Word: accidental
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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The accident occurred around 3:30 p.m. when the heavy mechanical shovel cut the three-inch underground telephone cable. Construction workers are building two Harvard-owned apartment structures on the DeWolfe St. site.
But some Soviet politicians and scientists now claim that a cover-up is still going on. They charge that 1) the accident released at least 20 times more radiation than the government has admitted, 2) Communist officials failed to evacuate nearby towns and cities right away, although they knew of...
Another legislator, Yuri Shcherbak, notes that the decision to evacuate residents of the town of Chernobyl, which is just 14 km (9 miles) from the plant, was not made until May 2, six days after the accident. By April 30, he says, radiation in nearby Kiev (pop. 2.6 million) had...
The mismanagement, moreover, started long before the Chernobyl accident itself, claims Shcherbak. The reactor's safety system, approved by former Academy of Sciences head Aleksandrov, had design flaws, and, says Shcherbak, a near accident at a similar reactor in 1976 was hushed up. Most disturbing is the contention that safety...
At least one accusation -- that the accident released 1 billion or more curies of radiation, rather than the reported figure of 50 million to 80 million -- is denied by the authorities. Says Nikolai Steinberg, former chief engineer of the Chernobyl reactor and now deputy chairman of the State Committee on...