SECRET DOCUMENTS REVEAL DANGER OF NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS
     
     Last March 11, NBC broadcast a documentary called "Nuclear 
Power: In France It Works," which 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 company and third largest 
producer of nuclear weapons systems.
     One month after the documentary, accidents occurred 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. The NBC policy that produced the pro-nuclear power 
documentary while censoring the news about two nuclear accidents 
is typical of the international silence about reactor incidents, 
which bolsters the industy's undeserved reputation for safety.
     Nuclear safety did come under fire last year, however, when 
the mainstream West German weekly DER SPIEGEL published 48 of the 
more than 250 secret nuclear reactor accident reports compiled by 
the International Atomic Energy Agency. These previously secret 
documents were published in English for the first time in EARTH 


ISLAND JOURNAL.
     Some of the underreported incidents: February 1983 -- 
Bulgaria's Kozluduj nuclear power plant lost pressure in the 
primary cooling system; June 1983 -- three of four pumps fail in 
Argentina's Embalse nuclear plant; August 1984 -- the primary 
cooling system in West Germany's Bruno Leuschner plant in 
Greifswald burst; January 1985 -- at Pakistan's Kanupp reactor, 
radioactive heavy water leaks while being transferred through a 
rubber hose; April 1985 -- radioactive water and sludge swamp two 
rooms of an auxiliary building at Belgium's Tihange reactor.
     In several of these previously unreported nuclear slipups, a 
"meltdown was a real possibility," noted DER SPIEGEL.
     A survey of official records since the Three Mile Island 
reactor meltdown in 1979 shows there have been more that 23,000 
mishaps at U.S. reactors -- and the number is increasing. In 1986, 
there were more than 3,000 reported incidents -- up 24 percent 
since 1984. DER SPIEGEL's 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; EXTRA!, June 1987, "Nuclear Broadcasting Company."
     
From: UTNE READER, September/October 1988, pp. 85-86.