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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 violations are still going on. Budko and journalist Vladimir Kolinko, for example, say that food grown in contaminated soil is still being distributed to children, among others. And last week Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Moscow daily, published a story by Vladimir Lipsky, president of the Byelorussian branch of the Soviet Children's Fund, charging that infant disease is on the rise and that officials have authorized construction of 43 kindergartens in affected areas.
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 the Safety of Nuclear Industry: "We're not the only ones who came up with that figure. International scientists were involved as well." U.S. experts support the lower estimate. Nonetheless, Yablokov and other deputies have demanded that the Chernobyl installation, which is still operating, be closed down completely.
The Soviets who are complaining have a clear political bias. Virtually all of their targets are thought to be enemies of Mikhail Gorbachev's program of restructuring society, while the accusers are mostly progressives. If Gorbachev wants to remove accused officials from their posts, the growing scandal could make it easy to do so.