Six people died from radiation and burns received from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, official Soviet media said Monday, apparently raising the death toll to eight.
A brief statement broadcast on television and carried by the Soviet news agency Tass reported new casualty figures and reassurances that ”the radiation situation . . . is improving.”
The official statement said 35 persons now are ”in a grave condition”
and 6 people had died.
Although it was unclear from the three-paragraph statement, Western analysts interpreted the casualty figures as representing new fatalities, as opposed to a cumulative total.
Official announcements earlier reported one man died from falling debris, and one received fatal burns over 80 percent of his body in the explosion and fire at the power station. The Monday report said the six victims died of
”burns and radiation.”
Although Soviet officials in Moscow previously acknowledged only two fatalities from the reactor accident, a Soviet spokesman traveling in Western Europe last week said four died.
Eighteen were earlier reported in serious condition out of the 204 said to have been hospitalized.
”Those affected are undergoing therapeutic and preventive treatment,”
Tass said.
Meanwhile, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda said Monday that three low-level Ukrainian officials had been reprimanded for shirking their duties in the days after the nuclear accident.
Pravda reported that three men in charge of a transportation section at Chernobyl had been disciplined.
Their infraction was letting 10 days pass before offering assistance to the unit`s 200 workers and their families, all ordered evacuated from a 19-mile zone around the plant.
”Wages were not given out on time, clothing was not distributed and they ignored the legitimate requests of those evacuated,” Pravda said.
The evacuation forced 84,000 people from their homes in two stages after the April 26 accident, on April 27 and then on May 2-4.
Soviet authorities have said previously that local officials failed adequately to assess dangers of the reactor accident in the first two days after the explosion and fire.
The latest Pravda report was the first report of specific punishment handed out due to actions in what Western scientists describe as the worst nuclear accident in history.
However, Western Kremlin watchers noted that the three men singled out for criticism were low-ranking officials.
In addition, their crimes had nothing to do with the accident or with the issue of belatedly notifying the Soviet leadership of the disaster`s implications.
Pravda said that one transportation unit official, identified as A. Shapoval, showed ”complete indifference” to the status of his employees ordered out of homes near the plant.
He was expelled from the Communist Party, effectively ending his career advancement and halting his access to the perquisites and prestige of belonging to the ruling party, Pravda said.
Another official, A. Sichkarenko, had a formal reprimand entered on his party record, Pravda said, which is sure to damage his career.
The third official publicly criticized, A. Gubsky, was identified as head of the transportation unit`s Communist Party organization. His punishment was not detailed in the article.
Pravda, explaining the disciplinary measures, said Communist Party officials should always remember their role as the vanguard of society and the workers` representatives.
”Some leaders turned out to be psychologically unprepared for work in the conditions caused by the accident in the atomic power station,” Pravda said.
Previous newspaper accounts of the accident have focused on heroism and selflessness displayed by those dealing with consequences of the accident.
Western analysts viewed Monday`s Pravda report as the first formal move by Soviet leadership under Mikhail Gorbachev to lay the blame squarely on inept, inefficient local party functionaries.
”I think what we`ll see is an attempt by Gorbachev to spin this disaster around,” one NATO-nation diplomat said.
”I believe he will now try to show that if his reforms had been implemented, and if his kind of new man had been on the spot, this would have been dealt with more successfully,” the diplomat said.
Since coming to power in March, 1985, Gorbachev has preached a renewal of the Soviet system based on vigorous, imaginative leadership.
Western analysts have noted in recent months, though, that many of his reforms appear mired in a bureaucracy that sees its own interests threatened by Gorbachev`s changes.
During a Monday afternoon press conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Lomeiko attacked Western European action to ban East bloc food imports feared poisoned by radioactivity.
”They are totally unjustified,” he said. ”They cannot be justified by any objective-minded person.”
Representatives of the Common Market met in Brussels Monday and decided to impose a ban on fresh food imports from seven East European countries affected by fallout from Chernobyl.
Lomeiko said, ”There is no danger whatsoever for the health of the people of Europe” and accused those supporting the ban of fomenting anti-Soviet feeling in the world.
The Foreign Ministry spokesman repeated criticism of Western press coverage of the accident. At one point he dramatically reached under his podium and emerged with a copy of the New York Post. The newspaper`s banner headline read: ”Mass Grave,” followed by smaller print that said: ”15,000 Reported Buried in Nuke Disposal Site.”
In New York, meanwhile, three scientists studying the accident told the New York Times that fallout readings and other analysis suggest that fire from the reactor probably shot more than 1,000 feet into the air for two days, carrying radiation from an exposed nuclear fuel core.
The experts, one of them a Soviet-born engineer who helped design a nearly identical Soviet plant, are employed by Ebasco Services Inc., a major reactor builder.
The Times quoted them as saying the reactor`s design and Soviet statements were consistent with the disaster starting as a ”hot spot” in one of the 1,700 channels where fuel rods were installed, sometime around 8 a.m. on April 25. At that time, they noted, the Soviets reduced the power level from 1,000 megawatts to 200 megawatts to deal with what appeared to be a small problem.
But the problem spread and hydrogen was produced from steam reacting with metal fuel cladding and with the reactor`s graphite core, they said. Finally, 17 1/2 hours later, the hydrogen exploded, blowing the building`s top apart and the cover off the reactor. The explosion knocked out the plant`s marginally acceptable electrical and emergency systems and the reactor ran out of cooling water because there was no power to pump it, they said.
