A look at nuclear power in Ukraine (05/04/86)

A look at nuclear power in Ukraine

The Chornobyl nuclear power plant is located near the town of Prypiat, a town of 25,000 to 30,000 residents that grew with the energy facility.

According to Dr. David Marples, an expert on Soviet industry and energy who is now a research associate at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, the plant became operational in 1979. Its proposed capacity is 5,000 megawatts. Its present capacity is 4,000 megawatts provided by four nuclear reactors. The fifth and last reactor was to have gone on line in March of this year, but due to delays, this did not happen.

In a January 1986 article published in The Ukrainian Weekly, Dr. Marples wrote:

"The Ukrainian nuclear industry has grown rapidly since 1981, and especially over the past two years, in which time nuclear power plants have come to account for some 60 percent of the republic's total electricity-generating capacity.

"The Ukrainian SSR, moreover, is expected to play a key role in Soviet plans to increase the contribution of nuclear energy to the USSR's production from 9 percent to over 21 percent by 1990."

In that same article, Dr. Marples pointed out that, given the rapidity of expansion of the nuclear industry, the question of safety needs to be raised. There is also the fact that the nuclear power plants are located in close proximity to major cities in Ukraine. "This, is not, however, a matter to which the authorities are prepared to devote much public discussion." he wrote.

Dr. Marples quoted a former minister of power and electrification, Petr Neporozhny as saying, "such stations are very economical and can be built in the immediate vicinity of a city because they do not emit smoke and are tolally safe."

"Many years of Soviet experience have proved that it is quite possible to guarantee the complete safety of nuclear station operation," said a political analyst at the Novosti press agency, Dr. Marples reported.

Dr. Marples told the CBC in a radio interview last week that there is evidence that the pace of construction of nuclear power plants has been so "frenetic" that even students were used to build them. Thus, unqualified personnel worked at constructing the plants.

Summing it all up, he told the CBC, the Soviets "are developing an industry without creating the infrastructure for it."

In Israel, a former Soviet nuclear energy specialist, Boris Tokarsky, was quoted as saying that the Chornobyl plant was obsolete even before it was built. He also said that an accident like the one at Chornobyl could happen at any other Soviet nuclear power plant.

Ukraine is the site of four nuclear power plants; five more are in the planning or construction stages.

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