MEDIA RELEASE Jj. AUSTRALIA ,ÃÂ

THE SENATE P.R NO. 86/99

CANBERRA  1 MAY 1986

SANDERS SAYS CHERNOBYL WAS INEVITABLE

Senator Norm Sanders, Australian Democrat spokesperson on Nuclear  Issues today said that while the world was shocked over the  disasterous melt down of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, such a  disaster somewhere, indeed anywhere in the world, was predibted  years ago by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission itself.

CARL J. HOCEWAR - Formerly a main AEC expert on safety who quit  in protest in 1974 "The attitude was not let's see if  this thing works, but let's find a way to O.K. it.1  '

EDWARD TELLER - father of H bomb. 1  Breeder reactors are too  dangerous to contemplate.

DAVID LILIENTHAL - First Chairman AEC, 1946, said 1969: Once a  bright hope shared by all mankind, the rash

proliferation of atomic power plants has become one of  the ugliest clouds overhanging America.'

Senator Sanders said "The U.S. A.E.C. suppressed an internal  document called the WASH 740 Reactor Study Update commissioned in  1964. This study concluded that in a reactor melt down 45,000  people would be killed, 100,000 injured,  and $17 billion damage  would be caused."

" The prediction was so horrendous that the world insurance community refused to cover anything but a fraction of the total  cost of a nuclear disaster. The Price-Anderson Act was passed in  the U.S. to limit liability. Not only was liability limited, but

the U.S. Government had to put up the majority of the money.

"Even in Australia (as everywhere else in the world) there is a  nuclear exclusion clause in every insurance policy. ’  Ã¢ÂÂ   '  '  t

"The claim by the Government that Australia has a moral and legal  obligation under the NPT to sell uranium for nuclear power production is dangerously absurd. There is a higher moral obligation to preserve human life which is totally incompatible  with any form of nuclear activity. Australia must immediately  stop this nuclear double-speak and cease exporting uranium.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:  SENATOR NORM SANDERS  HELENE TEICHMANN 062 72 7690

062 72 7556

