FW: Russian Criticality Accident

["Edgerton, Patricia" <pedgerto@rhb.dhs.cahwnet.gov>]

Maybe this has already been posted, but in case:
Trisha Edgerton, pedgerto@rhb.dhs.cahwnet.gov
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------

     Russian engineer dies after being exposed
     to radiation

        MOSCOW (AP)  A government researcher died
     of radiation sickness today, three days after
     he was accidentally exposed to a high dose of
     radiation at one of Russia's largest nuclear
     research centers, officials said.

        The incident happened Tuesday at the
     Arzamas-16 research center near the city of
     Nizhny Novgorod in central Russia while
     Alexander Zakharov was conducting an experiment
     involving incomplete nuclear chain reactions.

        Alexander Zakharov, 42, was exposed to
     several hundred roentgen of radiation, said
     Vitaly Nasonov, a spokesman for the Russian
     Nuclear Power Ministry.

        A safe annual exposure is considered to be in
     the range of five roentgen.

        Zakharov died at a hospital today.

        Arzamas-16 is one of Russia's so-called secret
     or closed cities, where defense-related work is
     carried out.

        Officials have blamed the accident on human
     error and said there was no radiation leak outside
     the experiment area. The room was sealed off and
     authorities have been trying to figure out a safe
     way to decontaminate it.

     ====================================================

     Russia's first nuclear victim since Chernobyl dies

     20 June 1997
     Web posted at: 13:06 CEST, Paris time (11:06 GMT)

     MOSCOW, June 20 (Reuter) - An atomic weapons
     researcher who became Russia's first nuclear accident
     victim since the 1986 Chernobyl power station disaster
     died on Friday, an Atomic Energy Ministry spokesman
     said.

     Vitaly Nosonov said by telephone that
     Alexander Zakharov, 42, died in a Moscow hospital
     after Russian doctors battled for his life for three
     days. On Tuesday, Zakharov received a high dose of
     radiation at the Arzamas-16 nuclear research centre.

     =====================================================

     Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited

     Russia's first post-Chernobyl atom victim dies
      08:40 a.m. Jun 20, 1997 Eastern

      By Andrei Khalip

     MOSCOW, June 20 (Reuter) - An atomic weapons
     researcher who became Russia's first nuclear
     accident victim since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster
     died on Friday, an Atomic Energy ministry
     spokesman said.

     ``We can confirm that he is dead,'' Vitaly Nosonov
     said by telephone.

     Alexander Zakharov, 42, died in a Moscow hospital
     after Russian doctors battled for three days to
     save his life.

     On Tuesday, Zakharov received a high dose of
     radiation calculated at more than 600 roentgen
     at the Arzamas-16 nuclear research centre.

     He was then flown to hospital in Moscow from
     Arzamas-16, a town of 80,000 people about 350 km
     (220 miles) east of Moscow, and treated in a
     sterile room at the capital's Clinic Number Six,
     one of the main centres for treating Chernobyl
     victims. Doctors had said they hoped that
     experience would help keep him alive.

     Zakharov was conducting a weapons test involving
     a controlled nuclear chain reaction using small
     amounts of uranium when what the ministry called
     ``a serious breach of the rules'' caused ``an
     irregular radiation situation involving the
     emission of neutron rays.''

     Doctors said Zakharov was the first Russian to
     suffer serious injury in a nuclear accident since
     the Soviet atomic power plant in Chernobyl in
     Ukraine blew up in April 1986, causing many people
     to die and blighting lives of many more across
     swathes of Ukraine and Belarus.

     Ukraine is looking to this week's Denver summit of
     the Group of Seven rich industrial nations for
     concrete help for Chernobyl. Kiev has been locked
     in talks with the West for several years on
     financing the closure of the Chernobyl plant.

     Kiev's hopes for the summit are focused on a
     $780 million grant for the stricken plant's fourth
     reactor and its ``sarcophagus'' covering and on
     money to build two new reactors to replace
     electricity to be lost by Chernobyl's closure
     in 2000.

     ``The G7 should find ways of financing the
     sarcophagus and problems associated with it,''
     Chernobyl negotiator and Ukrainian Environment
     Minister Yuri Kostenko told Reuters on Thursday.

     In Moscow, Nosonov said de-contamination works
     were under way at the Arzamas workshop. The room
     where the accident happened had been sealed off
     while ministry staff investigated.

     He said the work was being hampered by the
     danger of sending any metal objects into the
     room as this might provoke a nuclear reaction
     and cause another blast or f
     re.

     ``They do not want anyone else to be radiated,
     so they are seeking a solution on how to handle
     the source of radiation,'' he said, adding that
     by the end of the day a solution was likely to
     be found.

     ``It will probably be a manipulator or hydraulic
     gadget. We do not know yet.''

     Arzamas-16 is one of two such nuclear weapons
     establishments in Russia, and it is closed to
     foreigners. The town, whose centre was partially
     evacuated after the accident on Tuesday, was back
     to normal on Wednesday.

     =========================================================

     [This article obviously predates news of Zakharov's death.
     From: RIA-Novosti. HotLine.
     entered from URL
     http://www.ria-novosti.com/products/hotline/1997/06/17.htm]

     ACCIDENT AT NUCLEAR CENTRE

       This has not happened in the closed city of Sarov or
              Arzamas-16 for more than thirty years

                    N. POPOVA, V. BUKHALKIN

          In the underground bunker of the All-Russia
     Experimental Physics Research Institute there has
     been a serious violation of the work procedure on the
     unit where incomplete nuclear reactions are tried
     out. There was only one person near the unit at the
     time of the accident: the 42-year-old researcher
     Alexandr Zakharov. The time was 10.50 a.m. For some
     unknown reason, Zakharov was not even wearing any
     protective gear, so the neutron flow
     which hit him sort of burned him through. Nevertheless,
     Zakharov managed to get out of the underground
     laboratory and report the incident to the management,
     after which he lost consciousness. It was immediately
     decided to seal off the bunker and evacuate everyone
     from nearby objects and installations. A similar
     accident happened in Arzamas-16 in 1963. This
     information has been passed to the press service of
     Rossiiskiye Vesti by a news analyst of the "Sarov"
     newspaper Yelena Mazanova. In both cases the radiation
     dosage amounted to 900 roentgen. The physicist who
     suffered in the 1963 accident died in hospital several
     days later.

          The condition of Alexander Zakharov, too, is
     described as extremely grave.

          The laboratory in which the accident has
     happened has a high safety redundancy factor to deal
     with such incidents, so there has been do discharge
     of radioactive aerosols into the atmosphere.

          At 9 a.m. on Wednesday a special commission of
     the Ministry of the Atomic Power Industry of Russia,
     which had arrived from Moscow and which is headed by
     the deputy head of the department of safety, ecology
     and emergency control, Gennady Novikov, started
     investigations on site, but so farthere have been no c
     onclusions.

     (Rossiiskiye Vesti, June 20. Abridged.)

     Copyright 1997 by RIA-Novosti"

     =========================================================