Cuban Chernobyl—Not In Our Backyard

BAN Chernobyl

.Florida

T IN Our Backyard

Havana

Cienfuegos

Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is at it again. With at least $800 million in help from friends in Moscow, Europe, and Latin America, he hopes at last to bring on-line a troubled nuclear reactor 180 miles from Key West, Florida, near the city of Cienfuegos on the central stretch of

Cuba's southern coast.

For Roger W. Robinson, Jr., president of RWR Inc., a Washington-based consulting firm, and formerly Senior Director for Inter

national Economic Affairs at the National Security Council under President Reagan, it has been clear for several years that should Fidel Castro succeed in this, it is just a

matter of time before this reactor melts down with catastrophic Chernobyl-style consequences for

much of the United States.

In an exclusive interview with

Crusade, Mr. Robinson discussed this problem.

Crusade: What does Castro's nuclear project amount to?

Mr. Robinson: As you know, this agree

ment between Russia and Cuba for the completion of a major nuclear power facili ty on the island was originally con

cluded back in the 1970s. The plant was under construc-

tion until 1991, when, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, sensitive equipment was left insufficiently sheltered in the corrosive tropical air. The project was resurrected in the spring of 1995 with a dedicated effort to complete it as quickly as possible to bring it on-line. Castro already has about 1.2 billion dollars in this deal, the equivalent of a full year's annual hard-currency income for the island, so he is very unlikely to want to abandon the project. Moscow has recently pledged around 330 million dollars to com plete the reactor, and Cuba is supposed to

fi nd 208 million dollars from somewhere to contribute to its completion. Some 200 mil

lion dollars is envisioned to come from Western suppliers, several of them from Europe but aLso possibly even Brazil and

other Latin American countries.

Crusade: Why is the project now being revived?

Mr. Robinson: The revival came about when Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy decided that not only was it an appropriate time to complete the deal but that in the end they could secure a consortium of West European and Latin American suppliers

who would have their business activities in Cuba 100% covered by taxpayer credit and insurance coverage, that is, the government export support programs of these countries. Russia would thus be able to avoid any risk and complete the project as virtually the prime contractor.

Crusade: Where does Castro intend to get the money for such a costly project?

Mr. Robinson: As I mentioned, there is

a division of labor envisioned in the com pletion of the deal. I suspect that both reac

tors will cost a little over a billion dollars to

fi nish. The estimates on the Moscow side

are around 750 million dollars, but that seems to me to be deliberately lowballing

what it would take to finish. So we have three central components: the Russian con tribution, something estimated in the area of 350 million dollars; the Cuban component, supposedly 200 million dollars or more, which no one really knows how they are going to acquire; and then roughly 200 mil lion and probably considerably more from Western and Latin American suppliers.

Crusade: What is Clinton's policy regarding the Cuban reactor '

Afr. Robinson: Frankly, it ha.s ucon a vacillating policy, unclear in its intentions. On the one hand Department of Stale press releases have indicated that it is prepared to

see these reactors come on-line if our attempts to stop the project are unsuccess

ful. The Administration seems content with the notion that if this deal is going to be completed over American objections, that it

be made safe, that is, meet all of the inter national safety standards. There is even an implication that we would assist that safety

process.

On the other hand, President Clinton has shown sensitivity to the concerns of Cuban

Roger W. Robinson, Jr., president of RWR Inc., a Washington-based consult ing firm, and formerly Senior Director for

International Economic Affairs at the National Security Council under President Reagan.

Americans and the Florida political struc ture, if you will, in the course of these upcoming elections. So it is, as usual,

unclear where the Clinton Adminl.stration stands, but I think it is fair to say that it has not been sufficiently forceful with Moscow and Americas allies who are prospective suppliers to this deal. They have made, as they put it, demarches, or approaches, to these respective suppliers, but to date they seem to be accepting a brush-off with a good degree of acquiescence.

That is not, fortunately, the view in Congress. The Congress is absolutely dedi cated to stopping this project on a bipartisan

basis. As was stated several times in the August I hearings, this is not an anti-Castro thing, this is an American security thing. It is not Just the Cuban American community that shares this concern, and we can get into why there is such a broad-based alarm going off in this country when we talk about the safety features and what would happen

when—not if—an inevitable accident takes place.

Crusade: That Is linked with my next question. Why do you consid

er the future Cuban nuclear reac tor a new Chernobyl?

Mr. Robinson: First we have to look at the design of the reactors. These are VVER 440 reactors. They are water-cooled and are the same type that were shut down in East Germany immediately after reunification, NBC News reported that there was a nearmeltdown in one of those reactors. They are fundamentally unsafe, poorly designed. They have never tried to build a VVER 440 reactor in tropical conditions, with the cor rosive air and the seismic activity being far more pronounced than elsewhere. The pro ject is irretrievably flawed at this stage.

There is no way it can be made safe or com pleted in a way that would avoid the likeli hood of a major accident affecting the

American mainland.

Why is this? Some 60% of the Sovietsupplied materials were defective, including valves in the emergency cooling system and other vita! components. We have talked about exposure to the elements of these sen sitive pieces of reactor equipment. We have

a containment dome that cannot withstand overpressures associated with a prospective accident. The upper portion of the domes are designed to handle only 7 pounds per square inch, whereas all American reactors are required to withstand 50 psi. There were some 5000 welds in this particular reactor to date. Some 15% of those welds join pipes in the auxiliary pumping .system, the con tainment dome, the spent-fuel cooling sys tem. The.se welds were X-rayed by the

Cuban nuclear scientists and workers on

site and were found to be defective because of air pockets, bad soldering, heat damage, other problems. One defective weld in the

United States would shut down a reactor instantly until it was repaired—if it ever opened again.

Well, there is no way to fix this particu lar problem. Cuban intelligence destroyed the X-rays that showed where the defective welds were located. They erased the serial numbers. Frankly, it would be a national embarrassment to fi nd shoddy construction of this magnitude. So they erased any possi bility of fixing this problem through the tra ditional nuclear safeguards that we know today.We have not even di.scussed that there is no safety culture in Cuba, no training of nuclear operators, no simulators that repli cate what we are looking at here from a

management point of view, not to mention again that the area in which the project is being constructed is seismically active.

So. there is a series of reasons—any one of which would immediately halt construc tion in the United States—that taken togeth er demonstrate that there is only one viable

.solution here: that this reactor must be torn down to the ground and rebuilt, presumably by an American contractor, in a postCastro—hopefully in a post-Castro—Cuba in a way that tiieets all of the rigorous safe ty standards of the United States.

Crusade: Environmental organiza tions like Greenpeace and World Watch usually mobilize their activ ities to oppose the building of nuclear reactors. Why are they so quiet regarding Cuba's nuclear project? Is there not some danger to the ecosystem involved in this project?

Mr. Robinson: This project is an ronmental catastrophe waiting to hapj-i.ii. These are arguably going to be the most dangerous reactors in the world today; because of the defects, arguably even more dangerous than the graphite reactors of the Chernobyl variety. In the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the General Accounting Office, among defectors from Cuba who have been working on this deal, and in our own Dep;ulment of Energy there is a consensus that it is not a question of if but when, that an accident is probable. You see this in virtually all the reports out on this subject.

First we should discuss what this means.