``Slippery gloves'' blamed in Russian atomic accident

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@ix.netcom.com>]

This follow-up article was retreived from Reuters News Service

Tuesday June 24 10:40 AM EDT 

``Slippery gloves'' blamed in Russian atomic accident

MOSCOW (Reuter) - A researcher who became Russia's first nuclear
accident victim since Chernobyl said shortly before he died that
``slippery gloves'' were partly to blame for his fatal mistake,
Itar-Tass news agency said Tuesday. 

``I told you, the gloves were too slippery,'' a member of a government
commission investigating the accident quoted Alexander Zakharov as
telling his colleagues after emerging from the contaminated workshop
in the weapons research center of Arzamas-16. 

The unnamed source said Zakharov, 42, who died last Friday, also
blamed himself for the accident. 

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

Details of the incident and how slippery gloves might have contributed
to it have not been released. 

``The gloves were like a banana skin that people slide on when they
run too fast,'' the government commission member told Tass, without
elaborating. 

Zakharov died in a Moscow hospital after Russian doctors battled for
three days to save his life. He had received a high dose of radiation
calculated at more than 600 roentgen. 

He was treated at Moscow's Clinic Number Six, one of the main centers
for treating Chernobyl victims. 

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

Decontamination work was still under way at the Arzamas workshop
Tuesday. 

An Atomic Energy Ministry spokesman told Reuters two workers were
injured Monday while working with a manipulator robot at the same
workshop. He said the accident was a mechanical one and did not
involve any radiation hazard. 

------------------
Sandy Perle
Technical Director
ICN Dosimetry Division
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