Ukraine, said Thursday that the average radiation level in Kiev’s atmosphere is twice what it was before the accident, though well within safe limits. Aside from the 31 people who died after the accident, most of them from radiation exposure, and 209 others who were reported to have suffered radiation exposure, he said: “We haven’t had a single case of radiation disease. We hope and are sure that there will be no such diseases.” Two of the engineers now back at work at the plant made no reference to any worries about radiation. In fact, they said, while they wear protective suits and hats, they no longer wear anything over mouth and nose while working in the main building at the four-reactor complex.

washing, polishing and repainting cars, said Godbold, who has appointed a special committee to look in to the situation. City officials say nearby industrial plants, generating stations and ships are responsible for some of the pollution, but that some may also come from as far away as the Ohio Valley. If ships are responsible for much of the acid, the city must be careful in trying to control the pollution, Mendoza said. “Autos are 30 percent of (the port’s) total business. They are critical to us. It is important to keep them here.”

6-month shutdown of Hanford reactor crimps economy

c. 1986 N.Y. Times News Service RICHLAND, Wash. Henry M. Jackson, the long-term United States senator, often told the voters of eastern Washington that as long as he lived, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation would never be closed. Jackson died in 1983. Since then the huge facility, which sprawls over 570 square miles of rolling, sagebrush-clad desert north of here, has continued doing what it has done since the dawn of the nuclear age: Making plutonium for atomic weapons. Indeed, it had been enjoying a modest boom recently, with new jobs created by the Reagan administration’s multibillion-dollar efforts to expand the nation’s strategic weapons arsenal. Now a threat has surfaced to the prosperity evident here as the stores fill with shoppers along a main street glowing with holiday lights and covered with a mantle of snow. On Friday, the Energy Department announced that it planned a six-month shutdown of the reservation’s most important facility, a 23-year-old nuclear reactor, for safety modifications at a cost of SSO million. The decision is a pocketbook issue to Richland and the nearby towns of Pasco and Kennewick, which collectively refer to themselves as the “Tri-Cities.” The jobs at the Hanford site pay well, about sl3 an hour on the average. And the site employs almost 14,000 workers, a major part of the Tri-Cities population, which approaches 100,000.

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December 15.1986 THE BANNERGRAPHIC,

Pete Todish, president of the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council, a labor organization that represents many of the workers at the facilty, said, “I think there are a lot of people who are concerned that it will be shut down” permanently. Others are more optimistic. “From my perspective, I think it’s a really good plan of attack by the DOE,” said John Poynor, the mayor of Richland. The modification program, he said, should assure that the facility keeps operating safely while giving the agency time to develop plans for a more modern reactor here. Even if the Hanford shutdown proves to be only temporary, there is no relief in sight for another major element of the local economy. Wheat growers in eastern Washington were told this week that projections of a record world crop probably means there will be no improvement in long-depressed grain prices that they say have led many to the brink of bankruptcy. Poynor says, however, that things are changing, taking note of the lush irrigated vineyards in nearby Yakima Valley that supply grapes to the growing premium wine industry. “We used to be a one-horse town, with one thing,” he said. “Now we’re growing a lot of grapes and diversifying in a lot of ways. I feel good about the future.”

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