Nuclear Power: In France

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        On March 11, 1987, NBC broadcast a documentary, "Nuclear Power:
    In France It Works."  It could have passed for a lengthy nuclear power
    commercial. Missing from anchorman Tom Brokaw's introduction was the
    fact that NBC's owner, General Electric, is America's second largest
    nuclear power salesman and third largest producer of nuclear weapons
    systems.
         One month after the NBC documentary, there were accidents at two
    French nuclear installations, injuring seven workers. THE CHRISTIAN
    SCIENCE MONITOR wrote of a "potentially explosive debate" in France,
    with new polls showing a third of the French public opposing nuclear
    power. That story was not reported on NBC News.
         NBC's policy which produced the "nuclear power works" commercial
    and censored the news about two nuclear accidents is typical of the
    international silence about reactor incidents which help explain the
    industry's undeserved reputation for safety.
         The lid to Pandora's nuclear safety box was partially opened last
    year when the West German weekly DER SPIEGEL published 48 of over 250
    secret nuclear reactor accident reports compiled by the International
    Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The report of previously secret IAEA
    documents was translated into English for the first time and published
    in David Brower's EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL.
         Some of the "incidents" you never heard about: February 1983 --
    Bulgaria's Kozluduj nuclear power plant lost pressure in the primary
    cooling system; June 1983 -- three of four pumps failed in Argentina's
    Embalse nuclear plant; August 1984 -- the primary cooling system in
    West Germany's Bruno Leuschner plant in Greifswald burst; October 1984
    -- engineers at the Chooz A reactor on the French-Belgian border
    discovered numerous "breaks" and "broken welding seams" on the
    critical control rods of the 17-year-old reactor; 1984 --
    Czechoslovakia's Jaslovska Bohunice reactor spilled radioactive
    coolant into two reactor containment units due to the failure of 72
    defective bolts in the circulation system; January 1985 -- at
    Pakistan's Kanupp reactor, radioactive heavy water leaked while being
    transferred through a rubber hose; February 1985 -- during a fuel rod
    experiment in East Germany's Rheinsberg reactor, a measuring device
    stuck into the center of the reactor caused a leak of radioactive
    water; April 1985 -- radioactive water and sludge swamped two rooms of
    an auxiliary building at Belgium's Tihange reactor; December 1985 --
    emergency power in Canada's Pickerikng reactor failed in three
    separate units for five days.
         DER SPIEGEL said that in several of these previously unreported
    nuclear slip-ups "a meltdown was a real possibility." Worse yet for
    Americans, DER SPIEGEL found that human error "is most advanced in
    North America ... sometimes with hair-raising results." A survey of
    official records since the Three Mile Island reactor meltdown in 1979
    shows there have been more than 23,000 mishaps at U.S. reactors -- and
    the number are increasing. In 1986, there  were more than 3,000
    reported incidents -- up 24 percent over 1984. The chilling
    conclusion: "Humanity has been sitting on a powderkeg as a result of
    reliance on the 'peaceful' use of the atom."

         SOURCES: EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL, Summer, 1987, "Secret Documents
    Reveal Nuclear Accidents Worldwide," by Gar Smith with Hans
    Hollitscher, pp 21-24; EXTRA, June 1987, "Nuclear Broadcasting
    Company," p 5.
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