Chornobyl release...

[Bruce Busby <bbusby@umich.edu>]

Take it for what it is worth, but here is the latest news release...

-Bruce

 KIEV, April 25 (Reuter) - A small amount of radiation  
escaped at the Chernobyl nuclear power station on the eve of the 
10th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear disaster, a 
spokesman for the Ukrainian plant said on Thursday. 
	 Oleg Goloskokov said the radiation was cleaned up overnight  
and there was no threat of contamination to the environment. 
	 The incident occurred on Wednesday night when staff were  
changing filters used to pump air from inside the sarcophagus 
encasing the fourth reactor, which exploded on April 26, 1986. 
	 ``The filters were changed in normal fashion, but when the  
work was completed, the old filters were left in a room by the 
third reactor,'' he said by telephone from Chernobyl. 
	 ``This was radioactive material. As the work was badly  
organised, radioactive dust contaminated four places. The level 
of radioactivity rose seven times. There was no irradiation of 
staff beyond norms. But this was a violation of safety rules and 
people could well have been affected.'' 
	 The incident rated a minimum one on the international scale  
of seven for reporting nuclear occurrences. 
	 Goloskokov said staff noted the contamination in good time  
and cleaned it up completely overnight, preventing a repetition 
of an incident last November in which a staff member received a 
year's permitted dose of radiation. 
	 Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are staging elaborate  
commemorations to mark the 10th anniversary of the disaster, 
which sent a plume of radioactivity over much of Europe. 
	 Ukraine has pledged to shut down Chernobyl's two remaining  
working reactors by the year 2000, but ecologists say the plant 
is dangerous and want it closed immediately. 
	 Anthony Froggatt, a spokesman for the ecologist group  
Greenpeace, denounced the incident as ``a classic example of the 
lack of safety culture that exists at the Chernobyl station. It 
is not sufficient to close the station in the year 2000. it must 
be closed immediately.''