Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 10:29:16 -0500
 

      2 April 1996 (Reuter) - Countries bordering the South
Atlantic expressed concern at shipments of radioactive cargoes
across the ocean. The statement, issued after the fourth
meeting of the group in the South African town of Somerset
West, did not elaborate.

      2 April 1996 (Reuter) - One in three leading Ukrainians
fear there could be another Chernobyl nuclear disaster, a
survey said. It showed that one in three thought the chances
of the Chernobyl accident happening again are higher than 50
percent.

      2 April 1996 (Reuter) - The Arab League is to meet next
week to discuss reports that radioactive waste leaked from
Israel's nuclear reactor at Dimona in  the Negev desert, the
secretary-general of the league said. Reports of the leak,
carried in many Arab publications, have alarmed Arab states
and Egyptian monitors have started checking radiation levels
along the  Egyptian-Israeli border.

      2 April 1996 (Reuter) - Pakistani authorities dismissed
as a concoction a U.S. newspaper report that U.S. spies in the
early 1980s found a blueprint for building a Pakistani nuclear
bomb that must have come from China. The report in the
Washington Post on Monday, citing unnamed U.S. officials, said
intelligence operatives found the blueprint in the luggage of
Pakistan's top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan during an
overseas trip.

      2 April 1996 (Reuter) - India's main opposition party
said a leading member's statement that it would test a nuclear
device if it won coming general elections did not reflect
party policy. The Asian Wall Street Journal on Tuesday quoted
K. N. Govindacharya, general secretary of the Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as saying that the
BJP, if elected, would declare India a nuclear power and test
a nuclear device.

      2 April 1996 (Reuter) - China denied U.S. charges that
it had sold equipment for making nuclear weapons to Pakistan
and stressed Beijing was more concerned about nuclear
proliferation in Asia than the United States.

      2 April 1996 (UPI) - The Greenpeace environmental group
warned that RBMK Chernobyl-type reactors are dangerously
unsafe and could cause nuclear disasters on the scale of the
Chernobyl disaster at any time. A report released by
Greenpeace, based on an independent assessment of the
remaining 15 RBMK reactors in the Commonwealth of Independent
States and Eastern  Europe, urges that these nuclear plants be
closed immediately.

      2 April 1996 (UPI) - Nuclear power plant technicians
were expected to attempt to extract fuel rods that jammed in
Unit 2 of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. Power
plant spokesman Jim McDonald called the removal of the fuel
rods an "engineering challenge." The plant had been undergoing
a routine fuel replacement since March 22 when officials
discovered "a ding" that prevented the normal lifting out of
the fuel rods. Turning to the manufacturer and computer
models, technicians attempted to resolve the problem to
prevent a worst case scenario of escaping radioactive material
in the containment building.