iz Wall Street Journal:
Russia Restarts Nuclear Reactor, No Radiation Leak -Offl
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
November 6, 2004 6:36 a.m.
MOSCOW (AP)--Russian officials on Saturday restarted a nuclear reactor that sparked widespread panic in southern Russia when it automatically shut down earlier this week.
Seeking to calm the hysteria, officials insisted there had been no radiation leakage.
Reactor No. 2 at the Balakovo nuclear power plant in the Saratov region shut down Thursday due to a turbine malfunction. It was restarted at 3:40 a.m. (0040 GMT) Saturday and was running normally, Russia's Rosenergoatom company said.
After the shutdown, rumors immediately spread that there had been a major accident.
Hundreds of residents fled homes near the reactor, dozens of businesses temporarily shut down and pharmacy's sold out of iodine, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported. Iodine can block absorption of radiation by shutting down the thyroid gland.
The former Soviet Union was the site of the world's worst nuclear accident when a reactor at the Chernobyl atomic plant in Ukraine exploded in April 1986. Residents were not informed about the accident for days and so couldn't take any precautions, and today the region where the fallout settled has high rates of thyroid cancer, an illness that can be caused by exposure to radiation.
Chernobyl was closed in 2000. Russia has 10 nuclear power plants with a total of 30 nuclear reactors.
Sergei Kiriyenko, President Vladimir Putin's envoy to the Volga region, made a quick visit late Friday to the region, some 900 kilometers (560 miles) southeast of Moscow, to try to calm fears. He personally inspected all four reactors at the power plant, including No. 2, Russian media reported.
"I am confident that there is no threat to people in Balakova, the Saratov region and moreover in neighboring regions," Kiriyenko said in remarks broadcast on Russian state television.
Radiation levels around the region appeared normal, Russian media reported.
Kommersant newspaper said that adding to the rumors about the shutdown -a relatively frequent occurrence -was the unusual appearance of several generals and about a dozen black government vehicles with military license plates in the region. The officials were there as part of a regularly planned Emergency Situations Ministry exercise, the newspaper said.
"The whole city lost their heads," Anna Vinogradova, head of the city's Department of Environmental Protection, told Kommersant. "All the telephone lines were busy.
People were telling each other to drink vodka, take iodine and no matter what not to use public water."
U vodki je spas
