The Soviet Union appears to have shut down all nuclear reactors built to the same specifications as its crippled power plant in the Ukraine, Western diplomatic sources said Thursday.
The action, following what has been described as the worst nuclear accident in history, would cut Soviet electrical output from nuclear reactors by up to 50 percent.
The government said Thursday that radiation levels were decreasing around the accident scene at Chernobyl, but it warned other countries that the
”accident is not over.”
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev turned down an offer of U.S. humanitarian and technical aid, as well as an offer from Sweden to accept patients suffering from radiation sickness. The Kremlin did, however, ask for and was granted technical assistance from Italy and West Germany on ways to alleviate ground contamination.
And it allowed an American specialist in bone-marrow transplants to come to the aid of radiation victims.
Western scientific experts said at least 13, and perhaps 20, Soviet reactors are similar to the damaged Chernobyl generator, located 80 miles north of Kiev, capital of the Ukraine.
The USSR draws about 11 percent of its electricity from 39 reactors grouped in 15 power stations across the nation, records show.
In other developments Thursday, the Soviets said 18 of the 197 people it said were stricken in the accident were in serious condition. It said no foreigners were affected by the disaster.
U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, however, said that based on Pentagon reports, casualties were ”a good measure” higher. Shultz, accompanying President Reagan on a trip to the Far East, said in Bali that the U.S. has ”a fuller picture” of the catastrophe`s dimension than the Soviet Union has given and that ”the scope of the accident is certainly a major one.”
Tests on a small group of Britons and Americans who had been living in the area disclosed ”small traces” of radiation, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said.
Eighty-five students and a teacher returned to Moscow Thursday from Kiev, while a group of 27 students and a teacher have arrived from the Byelorussian capital, Minsk, 200 miles north of the reactor site. A spokesman for the Kiev group said life there appeared normal.
More foreigners fearing health hazards left the Ukraine Thursday. The British Foreign Office warned travelers to avoid Moscow and Warsaw, Poland`s capital, saying Soviet authorities were withholding information about radiation levels.
Those developments came as Moscow was dressed in festive decorations for the May Day holiday. The annual parade, in which tens of thousands of workers marched through Red Square under the gaze of Soviet leaders, passed without a mention of the nuclear accident.
A Western diplomat familiar with Soviet technology said information gathered in recent days indicates the USSR has shut down all reactors of the same model as the Chernobyl plant. The envoy said the action appears to have been a precautionary measure while investigators determine the cause of the plant disaster.
In Washington, a U.S. interagency panel said that the Soviet Union might have smothered the fire that raged for the last five days at the Chernobyl site.
In addition, photos taken Thursday from the Swedish-French commercial satellite Spot-Sat indicated the fire had decreased or was struck, Swedish scientists said.
”You can also clearly see that hot cooling water is no longer being pumped out of the plant,” Michael Stern of the communications company Satellitbild said.
Only a day after it predicted that the severely damaged reactor might continue to burn for weeks, the panel said Thursday that the latest Air Force reconnaissance photos made it ”plausible” that the Soviet Union had put out the fire, as Moscow contended that it had done Wednesday afternoon. But the group said it lacked definitive evidence to make a firm conclusion.
American officials said special Soviet civil-defense forces, in helicopters, had been observed dropping material, believed to be wet sand, over the fire into the graphite that encased the nuclear fuel rods in the reactor.
The Soviets told the International Atomic Energy Agency Thursday that nuclear fission was no longer occurring at Chernobyl.
Like other official comments in recent days, Thursday`s announcement left many questions unanswered. No specific radiation levels were given. In addition, the statement did not explain how those in serious condition sustained their injuries.
Pavel Ramzaev, a Soviet radiation expert, said Thursday when asked if there was a meltdown of the reactor core: ”I suppose that is so.”
Some of the students and teachers arriving in Moscow Thursday from areas near the accident site asked for medical examinations at the U.S. Embassy.
”We found small traces of radiation,” said an embassy spokesman, who added that equipment at the embassy is only able to take radiation
measurements from clothes. ”We really don`t have enough data to make a firm judgment.”
At a Soviet clinic, the entire entourage was given blood, urine and lung tests. They also were checked by Geiger counters while fully dressed. A British Embassy spokesman said all members of the group were deemed healthy and able to board an evening flight to London, where they will be re-examined. As a precaution, 100 jogging suits were flown to Moscow. The students were ordered to discard their clothes and don the jogging suits before boarding the flight, a British Embassy spokesman said.
The first indication that fears of contamination may be spreading to Moscow also were reported Thursday. One Muscovite said her children returned home from school Wednesday and had been told by their teacher to wash or peel all fruit or vegetables before eating. Though the teacher is reported to have said this was a precaution against rat poison, it also would be sufficient to remove radioactive fallout.
The disaster did not appear to hinder the festive atmosphere of the annual May Day parade in Red Square, the second for Gorbachev as Soviet leader.
Gorbachev and the Soviet elite stood in dazzling sunshine atop the Lenin mausoleum to view tens of thousands of marchers waving crepe flowers and carrying banners, balloons and flags. Placards denounced U.S. ”state terrorism”–a reference to the bombing of suspected terrorist sites in Libya –and urged an end to development of American missile defenses in space.
Soviet television pictures Thursday from Minsk and Kiev, the first broadcast since the accident, showed thousands of smiling workers celebrating the socialist world`s labor festival.
One of the hundreds of billboards rolled through Red Square in the capital appeared particularly poignant. It showed a photograph of Gorbachev chatting with workers, and carried the headline: ”Care for them is the main question of our policy.”
