Energy and Now, the Political Fallout

By John Greenwald

$ Chernobyl. In little more than a month, the name of a once obscure Soviet plant has become a global household word, a new entry on the list of late-20th century technological disasters and a rallying cry for all those who fear and oppose nuclear power. The April 26 explosion and fire that destroyed reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine spread radioactive fallout around much of the world. Now the accident is transforming the East-West political climate and perhaps altering diplomatic relations between the U.S. and its European allies.

In the Netherlands last week, nuclear questions played a key role in the most widely watched Dutch election in years. During the campaign, Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers eased his stance on atomic power. Despite a strong commitment to expanding his country's nuclear capacity, Lubbers shrewdly delayed construction of two new plants following the Chernobyl calamity. That relieved Dutch anxieties aroused by the Soviet tragedy, and helped Lubbers' Christian Democrat party to score big gains.

In Austria, as the country's presidential campaign winds to an end, even the furor over Conservative Candidate Kurt Waldheim's wartime Nazi links has been overshadowed by the question of atomic power. Socialist Kurt Streyer, who faces Waldheim in a runoff June 8, stresses his commitment in new posters that proclaim, NO SECOND CHERNOBYL. Waldheim, the former United Nations Secretary-General, says he will use his diplomatic experience to get an international agreement on early and complete warning in case of atomic power accidents.

Nuclear questions may influence an election June 15 in the West German state of Lower Saxony. Social Democrat Gerhard Schroder, a candidate for minister-president, calls the vote a "people's referendum on nuclear power." Feelings on the issue are running high. Earlier this month, riot police battled demonstrators protesting the construction of a radioactive waste dump in the village of Gorleben.

The shadow of Chernobyl affects much more than the future of nuclear power. It also raises questions about Western Europe's defense. The disaster has increased doubts about anything having to do with atomic technology; this threatens to create more rifts between the U.S. and its European allies, particularly about the installation of nuclear weapons. Says a senior West German official: "The political scale of Chernobyl is equal to the force of the accident itself. We know that people equate the threat of nuclear accidents with the disastrous potential of nuclear weapons."

Parties like West Germany's Greens, who have long opposed the stationing of U.S. missiles in Europe, are capitalizing on such fears and arguing against anything and everything nuclear with renewed vigor. Last week the Greens adopted a two-pronged program calling on Bonn to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and abolish nuclear power. "The connection is obvious," says Uwe Nehrlich, director of West Germany's Research Institute for International Politics and Security.

Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to make a similar link May 14 in a speech on Chernobyl. He called the destructive power of nuclear weapons far greater than the impact of the atomic plant accident and urged the U.S. to agree to a ban on nuclear-bomb testing. Gorbachev's message seems to be influencing European public opinion. Said one NATO official: "Gorbachev has scored another public relations coup."

The political fallout from Chernobyl has descended most heavily upon West Germany. "No other country has gone quite as crazy as we have," says one government expert. The nuclear controversy is dramatically shifting West Germany's political agenda and deepening the problems of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who will face voters next January in a general election.

Kohl's Christian Democrat-led coalition continues to favor more nuclear plants. The rival Social Democrats, who in the elections will be headed by Johannes Rau, the minister-president of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, want to phase out existing facilities "as soon as is feasible." The ecology- minded Greens have been gaining in strength since Chernobyl, and their demand that the nation's 20 commercial atomic plants be immediately closed seems attuned to the mood of the country; a recent survey found that 69% of those questioned oppose further nuclear expansion.

In recent weeks clashes between antinuclear protesters and West German police have become common. More than 400 people were injured in mid-May at the site of a nuclear-waste reprocessing plant being built near the Bavarian town of Wackersdorf. Police used water cannons and dropped tear-gas grenades from helicopters to subdue protesters armed with slingshots, crowbars and Molotov cocktails.

Chancellor Kohl, who has been the subject of a three-month corruption investigation that was dropped last week for lack of evidence, looks < politically weaker now than at any other time since he assumed power in 1982. Polls taken since Chernobyl show the Social Democrats consistently leading his Christian Democrats. The opposition, moreover, has been able to dictate the campaign theme for upcoming elections. Its battle cry is Ausstieg! (phased "withdrawal" from nuclear energy).

Nuclear power has also come under increased attack in Italy since the Chernobyl accident. Groups ranging from the Communist Youth Federation to the World Wildlife Fund International are seeking the 500,000 signatures needed for a national referendum on atomic energy. A new opinion poll found that 71% of those surveyed would bar new nuclear units, while about half favored closing Italy's three existing facilities. The government of Socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi opposes the referendum. Says Party Spokesman Claudio Martelli: "Italy is surrounded by countries, like France, with dozens of nuclear plants in operation, many of them very close to our borders. What practical alternatives do we have for maintaining a high level of competition?"

In France, nuclear power produces 65% of the country's electricity, and it is solidly backed by Socialist President Francois Mitterrand and Conservative Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. Nonetheless, the French government has been forced to admit that radiation levels from Chernobyl were much higher than originally thought, and some farmers in the eastern part of the country have had to plow under tainted lettuce and cabbage crops. On Wednesday, Paris announced that five workers at a reprocessing plant at Cap de la Hague had accidentally received from .7 to 18 rems of radiation over their bodies. Five rems a year is the maximum exposure considered to be safe.

Moscow, of course, has many Chernobyl troubles in addition to the damage caused by the blast and radiation. It suffers from a serious credibility gap as a result of its lack of candor about the accident. Other nations have severely criticized the Soviets for first concealing the disaster from the world and then providing scant information. Many Soviet citizens are also resentful because they were not warned of the danger until more than a week after the accident. Residents of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, 80 miles from the crippled reactor, took no safety precautions in the same period. Many now fear that they suffered radiation damage. Some pregnant women are reportedly being advised by doctors to have abortions.

The Soviets last week disclosed a few new details about the accident. In Vienna, Boris Semyonov, a governor of the International Atomic Energy Agency, raised the official death toll from nine victims to 15, and said that 20 people remain gravely ill from radiation sickness. Members of the energy agency later agreed to draw up plans to provide early warning and detailed information about future accidents. While Soviet papers did not report the new death toll, some publications continued to complain about exaggerated foreign reports of the disaster and wildly distorted rumors. One tale making the rounds, according to the weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta, was that vodka and red wine could cure the effects of radiation exposure. First Deputy Health Minister Oleg Shchepin called that boozy prescription dangerous nonsense.

While diplomats try to gauge the political effects of Chernobyl, nuclear experts have renewed their search for safer atomic power systems. Many engineers and scientists argue that well-designed existing reactors are safe by any reasonable standards, but others insist that it will take a new generation of machines to ease people's fears and restore their confidence. "Chernobyl was the Hindenburg of the current nuclear power business," says Lawrence Lidsky, an M.I.T. nuclear engineer, referring to the 1937 explosion of a German dirigible that ended the use of hydrogen in lighter- than-air passenger craft. "People simply do not trust the present nuclear technology."

Advanced reactors under development in the U.S., Europe and Japan may prove more promising. Known as "inherent safety" devices, all are designed to eliminate vulnerable cooling systems and human errors and shut down immediately in case of malfunction. One such machine is being developed at the Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago. Any sudden rise in temperature will halt the experimental reactor within minutes. The system performed flawlessly in its initial test last April. A similar Swedish unit called PIUS (Process Inherent Ultimate Safety) floods with water in the event of a mishap; the boron-treated liquid instantly stops the reactor. West Germany is experimenting with small modular units that can be cooled more quickly and efficiently than the present generation of nuclear behemoths.

However safe they may prove to be, such designs will probably not be ready for wide-scale use before the turn of the century. Meanwhile, politicians, no less than engineers, will have to confront people's nuclear fears. Having argued for so long that nightmares like Chernobyl could virtually never happen, experts must now live with all the fallout from that historic accident.

With reporting by William McWhirter/ Bonn and Nancy Traver/Moscow, with other bureaus