Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency JPRS report, dated 1 August 1990, translates an OGONEK interview by Vanda Beletskaya with Academician Anatoliy Petrovich Aleksandrov, former president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Aleksandrov blames the Chernobyl accident on an ill-considered experiment prepared by Donenergo that violated operating instructions. He also describes earlier nuclear plant defects, Legasov's suicide, and his dealings with Beria and Kapitsa. He argues for continued atomic power engineering and a law on nuclear power.
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## UNCLASSIFIED # Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1990 ## Document 6 of 16 158. The publication in the general press of the draft of the law on atomic power engineering and its discussion before passage in the Supreme Soviet will relieve the tension that has appeared today in society in connection with atomic power engineering. 159. The minimization of the danger is amoral, but its exaggeration, the promotion of the spread of unverified rumors, and the invention of all kinds of terrifying incidents, which worry people, are also amoral. In this respect the law on the use of nuclear power will put everything in its place. 160. OGONEK: And all the same, Anatoliy Petrovich, we cannot, after all, say that nuclear power plants today are complete safe... 161. A.P. Aleksandrov: We cannot. A danger exists. Yet not only scientists, but also the public are obliged to do everything in order to reduce it. Strictly speaking, a reactor, in which physics itself does not allow what happened at Chernobyl, has already been designed. But time is needed in order to refine it. Passions are heating up over operating nuclear power plants. Therefore, steps to make monitoring more strict are also needed, a law on nuclear power engineering is needed.
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 22 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.