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I AS Asbury Park PressWednesday, April 30, 1 986 The Nuclear Blaster: far-reaching impact Soviet claims of only 2 deaths 'preposterous' tivity than simply letting the reactor, burn, according to a source who in sisted on anonymity. Adelman said those in the greatest risk are apparently the inhabitants of a village of 2,000 persons built to house workers at the nuclear facility and their families. When told by a senator that the Soviet Union has claimed that only two people were killed by the accident, he said that was "frankly preposterous in terms of an accident of this magnitude." not expected to have health effects in the United States. Sen. Patrick Leahy, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said after a CIA briefing yesterday, "I've seen nothing that indicates that huge numbers of people are dead.

It could be two, 12 or two dozen. Certainly the blast itself would have killed anyone in the immediate area." But Leahy said he had seen nothing to confirm a report that 2,000 people had been killed. He said radiation from the damaged plant "continues to escape at an alarming rate The nations around the Soviet Union are right to be very concerned" Emerging from the CIA briefing, Sen. Malcolm Wallop, told reporters, "As we understand it, the building itself was essentially destroyed One would have to assume there is contamination flowing everywhere within that 30-kilometer radius. You've got a hot radioactive core and it's still burning." The estimates are that the radiation levels are "100,000 to 200,000 to perhaps a million times greater than anything that was contemplated at the worst point in the appraisal of Three Mile Island," Wallop said, attributing that assertion to information he received from briefers.

"There are extensive levels of radiation, some of which are high enough to cause instantaneous death, some of which will cause death in days or weeks," Wallop said. "There is a hot fire burning and no ready way of putting it out." It was understood that much of the U.S. intelligence information was gathered by a KH-11 spy satellite, but nobody was saying so officially. A ranking administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that officials evaluating recent intelligence "don't believe there was a nuclear explosion per se" at Chernobyl. "But will continue to burn for a good number of days." In Bali, White House spokesman Larry Speakes, traveling with the president, called on the Soviet Union to minimize the danger to other countries by telling them more about the incident, and repeated a U.S.

offer of technical help in containing fire and radiation. "Fighting the fire will be very difficult due to the extremely high levels of radiation near the reactor," Speakes said, adding: "No one in the world has experience in dealing with a situation like this." The fire could continue for days or weeks, he said, continuing to spread radiation from the core as long as it burns. He said U.S. officials still did not have any casualty count. The White House has established a special interagency task force to coordinate the government's response to the accident, Speakes said, and the radiation cloud from the accident is being closely monitored.

He said it is The Associated Press WASHINGTON A top U.S. arms control official told Congress yesterday that Soviet claims of only two deaths from Saturday's nuclear power plant accident were "frankly preposterous" and called the incident "the most catastrophic nuclear disaster in history." U.S. intelligence sources reported that the Chernobyl nuclear reactor complex in the Soviet Ukraine experienced a meltdown Saturday, was still billowing smoke yesterday and threatened another reactor at the same site. The White House offered full U.S. assistance, and appealed to the Soviets to provide more information about the accident.

Kenneth Adelman, U.S. arms control administrator, said temperatures reached as high as 4,000 degrees (Centigrade, or 7,232 degrees Fahrenheit) at the graphite-cooled reactor and added, "The graphite is burning and Disaster From page Al cape at an alarming rate." Sweden and West Germany said yesterday that the Soviets had asked for help in controling the fire. Swedish national radio, quoting the Radiation Protection Institute, said today that warnings might be issued against drinking rain water in areas where recent showers had concentrated radioactive contamination from Chernobyl, more than 1,000 miles away. The radio said rainfall had raised contamination levels in Uppsala north of Stockholm and in Gavle in central Sweden. It said radioactive contamination had also been detected in milk from cows on the island of Gotland, off the eastern Swedish coast, but that it was still considered safe to drink.

Fallout might also be detectable in the United States by the weekend, but the amounts would be too small to be dangerous, U.S. specialists said. Because of shifting wind patterns, there were forecasts that the radiation could show up on both coasts. The radioactive cloud looped back toward Central Europe and the Soviet Union from Scandinavia yesterday, and weathermen around the world tried to track the fallout. Reports drew a picture of a hurried exodus from the Chernobyl area, but seeming unconcern in Kiev.

Michael Moss, a University of Washington student in Kiev, said in a telephone interview today that life in Kiev was normal. "Nobody in the city is terribly worried about it," he said. The State Department said the embassy in Moscow was in contact with Americans in the Kiev area, and that there was no indication any had been injured. Swedish radio, citing unidentified sources in the Soviet Union, said truck convoys were streaming north from the area near the Dnepr River in the Soviet industrial heartland. A West German technician working at the Chernobyl facility said an 18-mile security zone had been established around the damaged plant, Danish state radio reported.

In its first report on casualties, the Soviet news agency Tass said two people had been killed, and a Soviet official visiting Washington said less than a hundred had been injured. A Soviet government statement, distributed by the official Tass news agency, said in part: "The radiation situation at the electric power station and the adjacent territory has now been stabilized and the necessary medical aid is being KOTACLE KUCUEASl ACCIDENTS 1952 Dec 2, 1SS2: At Chalk River, Canada, an employee error leads to a mifflon gallons of radioactive wter leak insWe an experimental nuclear reactor. Took six months to clean up. Oct 7-10, 1S57: At Wlndscale Pile, a pkitonium production reactor north of Liverpool, England, a fire leads to largest known accidental release of radioactive material. Government later attributes 39 cancer deaths to mishap.

A nuclear accident, probably at a weapons fadlity, exxured in the Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union. Little Information exists, but It is believed that hundreds of square mfles had to be evacuated. May 23, A second accident at ChaJk River sparked by an overheated fuel rod toads to another tang cleanup. Im 3, 1SS1: A steam explosion at a mitary experimental reactor near Idaho Fails, Idaho, kite three servicemen. Oct 5, ISSSc At Enrioo Fermi plant, an expertnental breeder reactor near Detroit part of fuel core marts.

No injuries, but radiation levels high inside the plant Plant was otosed in 1972. Oct 17, ISSSe At a reactor in Saint-Laurent, France, fuel baring error leads to partial mertdown. No injuries and ortysmal amount of radioactive material escapes. Nov. 19, 1971: Over 50,000 gallons of radioactive waste water flows into the Mississippi River, when the waste storage space at tfie Northern States Power Ca's reactor in MorrtlceSo, overflows.

March 22, 1975: Worker using a candte to check for air leaks at the Brown's Ferry reactor in Decatur, causes a $150 million fire which lowers cooling water to dangerous levels. Nofrjriesor release of radtoactrviry. March 28, 1979t Three M8e Island in Middtetown, Pa, has partial mettdown and some racfioadfv is released irrto trie atmc in what many consider the nation's worst commerce nuclear mishap. Reactor is sti being decwitarninated. Aitg.

7, 1979: Accidental release of enriched uranium at a top-secret fuel plant near Erwin, exposes about 1 ,000 people to above normal doses of rariatioa Fab. 11, 1881: At least eight workers exposed to radiation at Sequoyah a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant when over 100,000 gyiora of radicflctfve ooolajit Aprl 25, 1831: Workers exposed to radioactive material at a nuctear piant in Tsuruga, Japan during repairs. Jan. 25, 1832: At the Ginna plant near Pxiester, N.Y., a tube ruptures and a small amount of radioactive steam escapes into the alrnosphere. Aprl 19, 1834: Sequoyah I has second accident when superheated radtoactive water erupts during maintenance procedure.

No injuries. Jim 1835: Davis-Besse plant near Oak Hartor, Onto loses cooing water supplies due to human and eojitornent error. Problem is caught in time to prevent meftdown. SOURCE: TTe Associated Press there was clearly a meltdown." As of early yesterday morning EDT, "smoke was still billowing from the site. The roof had been blown off and large portions of the walls (of the reactor building) had caved in," the administration official said.

"And it seemed at the time that (another) nuclear unit just above it might still be in some danger." The source said the U.S. government was convinced there had been a huge release of radiation, but that the most serious radioactive fallout on the ground occurred within an area stretching out about 10 miles out from the plant. This official aiso said the intelligence analysts were now convinced the accident occurred sometime Saturday. Reports reaching the State Department said Soviet authorities were hampered in their efforts to put out the fire because of the intense heat. They were also concerned that dousing the fire could create more radioac- Asbury Park Press Graphic experts said they had detected increases in radiation and pointed the finger at the Soviet Union.

The Soviets still have provided little information about the disaster beyond announcing that two people died and several villages have been evacuated. But U.S. intelligence reports indicate that a fire still is burning at the Chernobyl plant. Bengt Pettersson of Sweden's Nuclear Power Inspection Board told a news conference yesterday the concentration and composition of radioactive fallout measured in Scandinavia indicated a core meltdown, one of the most dangerous accidents possible in a nuclear power plant. Danish Prime Minister Poul Schlueter called it "totally unacceptable and unsatisfactory that we can come to experience such a great, tragic, nuclear power accident without the governments in the affected countries, at least neighboring states, being informed about what happened." grad and is a major river port with large chemical and metallurgy industries.

Kiev also is one of Europe's oldest cities, becoming a commercial center as early as the 5th century. The city was the capital of Kievan Russia in the 9th century. The four-reactor Chernobyl complex is at the confluence of the Uzh and Pripyat rivers, which flow into the reservoir just north of Kiev. The 50-mile-long reservoir empties out into the Dnepr River, which flows through Kiev and winds more than 600 miles through the Ukraine to the Black Sea. The Dnepr fills several other reservoirs, presumably drinking water supplies, en route to the sea.

It is flanked by industry and some of the republic's largest cities, including Cherkassy, Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye, are all downriver from the accident site. "You have an air danger hear Kiev and a water danger if the core' should burn down to the water (table) line," Adelman said. "There is concern over water contamination," Adelman told a Senate committee yesterday afternoon. "It is on a river. We've got to assume the water level is relatively high.

The burning core at 4,000 degrees is at such an intense temperature, if it goes into the water you could have serious, serious problems with contamination." Information on disaster controlled The Associated Press MOSCOW The Soviet Union yesterday struggled to contain a nuclear power plant disaster that may have affected thousands of people and the controlled Soviet press maintained strict control of information about the accident. After the initial, four-sentence report by the official news agency Tass on Monday night, the Soviet news media were silent for 24 hours about an accident that may have melted the core of a Ukranian nuclear reactor and sent a radioactive cloud rolling across hundreds of miles of Russian plains. The silence Was in keeping with Soviet information policy that tries to minimize natural disasters, airline crashes and other "bad news" about the Soviet Union. There also is an attempt to avoid playing up news that might upset the country's 278 million people or be taken as a reflection on the Soviet government and Commu- nist Party. The first report by Tass was issued hours after Scandinavian countries detected increased radiation and said the radiation apparently came from the Soviet Union.

Tass said the accident was at the' Chernobyl plant, but did not say the accident occurred only 60. miles from' Kiev, a city of 2.4 million people. The report did not say what when it happened, mention whether there were casualties or discuss possible risks to health. The report was read on the main TV news program Monday night and there was no new information issued until nearly 24 hours later when Tass-issued a second government statement' saying two people were killed and that people had been evacuated from four! towns in the area. That report said the radiation from the damaged plant had been contained and that medical aid had been "given to those affected." A Radio Moscow report yesterday referred to the accident as a and said victims were being given help.

But it offered no other details. Western reporters and diplomats had difficulty getting telephone calls through to Kiev, 475 miles from Moscow and the nearest large city to Chernobyl. Intercity and international telephone calls in the Soviet Union must be booked through Soviet opera-tors, who reported throughout the day that lines to Kiev and nearby cities were busy. All foreigners stationed in Moscow are restricted to a 25-mile radius of the Kremlin unless they give at least 48 hours notice of travel plans to the Foreign Ministry. They normally must arrange an itinerary with state agencies handling transportation and accommodation, which usually takes a minimum of a week.

i That means foreign correspondents working in Moscow cannot immediately travel to areas where news events occur to get first-hand information. Reporters inquiring yesterday about going to Kiev were told either that the city was closed now, or that they should write letters requesting arrangements. heartland Soviet government reports on the accident gave no indication whether drinking water sources were contami-nated by radiation or what other health hazards may have been created by the reactor accident. A radioactive cloud apparently spread northwest from the nuclear complex and Scandinavian countries reported higher-than-normal radioactivity. Those reports indicated fallout from the accident would have traveled over the Byelorussian capital of Minsk and across the three Soviet republics along the Baltic Sea.

There was no immediate inforrria-tion on whether radiation levels were dangerous in those areas of the Soviet Union. Scandinavian countries said the radiation levels detected there were higher than normal, but not Nordic leaders irate over lack of details atmosphere. He said the U.S. government still has no word on casualties. He also said the United States "hopes the Soviet Union will live up to its international obligation" by reporting full details on the mishap.

Briefing reporters accompanying the president on his 13-day Far East trip, Speakes said: "It could not happen in the United States" because of various safeguards. He noted that the Soviet disaster was far more serious than the Three Mile Island accident near Harrisburg, in 1979. Speakes said all U.S. power reactors have such structures, plus many other safeguards. Asked if the mishap changes Reagan's strong advocacy for nuclear power, Speakes said: "It does not." He said an interagency task force appointed by the president would issue a daily statement, through the Environmental Protection Agency, on the status of the fire and the radioactive air mass.

Poland banned the sale of milk from cows that feed on fresh grass and said children would be treated with potassium iodine solution for possible radioactive contamination, but state television said the general public was not endangered because of the "temporary character" of the fallout. European political leaders angrily demanded that Moscow explain why it had not quickly alerted the rest of the world to the disaster, with some calling on the Soviets to shut down all their nuclear plants until international inspections could be carried out their estimated 45 operating reactors. Adelman said reactor temperatures had reached 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit, more than enough to have caused a calamitous meltdown of reactor fuel. But other scientists disagreed. Manfred Petroll, a West German nuclear industry spokesman, told The Associated Press that diplomats at the Soviet Embassy in Bonn had asked for advice in combating a graphite fire in a nuclear reactor.

He said other Soviet diplomats were trying to arrange assistance from West German anti-radiation experts and the possible delivery of medicine. In a meltdown, the heat of the nuclear fuel core builds up faster than it can be released, and radioactive material is boiled off into the atmosphere. It is a particularly dangerous accident when the reactor, as apparently is the case at Chernobyl, is not housed in a concrete-and-steel containment. Specialists interviewed in the United States yesterday suggested that the fire might have started when air came in contact with superheated graphite, the material that surrounds and is supposed to help control the uranium fuel reaction. thick concrete and steel containments.

In addition, ever since a 1974 fire at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama, government regulators have required U.S. reactors to have expensive automatic sprinkler systems for extinguishing fires similar to the one at Chernobyl. U.S. reactors, as opposed to those in the Soviet Union, have a "defense-in-depth" concept, said James Vaug-han, acting assistant energy secretary for nuclear power programs. "People who live around power plants in this country are not subjected to the kind of risks that this type of accident represents," said Paul Turner, vice president of the Atomic Industrial Forum, an industry group.

With 101 civilian power reactors holding Nuclear Regulatory Commission operating licenses, atomic power now provides about one-sixth of the United States' electricity. That is expected to grow to 19 percent by 1995 as most of the 27 plants still under construction are completed, according to Energy Department projections. However, no new plants have been ordered since 1978, and utilities have canceled more than 100 reactors. Plants completed in recent years have been plagued by expensive safety "backfits" ordered in the wake of Three Mile Island, double-digit interest rates and prolonged construction periods. i given to those affected.

The inhabitants of the nuclear power station's settlement and three nearby populated localities have been evacuated." It did not say how or where the two people died, or how many others had been exposed to radiation. Mikhail Timofeev, Soviet deputy minister for civil aviation, told reporters in Washington yesterday that "tens of people" had been injured. The power station's "settlement," referred to by Tass, is Pripyat, a town with a population of about 25,000. The three other evacuated towns were not identified. Danish radio quoted Moscow diplomats as saying tens of thousands had been evacuated.

The Soviet statement said the accident occurred in the fourth of Chernobyl's four power generating units apparently meaning the newest, completed in 1983 and that the reactor was damaged, destroying its housing and producing "a certain leak of radioactive substances." Western experts said serious health hazards many of them not showing up until years from now are unlikely beyond a 30-mile range of the site. Some scientists abroad noted that Kiev's drinking water, drawn from the Dnepr River, could become contaminated. The Ukraine is also a major grain-growing region for the Soviets. U.S. arms control administrator Kenneth Adelman in Washington said the Soviet report of two deaths "frankly preposterous," and called the incident "the most catastrophic nuclear disaster in history." Emerging from a CIA briefing, Sen.

Malcolm Wallop, told reporters there were extensive levels of radiation, "some of which are high enough to cause instantaneous death, some of which will cause death in days or weeks." "There is a hot fire burning and no ready way of putting it out," he said. In Bali, Indonesia a spokesman for President Reagan said the kind of massive nuclear accident that occurred in the Soviet Union "could not happen" in the United States and that the president remains a strong supporter of nuclear power, a presidential spokesman says. Deputy Press Secretary Larry Speakes said the accident that seriously damaged a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl appears to pose no threat to the United States although he said he didn't know whether the same assertion could be made with regard to Europe and Scandinavia. "It appears the radioactive air mass is currently moving to the northwest" over Scandinavia and toward the polar cap, the spokesman said. Speakes said the cloud of radiation is expected to disperse in the upper of Americans for Energy Independence, a coalition of industry and academic experts.

"The real issue is the effect that declining oil prices will have on utility plans for new power plants." Charles K. Ebinger, director of energy and strategic resources studies at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic Studies, called the disaster "just the type of thing nuclear opponents have been looking for." Sen. James McClure, R-Idaho, said he feared "many people would try to draw parallels between this accident and the U.S. experience." "We have nothing in this country that is identical to the Soviet plants," he said. An ad-hoc coalition of several anti-nuclear and environmental groups including the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club and the National Audubon Society cited the Soviet accident yesterday in calling for shutting down the U.S.

atomic program. "As long as there are operating nuclear power plants in the United States, we live with the risk of a similar accident here," the coalition said in a statement. Industry and government officials said the same kind of accident is virtually impossible at a civilian power plant here, primarily because all U.S. plants are enclosed in 4-foot- The Associated Press STOCKHOLM, Sweden Scandinavian leaders are demanding ear-, lier warning about nuclear accidents such as the power plant disaster in Soviet Union, which they first learned about when they began to pick up an increase in radiation already over their countries. Health officials said radiation in the Nordic countries, which did not reach dangerous levels, was expected to continue declining today, four days after the accident at Chernobyl, north of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, hundreds of miles to the southeast.

Swedish weather experts said yesterday that a change in winds had ended further contamination of Northern Europe and that any continuing contamination would be blown into Poland and Czechoslovakia. The accident apparently happened Saturday, but Soviet officials did not say anything about it until late Monday, hours after Swedish and Finnish Atomic industry braces for public, political fallout Nuclear plant set in The Associated Press WASHINGTON The Chernobyl catastrophe in the Soviet Union, which may be the worst nuclear accident in history, is producing a new dose of political fallout for a U.S. atomic program already reeling from cost overruns, plant cancellations, safety concerns and fear about radioactive wastes. Stocks of U.S. utilities with heavy investments in atomic power plants plummeted yesterday as news about the severity of the accident at the four-reactor Chernobyl plant 60 miles north of Kiev began filtering to the United States.

Nuclear industry officials braced themselves for a repeat of the political and public furor that stalled the U.S. program for two full years immediately after the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. However, citing the more stringent government regulation of nuclear power here than in the Soviet Union, particularly since the TMI accident, officials and energy experts said the long-term effect of the Chernobyl accident on the U.S. atomic activities will be minimal. "Those who want to discredit nuclear energy will use this to do that," said Elihu Bergman, executive director The Associated Press MOSCOW The Chernobyl nuclear accident in the northern Ukraine occurred in an area of gently rolling hills in a populous stretch of the republic's industrial heartland that hugs the Dnepr River.

Soviet reference books do not list a population for Chernobyl, about 60 miles north of Kiev. Although the facility is called the Chernobyl plant, it is a few miles north of Chernobyl and the town of Pripyat grew up around the nuclear power complex to house those who work there. The second most-populous of the 15 Soviet republics, the Ukraine has 50.8 million residents and Kiev is its largest city with a population of 2.4 million. Kiev is the Soviet Union's third largest city after Moscow and Lenin.