SCIENTIST ALLAYS FEARS ABOUT CHERNOBYL POLLUTION
Radioactive contamination of water
supplies around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant will not
reach danger levels when the winter snowfall starts to melt, a
Soviet scientist was quoted as saying at the weekend.
    Konstantin Sytnik, vice-president of the Ukrainian Academy
of Sciences, said there had been fears that melted snow
containing radioactive particles might flow into main water
supplies.
    But he told the Communist Party newspaper Pravda that
contamination of snow around the plant was within safety levels
and some of it had already been absorbed into the soil.
    Snowfall this winter had been greater than usual and a
certain increase in the amount of radiation in the water was
inevitable. But contamination would be within the permissible
limits, Sytnik said.
    The banks of the river Pripyat, which flows near the plant,
had been reinforced to prevent it bursting its banks when the
thaw began this spring, he added.
    About 135,000 people were evacuated and 31 were killed
after an explosion and fire at Chernobyl last April 26. A
concrete wall was built last summer to prevent contamination of
the Pripyat by radioactive ground water.
    Meanwhile, a Ukrainian official was quoted as saying today
that preparations were under way in the Ukraine to evacuate
towns and villages before there was heavy flooding after higher
than usual snowfall this winter.
    V. Martynenko, head of a flood commission in the Donbass
area of the Ukraine, told Pravda preparations had begun for the
evacuation of about 112,000 people in the Donbass in the south
of the republic. About 190 towns and villages and 12,000 homes
could be flooded when snow -- falls of which had been six times
higher than usual in some areas -- started to thaw. Cattle had
already been moved from some parts, they said.
 REUTER
