" Congo Nurses an Old Nuclear Reactor "

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@AECL.CA>]

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010726/wl/nuclear_congo_1.html

 

Thursday July 26 2:57 PM ET 

Congo Nurses an Old Nuclear Reactor

By TIM SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer 



KINSHASA, Congo (AP) - A hand-held Geiger counter tapped out a steady beat

as Patrick Kanyinda - looking decidedly uneasy about having a visitor in his

small, windowless workroom - stood at the edge of a circular pool and

pointed into the water.

Above him, fluorescent lights buzzed and flickered, casting a faded light

onto moldy walls. Below, submerged in the brackish water, beneath a

padlocked metal grate and splotches of floating scum, about two dozen metal

rods were lined up in neat rows.

``It's safe,'' insisted Kanyinda, chief technician in this all-but-forgotten

facility on the fringes of the University of Kinshasa.

The water, he explains, cools the rods; heavy locks keep burglars at bay;

armed guards keep watch outside, just in case.

He paused, then added: ``But I wouldn't suggest staying here long.''

Few would disagree.

The rods, about 2 feet long and triangular, hold one of the most dangerous

substances on the planet: uranium.

In a crumbling concrete building on the edge of one of the world's most

dysfunctional cities, in a program that traces its roots to a Belgian priest

and America's Cold War ``Atoms for Peace'' program, a few Congolese

scientists nurse along Africa's oldest nuclear reactor.

In Congo - a nation savaged by decades of inept, deeply corrupt rule,

poverty and a long stream of wars - the reactor is a point of pride, proof

that, for all its problems, this Central African nation can also harness the

atom.

But elsewhere, the reactor is a concern. The reasons are evident.

The reactor sits on an erosion-prone hill, the electricity gives out

regularly and the decades-old control panel looks as if it was stolen from

the set of a 1950s Buck Rogers movie. Gardens are sprouting out back, right

next to a garbage pit.

The front entrance is marked only by a poster taped to the door advising:

``How to Recognize and Quickly Treat Accidental Radioactive Burns.''

And all this is in Kinshasa, a city famed for its sprawling slums,

car-swallowing potholes and paucity of regular services, from fire

departments to telephone wiring. The past decade has seen the city engulfed

twice by military pillaging.

The facility's budget is confidential, but cannot be very large. The

Congolese government is broke and ensnared, yet again, in war.

The reactor is small, capable of producing less than 1 percent of the energy

of a nuclear power plant, and the uranium is not believed to be sufficiently

refined for weapons manufacturing. But an accident could spray radioactivity

across a good part of the university, or poison the water supply for much of

the city.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. organization that monitors

nuclear facilities, won't discuss specifics, but makes clear the Kinshasa

facility is in trouble.

``It's in poor condition because of the economic conditions down there,''

said David Kyd, spokesman for the Vienna, Austria-based agency. ``It's not a

high priority,'' for the Congolese government.

American officials have repeatedly tried to get the fuel, both used and

unused, shipped to the United States for storage.

The scientists who run it, though, have no intention of stopping their work.

They insist they are doing important peaceful research: creating nuclear

isotopes and looking at atomic uses tied to agriculture and mining.

``This isn't just prestige,'' grumbled Felix Malu wa Kalenga, who has headed

the facility for decades. ``It's real work.''

But he and his staff seem to view that work with a surreal combination of

hyperbole and despair.

At one moment Malu celebrates Congo - incorrectly - as ``the very first to

have a nuclear reactor,'' then switches to a grim lecture on the state of

the facility's finances.

``Our means are very precarious,'' he said. ``We don't have the means -

zero!''

But later he concludes: ``We'll continue, despite the problems.''

The program took root in the late 1950s when Congo was a Belgian colony.

Monsignor Luc Gillon, a Belgian priest and nuclear physicist based in Congo,

devoted much of his energy to bringing a reactor here, according to Malu,

his protege.

He succeeded just before Congo's 1960 independence. TRIGA-Mark I was built

in 1959, but is now used to store the spent fuel. TRIGA-Mark II has been

operational, on and off, since 1972.

While stories differ on the facility's history, both the reactors and the

fuel apparently came from the United States, compliments of President

Eisenhower's ``Atoms for Peace'' plan. That program traded U.S. help for

peaceful atomic research for agreements not to develop nuclear weapons.

Although Congo's soil holds enormous uranium reserves, the country turned to

the United States for the fuel in refined form.

These days, though, America wants the uranium back, and U.S. Department of

Energy (news - web sites) officials have been negotiating with the Congolese

government for permission to remove the nuclear fuel.

The Congolese, though, have little interest in turning it over.

Fortunat Lumu, a nuclear chemist, hints that America might get back some of

the fuel as long as it buys Congo another reactor.

If not, Lumu said there's enough fuel for another 10 to 15 years of

Congolese atom-splitting.

``They can't take it,'' he said. ``It would be a loss for the country ...

This program is known all over the world.'' 

 

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