St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 25

SILDUiS POST-DISPATCH 3C Jun 10, 1986 "TCsn William 1 John COIlimentarV Chamberlain, More Similarities Than We'd Like Soviet Reactor And Accident Comparable To U.S. Reactors And Their Accidents America Is Picky About Its Terrorists cello reactor near Minneapolis in 1974. There are other similanties between the chain of mishaps that caused the accident at the Chernobyl plant and documented reactor accidents in the VS. I will mention just two. (1) It is thought that fire destroyed the power cables that operated Chernobyl's safety equipment Similarly, the fire at the Brown's Ferry reactor in Decatur, Ala, burst out By Dan Bolef The April 19 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power reactor in the U.S.S.R.

is the most serious of a long series of accidents that have occurred in nuclear power reactors throughout the world. The accidents at the Windscale (Great Britain 1957), Brown's Ferry (VS. 1975), Three Mile Island (U.S. 1979). Tsuruga (Japan 1981) and Davis-Besse (VS.

1985) reactors, among many others, differ in scale but have many similarities to Chernobyl In each case, the initial reaction of the authorities, as at Chernobyl, was to understate the seriousness of the accident and especially to minimize the danger to the public of to enable radioactive gases to escape from a reactor's containment building. The atmosphere in the building is vented (a valve is opened) frequently each year to control the building's pressure, temperature, humidity and airborne ra-dioactvity levels. The building atmosphere is purged an average of four times a year to enable workers to enter for fuel loading or maintenance. At Callaway, for example, during the last six months of 1985, a batch of radioactive gases was released on an average of once a week, with the vent open an average of seven hours a batch. There is no guarantee of leakproof operation of the containment building even in the case of relatively minor accidents.

Containment buildings are pierced by hundreds of cables, pipes and other equipment. Some of these Insurance Industry0 Merits No Sympathy WASHINGTON The liability Insurance crisis that everybody is talking about: Is it a crisis of company profits, of increases in the size of tort claims, of price, or of coverage at any price? Yes. Item: Aetna Life It Casualty recently announced that it would write no more new commercial liability policies in Florida because premium-rollback proposals in the state Legislature "would force us into a money-losing position." Item: Liability awards, particularly the bigger awards, really are increasing faster than inflation. Item: The Boy Scouts of America will start extracting a $20 surcharge from every Boy Scout troop and Cub pack in the country to help pay the organization's liability insurance, which has soared from $2 million a year in 1984 to $10 million in 1986. But insurance expert J.

Robert Hunter says it is also true that the main source of the liability insurance crisis is the insurance companies themselves. For instance, Aetna's profits increased 348 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to a study by Hunter's National Insurance Consumer Organization (NICO). Industrywide, profits are up an astonishing 1,227 percent Hunter, a private actuary and former federal insurance adminstrator, said the key reason for what he called "price gouging" is an up-and-down cycle in insurance company profits that has gone on since 1900. The latest cycle was triggered by a spate of insurance company investments turned sour by a decline in interest rates. He said the industry responded by boosting premiums and "dumping" lots of risks.

"The insurance companies dumped a lot of their risks nurse-midwives, smaller jurisdictions and so on and still collected 26 percent more in premiums," he said. "You get an increase in the amount of money you take in while at the same time reducing your exposure to risk, and your profits are going to increase." In addition, he said, there's "a certain inelasticity" in the market; mortgage holders require homeowners to have insurance; most jurisdictions force automobile owners to carry liability coverage. Hunter said the insurance industry has two key goals: to boost profits back to what it considers acceptable levels in the near term and to force tort reform to protect long-term profitability. "We expect they'll price higher for another six months or a year, then level off and start downward again." So if prices are going to come down anyway, why is NICO working so hard to force that result? "I just don't like the idea of having the economy screwed up every 10 years because the insurance industry shoots itself in the foot," Hunter said. "I'm not saying that there aren't some things that have happened some unusual awards that are quite alarming.

But nothing is happening that isn't actuarially predictable. Despite the aberrations, the law of large numbers still works." What isn't working as well is the free market. Left to their own devices, the insurance companies will maximize their profits even if the result is that many former customers, individual and corporate, are priced out of the market The solution. Hunter argues convincingly, is not so much legislating limits on liability as tougher regulation of the industry. NEW YORK There is supposed to be an all-powerful Israeli lobby in Washington.

Maybe soon we'll be getting a measure of its true strength. It so happens that Nathan Perlmutter, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. has published an article in the league's ADL Bulletin that exposes all the communist connections of the African National Congress, which purports to speak for the anti-apartheid cause in South Africa. Perlmutter's collaborator on the article is the knowledgeable David Evanier of the ADL Research and Evaluation Department Together, rhey make it absolutely clear that the ANC is not only pro-Soviet and anti-American but also maintains strong links to the PLO terrorists. South Africa recently bombed ANC guerrilla bases in Zambia.

Zimbabwe and Botswana. President Botha justified the raids by referring to President Ronald Reagan's bombing of Libya. Botha's excuse was that he was striking at the sources of terrorism in a way that should have been understood in our State Department But Secretary of State Shultz would not allow that sauce for the Libyan goose was also sauce for the Zambia-Zim-babwe-ANC gander. Sens. Ted Kennedy and Lowell Weicker, with support from such unlikely colleagues as Sens.

Bill Bradley and William Proxmire, forthwith Introduced a bill in Congress called the "Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986." It calls for a ban on U.S. bank loans to private companies in South Africa and a crackdown on all new U.S. investments there. It also would block the importation of South African uranium. But, hypocritically, it does nothing about the truly strategic metals that come from South sources and are needed to keep complicated aircraft and air shuttles flying.

What is happening, in short, is that we do, not intend to let Botha use the same techniques in fighting terrorism that Reagan used in the case of Moammar Gadhafi. The ANC thereby gets an immunity not accorded to the terrorist groups financed by Gadhafi's oil money. So what about this ANC that we have favored? Oliver Tambo, who has run the ANC since 1964, backs Soviet foreign policy to the hilt. He told a meeting of the African National Congress that the "anti-imperialist revolution in Afghanistan has been saved with the support of the Soviet Union." Tambo accepts the analysis that equates Zionism with racism. At a meeting in Paris, Tambo said the "PLO's struggle is ours." Are we to believe that the Senate really plans to dignify Tambo as a "freedom One can only hope that in this case the Israeli lobby will succeed in supplying a better definition.

Perlmutter and Evanier leave no doubt that "while tyrannies can be overthrown, at times the regimes replacing them may be worse." In listening to the likes of Tambo, our senators have chosen to ignore Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the chief of the 6 million-strong tribe of Zulus. The Zulu chief has said, "I will not lead black South Africans to maim, hack and kill black South Africans, nor will I lead blacks to maim and kill white South Africans." Buthelezi could turn out to be the James Madison of a South African federalism and we should listen to him. the released radioactivity. In many respects, the Soviet authorities appear to have reacted more forth-rightly and expeditiously (for example, in immediately evacuating 92,000 people from the surrounding areas) than did the authorities at Three Mile Island. The early emphasis In the U.S.

media on the differences between the Chernobyl reactor and those in the U.S., such as the Callaway plant, are now known to have been grossly misleading. Official documents and drawings available from U.S. and international atomic agencies reveal, rather, that the Chernobyl No. 4 reactor is among the newest nuclear power plants in the Soviet Union and contains very modern and sophisticated safety features, similar to those used in U.S. reactors.

Among the safety features is a steel-and-con-crete containment building designed to be capable of withstanding pressures penetrations can be left open, fail to close when called upon or rupture under stress. Indeed, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's figures reveal several thou-sand failures of containment isolation or pre-existing containment leaks between 1965 and 1983. According to a study for a nuclear insurers pool, during 1967-1979 the containments in boiling water reactors were adequately leak-proof only 77 percent of the time. In addition to this documented failure of containment isolation, the Integrity of many containment buildings in the United States has been compromised by construction defects. At the Callaway power plant for example, holes within the concrete of the dome, walls and base mat have been documented.

Improperly installed steel reinforcing bars and improperly welded plates imbedded in the concrete walls are relied upon to hold the building together. The nuclear accident at Chernobyl has resulted, thus far, in 26 deaths, hospitalization of hundreds, the evacuation from their homes of some 100,000 people, the radioactive contamination of water and farmland and the exposure of millions of people in the U.S.S.R. and Europe to high doses of radiation. Most Americans realize, after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, that nuclear power is an inherently dangerous technology. For Missourians and those to the east of us we must face the fact that the catastrophe at Chernobyl could also occur at Callaway.

Dan I. Bolef, Richmond Heights, is professor emeritus of physics at Washington University. equal in magnitude to those for which U.S. containment buildings are designed. A top safety official at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Robert M.

Bernero, has described the Chernobyl containment structure as "truly massive and sturdy." It is now believed that the explosion at the Chernobyl plant that resulted in the release of radioactivity was due to hydrogen gas. It was a hydrogen gas bubble, trapped in the dome of the reactor vessel, that caused so much concern at Three Mile Island in 1979. These two have not been isolated incidents: On Dec. 13, 1977, a hydrogen explosion took place in an auxiliary building at the Millstone power reactor near Water-ford, and hydrogen gas ignitions have occurred at other U.S. nuclear power plants, for example at the Monti- the electrical controls, lowering the cooling water to dangerous levels.

(2) The Chernobyl accident was initiated by a sudden rise in reactor power. In the U.S. on at least four occasions at nuclear power plants, control rods did not insert on command to stop the chain reaction. As Mr. Bernero of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has admitted in commenting on the Chernobyl accident, "The message is not whether the Soviet plant is as safe as ours.

The question is whether we understand our own reac-'tors well enough." On the record of the thousands of accidents that plague U.S. reactors each year, the answer to this question must be, "No, we do not understand nuclear reactors well enough to be able to prevent life-threatening accidents." It does not take a hydrogen explosion David Brodcr A Not-So-Gentle Reminder Chernobyl Disaster Warns The World Of What A Nuclear War Would Do By Gwynne Dyer low that the dust has begun to settle (if you will pardon the ex- I pression) from the Chernobyl di any real contradiction in Gorbachev seizing this occasion to preach about the perils of nuclear war. The Soviet and Western systems have both been on their worst behavior since Chernobyl. With their traditional obsession with secrecy and saving face, the Russians concealed the disaster as long as they could, and then minimized it as much as possible. Meanwhile, the Western media blew it up into a catastrophe of vast proportions.

"The Soviet news coverage of Cherno- Gorbachev is not exactly the best-qualified person to call it a "mountain of lies" given the atrocious performance of his own media, but the Western media have nothing to be proud of. The Germans have a word for it. Schadenfreude, a delight in the misfortunes that befall your adversary. That is what both official and unofficial sources in the West have been indulging in over the past few weeks, and it is a shameful and stupid behavior. The East and the West may be adversaries, but they are really both in the same boat (with the rest of the world).

The real adversary is nuclear war, and if it happens we all go down together. Tactical maneuver was part of Gorbachev's an saster, an Immense contradiction looms out of the haze. Measured either as an industrial disaster or a human tragedy, Chernobyl has commanded a grossly disproportionate amount of attention. More people die in traffic accidents each week in the Ukraine than have died so far from the radiation leakage at Chernobyl. Even counting the far larger number who may eventually succumb to the after-effects of radiation, the death toll will probably never compare with the traffic casualties the Western world suffers on a single long weekend.

Admittedly, radiation is a particularly stealthy and horrible form of danger but so is poison gas. Yet last Hot Re-election Drive Shirks The Long View WASHINGTON Tony Coelho is so successful at what he does, he's scary. His success tells a lot about what's right and what's wrong with the Democratic Party. Coelho, a congressman from California, is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the election committee for House Democrats. He has done so well there he is the front-runner for election in the next Congress to the job of party whip, the No.

3 position and traditionally a stepping-stone to House speaker. Coelho's goal is to see that not one Democratic House incumbent is defeated in November. If that seems far-fetched, consider this: In 1982 only three Democratic incumbents lost House seats. Since Coelho took over the election committee in 1981, Democrats have picked up a dozen seats. He has transformed the committee into an effective fund-raising machine.

His great skill is helping fine-tune campaigns. He can tell you how Democrats can exploit public fears about the safety of airlines, drugs and food to make the case for activist government and in the next breath brag that a Nevada Democrat is winning because "he's running against the government." Since it is an article of faith in the House that "all politics is local," Coelho's tactical genius makes him many allies. The difficulty arises when tactics begin to control policy choices. Coelho discovered in a hard-fought special congressional election in Texas last year that a tough line against foreign imports stirred the voters. Ever since, he has pushed hard for House Democrats to take what he calls "an aggressive stance" on trade issues.

The highly restrictive trade bill that passed the House last month in the face of veto threats from President Reagan was a central piece of Coelho's strategy for the November elections. He is not fazed when that bill is denounced by editorialists who are rarely in tune with the Reagan administration as a dangerous piece of protectionism. The trade issue worked for the Democrats in Texas last year, Coelho says, and he can tell you a dozen specific districts all over the country where it may help swing seats to the Democrats this year. As a tactician he rejoices that "We've put the Republicans on the defensive." Whether the legislation is "responsible" is another question. "Our bill won't become law," he says, as if that were the answer to the objections.

"We're forcing the administration to react to the problem of lost American jobs, and that's being responsible." The most visible administration response to passage of the House trade bill was a sudden move to shut down imports of Canadian cedar shakes and shingles. Canada in turn has taken angry retaliatory action against the import of American computers, semiconductors, books and magazines. Two weeks after the Democrats' trade bill passed, there Is talk of a trade war between the United States and its largest trading partner. It is the triumph of Tony Coelho to make the Democratic message sell so well in 250 separate districts that not one incumbent may lose. It is the tragedy of the Democratic Party that in message and meaning, its whole is so often less than the sum of its parts.

War Talk In A Hymn Wouldn't Bother Him WASHINGTON ft Walter Benjamin, who teaches religion at I Hamline University, has boiled over in kl the pages of The Washington Post about one of those can-you-believe-it? newspaper reports: A committee has voted 10-8 to scrub "Onward Christian Soldiers" from the planned revision of the Methodist hymnal. Millions must have snorted with contempt, as I did. But Benjamin took action. He shot to his typewriter and roundly denounced those sniveling committees that squeeze the rich Old Testament juices out of Protestant hymn books, reducing them to "liturgical pabulum." And as for the post-Vietnam tendency to read soldiers, Christian and otherwise, out of the human pale, "Hymnal revisers," Benjamin says, "should realize that the soldier as barbarian is an image, not a norm." Benjamin says many other sound and satisfying things: that Holy Writ, whence most good hymns derive, is sometimes a mixed and bloody matter (see the adventures of Kings Saul and David), and that heroic behavior is at the core of our literature. All true; wish I'd said it myself.

Yet Benjamin's roar of outrage, while satisfying, left me with the feeling that something was missing. Such as the real issue? Admittedly, the idea of bumping a classic like "Onward Christian Soldiers" arises from confusion about the morality of warfare and is simply ridiculous. Unless millions of Methodists follow their committee around this mindless bend, the expurgation stands about as much chance of success as the Washington Monument does of being shut down in a budget squeeze. And anyway, don't the words speak of marching "as to," not "off to," war? The issue is whether such a hymn offers heroic uplift or sound teaching. However nobly rhymed or stirringly scored, if a hymn were built around the refrain, "Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands," it would be thought to fall somewhat short of today's acceptable Christian attitude.

The sensed mandates of a religion evolve, and boundaries of taste and sensitivity shift There was a time when our slaveholding ancestors belted out hymns whose words seem to us today clearly incompatible with slavery. Yet they seem to have felt that holding other people as property was not only not un-Christian but a performance of Christian duty. Warring in the name of the Lord, in this age of ayatollahs and nuclear weapons, isn't so unambiguously jolly as it must have seemed to a 12th century crusader. "War," says Herman Wouk, "is an old hablf of thought an old frame of mind, an old political technique, that must now pass as human sacrifice and human slavery have passed." Wouk is no pacifist. That the writer of some of the best American fiction about war should state his hopes in just that way makes them the more arresting.

And if Herman Wouk can muse adventurously about the future of war, maybe hymnal revisers may do so as well so long, of course, as they don't commit "liturgical pabulum." Meanwhile, if God's stomach were as queasy as 10 members of that Methodist committee seem to imagine. He would have called off the human experiment in disgust eons ago. nouncement that Russia would extend its moratorium on nuclear weapons testing until Aug. 6 (the anniversary of Hiroshima) and in his proposal that he and President Reagan should meet in that city to negotiate a complete nuclear test ban. But it also sounded like a genuine plea.

For a long time I have harbored the secret belief that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, on balance, a good thing. I have met several radiation-scarred survivors of those tragedies who expressed the same thought: that without the vivid and awful example of what happened to those cities, we would not have been scared enough of nuclear weapons, and we would probably have unleashed them in a full-scale war by now. In recent years, I have begun to fear that we were forgetting the lesson, and that we might not make it to the 21st century unless we had another horrible ex year's disaster at the chemical plant in Bhopal, which killed 100 times as many people as Chernobyl at once, and will have equally dreadful after-effects on the survivors, had nothing like the same impact on world opinion. Why not? The answer is that the Chernobyl disaster was nuclear, and it reminds people of nuclear war. People know bone-marrow transplants would not be available for the millions of radiation victims after the smallest limited nuclear war, let alone the Big One.

We worry about nuclear power, but we're terrified of nuclear weapons, which are designed to do deliberately what Chernobyl did by accident Mikhail Gorbachev put it quite succinctly in his televised speech on May 14: i 'Hit irm 11 1 1 1 1 li II ample to teach us caution anew. It is an ugly thought and I felt ashamed every time it occurred to me which city would you nominate as the sacrifice? but these are harsh times. Perhaps Chernobyl can be our sacrifice. Its fate had nothing to do with nuclear weapons, but we can't afford to be picky about symbols. A majority of people in every industrialized country would support a total ban on nuclear weapons tests.

But can that popular sentiment move the leaders? Gwynne Dyer is a free-lance writer living in London. "For the first time, we have come face' to face with the real power and the threat of the atom. In our interdependent world, we also have the problem of the military atom, which could have a far, far worse aftermath For inherent in the stockpiled nuclear arsenals are thousands upon thousands of disasters far more horrible than Chernobyl." There is no real contradiction in the strong popular reaction to Chernobyl, because symbolically it is far more important than Bhopal. Nor, despite the public relations disaster he has sustained over the past few weeks, is there byl was late, meager but not untrue," said Dr. Hans Blix, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, addressing the potentates of the Western media at the International Press Institute conference in Vienna last month, whereas "the Western coverage was fast massive and misleading." About half of the expected American contingent had stayed home for fear of terrorism, but almost everybody who was there accepted Blix's criticism meekly.

Claims that 15,000 bodies had been bulldozed into nuclear waste pits; reports that a second reactor had blown.