KLAUS Topfer, the West German environment minister, returned from an
inspection tour of East Germany’s nuclear installations last week with promises
to do all it can to make its power plants safe. Preliminary inspection by
West German engineers revealed so many design faults and damaged components
in the four 440-megawatt reactors at Greifswald, near the Baltic coast,
that they may have to be shut down.
According to East German records, an accident similar to the one at
Chernobyl in 1986 was very narrowly avoided at Greifswald in 1976.
A badly earthed electrical circuit shorted, burning out the power leads
to all the pumps for water to cool the reactor, to the emergency generator
and to all but one of the backup pumps. Meltdown was narrowly avoided. The
Soviet-designed reactor was rushed back into service four months later.
Topfer’s experts estimate that bringing each of the four reactors up
to Western safety standards could cost DM500 million (Pounds sterling 180
million). The minister, who has a budget of DM15 million this year for ‘nuclear
safety in East Germany’, said he would call on the West German nuclear industry