Nuclear Accidents

In the winter of 1978, when a nuclear-powered Soviet spy satellite plunged into the atmosphere and sprinkled radioactive debris across northern Canada, the government in Ottawa added up the cost of finding and retrieving bits and pieces of the satellite and presented the Soviet Union with a cleaning bill for 6,041,174.70 Canadian dollars. The Soviets balked at first, but after two years of negotiations they finally agreed, in April, 1981, to pay 3 million Canadian dollars.

The nuclear age dawned with virtually no indication of how deadly some of the byproducts of making bombs can be. Time taught the nuclear industry better, and even though building safeguards was a sloppier process than it should have been, managers and workers learned to respect the lethal power of nuclear byproducts. So did the federal government in its role as regulator.

Treaty: Antarctic Treaty Date Signed: 1959 Signatories: U.S., Soviet Union and 21 other nations Purpose: Prohibits establishment of bases for nuclear weapons, introduction or testing of nuclear weapons and disposal of radioactive waste in Antarctica. Treaty: Hot Line Agreement Date Signed: 1963 Signatories: U.S.-Soviet Union Purpose: Established crisis communications links between superpowers.

The nuclear accident at the Tokaimura uranium-processing plant in Japan last week has surprising parallels with other nuclear accidents, notably with the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Granted, Chernobyl's scale and impact dwarf that of Tokaimura and involved a huge power-generating reactor, not one for fuel manufacture.

Telltale signs of neutron radiation found in a gold bracelet, coins, leaves and household salt leave little doubt that people in the neighborhood of Japan's worst nuclear accident were exposed to a potentially damaging bombardment, environmentalists and scientists said Thursday.

A 6-year-old girl and her aunt died of radiation poisoning Friday, the first fatalities in a nuclear incident last month that has contaminated at least 243 people, Brazilian officials said. Leide Das Neves Ferreira and her 37-year-old aunt, Maria Gabriela Ferreira, died of "septicemia and generalized infection" at the Marcilio Dias navy hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Dr. Jose Maria Sampaio said by telephone.

When the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded five years ago this week and loosed a radioactive cloud over much of Europe, it also polarized European attitudes toward nuclear power. Nowhere is there a clearer fault line than along the border between Austria and Czechoslovakia. Here on the Czechoslovak side, an old, Soviet-designed nuclear plant pumps megawatts of electricity to the Slovak countryside.

Sometime in the next few weeks, a disabled Soviet spy satellite carrying a highly charged nuclear reactor will drop out of its shallow orbit. If it burns up in the upper atmosphere--as Moscow predicts--it will go largely unnoticed by the general public, just another of the hundreds of pieces of space junk that fall from the sky every year. But if the satellite follows the predictions of some American space experts, it will plunge to Earth, scattering radioactive debris wherever it lands. The 4.

Radioactive fallout near the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in northern Ukraine has reduced populations of brightly colored birds more than those of their drab cousins, scientists reported this week. Growing those vividly colored feathers uses up a lot of antioxidants, which are also needed to fight radiation damage.