Subject: headlines March 20
 
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996 10:14:25 -0500
 
     March 20, 1996 (Reuter) - France said it would raise the
question of Ukraine's honesty about its management of the
Chernobyl nuclear power plant at a Moscow summit on atomic
issues in April. Ukrainian officials have accused the West of
failing to do enough to help it close down the two reactors
still functioning at the plant. Environment Minister Yuri
Kostenko complained that the West had so far given it none of
the funds it had pledged to help Kiev close the plant.  

     March 20, 1996 (Reuter) - The Chernobyl power station has
no money to buy fuel and may have to stop one of its two
working reactors, a senior Ukrainian official said.
Chernobyl's number three reactor could be shut down as early
as this weekend. Electricity consumers owed the nuclear sector
the equivalent of $500 million in unpaid bills.


     March 20, 1996 (Reuter) - The French navy returned
Greenpeace's flagship Rainbow Warrior II on Wednesday, the
fourth of the environmental group's vessels freed since they
were seized. The navy impounded the five ships last year
during protests in French Polynesia near the site of
underground nuclear tests.  


     TAIPEI, March 20 (Reuter) - A group of Taipei residents
was taken through a nuclear disaster drill. Taipei's mayor and
ranks of city councillors, dressed in suits and hard hats,
looked on as buses and roads were sprayed to wash away
imaginary nuclear contamination. A city government spokesman
said the exercise was aimed at being prepared in the event of
an accident at one of the island's three nuclear power plants.


     March 20, 1996 (UPI) - Slovak Premier Vladimir Meciar
announced in Vienna that Slovakia's dangerously unsafe
Bohunice nuclear plant would be closed at the end of 1999. The
plant would not be repaired as the Slovak government had
previously proposed, but the country would keep an earlier
promise to Austria to close it down. The closure has been
delayed until 1999 to coincide with the opening of the
Mochovce reactor in west Slovakia, said Meciar.


     March 20, 1996 (UPI) - CIA Director John Deutch said the
international community has been "lucky" that large quantities
of nuclear bomb-grade material has not been obtained by
terrorists or anti-Western regimes. The greatest danger of
nuclear pirating from Russia had been at non-military sites
such as science and physics laboratories that are now under
joint surveillance with intelligence officers from the United
States and other Western countries, Deutch said.