A legacy of lies follow growth of nuclear power

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High-ranking government personnel are illuminated by atomic blast at Atomic Energy Commission's Pacific Proving Ground in 1951.

President Reagan has criticized the Soviet Union for its "stubborn refusal" to provide a "full accounting of what happened" during the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. This, the president says, is "the least the world community has a right to expect."

Unfortunately, the former General Elec -tric spokesman turned president is not such a forthright critic when it comes to the nuclear industry in the United States.

Secrecy and deception have, in fact, been the watchwords of the nuclear industry from its inception. A six-month old U.S. government survey, made public on May 1, 1986, reveals that "potentially significant" nuclear accidents "may not have been publicly reported" in 14 of the 17 "non-Communist" countries with operating nu -clear power plants. General Electric and Westinghouse corporations are the main exporters of nuclear technology to other nations.

One hardly unknown accident, of course, was the disaster at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pa., in 1979, which was a notso-well choreographed exercise in duplicity by Metropolitan Edison Co., the operator of the plant, and state and federal officials.

All is well?

"Everything is under control," said Lt. Gov. William Scranton as radioactive steam vented from the plant.

"There was nothing there that was catastrophic or unplanned for...the plant is in a safe condition," Metropolitan Edison Vice-President John Herbein told reporters soon after the accident, failing to mention the radioactive releases because "it didn't come up."

Radiation levels within three miles of the plant reached 25 millirems an hour on the first day of the disaster. Government standards, which themselves are highly questionable, set 170 millirems a year as the maximum "safe" dose for the public.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader noted that Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials purposely avoided a mass evacuation from the Three Mile Island area because they feared the political consequences of such a drastic emergency measure on the future of the industry.

"It would have shown 150 million people watching on TV a picture of half a million people fleeing from a potential disaster," Nader noted. "That picture would have terminated the nuclear industry right there and then."

The reactor actually came within 30 to 60 minutes of a meltdown—a scenario that could have meant death for thousands and turned eastern Pennsylvania into a radioactive graveyard.

Today a senior Reagan administration official complains that "exaggerated press attention" about Three Mile Island "needlessly alarmed the public."

At the time of the Three Mile Island disaster, radiation expert Dr. Ernest Sternglass said that radioactivity released on the first day alone "corresponded to a major fallout pattern from a bomb test."

Of course, during the 1950s such a characterization might have been used to reassure the public, since government spoksemen were fond of telling the public in those days that fallout from nuclear weapons tests was "insignificant" and no cause for concern.

Deception in the desert Previously secret Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) documents, however, have revealed that one atom bomb test alone in 1953 subjected residents of southern Utah and Nevada to doses of radiation 400 to 500 times higher than was released during the Three Mile Island accident.

Between 1951 and 1958 there were 97 atmospheric atomic explosions in Nevada. The leukemia death rate in southern Utah, where the fallout drifted, was found to be 50-percent higher than expected from 1950 to 1964.

Dr. John Gofman, the AEC's former top expert on the biological effects of radiation, says that the government canceled atomic tests when the winds were blowing toward heavily populated areas—but not if the fallout would be blown toward sparsely inhabited areas.

Similarly, in 1954 the U.S. military exploded the Bravo hydrogen bomb in the Marshall Islands, which covered residents of the island of Rongelap with a snow-like radioactive ash. A 1954 U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency report, not released until 1982, confirmed that U.S. officials knew in advance that the fallout would blanket the islanders.

At the time, the military claimed the winds unexpectedly shifted toward Rongelap at the last minute.

CIA covers up Russian disaster Moreover, the U.S. government doesn't just cover up its own tracks. In 1957-58, a nuclear disaster of perhaps unparalleled magnitude occurred at Kyshtym, a town in central Russia, when a reactor explosion poisoned an area estimated at 40 to 400 square miles. Thirty villages were aban -doned, and possibly thousands died.

The Soviet Union kept quiet about the disaster-and so did the CIA, which confirmed in 1977 that it knew of the disaster. It was only through the effort of Dr. Zhores Medvedev, a Russian scientist living in Britain, that details became known after 20 years of silence.

The CIA apparently didn't want to stir up anti-nuclear sentiment, so they covered up the accident, in cooperation with the Soviet Lies and subterfuge have been the routine response to each and every crisis of nuclear technology. Such deception, of course, is designed to perpetuate the biggest lie of all-that nuclear technology is safe.

U.S. Air Force/photographer