West Germany: Too Close A Call

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For more than a decade, West German environmentalists have warned of a major nuclear disaster if, for example, a plane were to crash into an atomic plant. Aware of the fact that more NATO air maneuvers take place in their skies than in those of any other alliance partner, West Germans had more cause than ever to fear the unthinkable last week. A French air force Mirage F1 fighter based in Strasbourg and flying in an exercise above southern Germany crashed and exploded in a wooded area about a mile from two nuclear power plants outside the village of Reichersdorf, 50 miles northeast of Munich.

While experts in reactor safety insisted that the country's nuclear plants could withstand such a crash without radiation leakage, Hubert Weinzierl, chairman of West Germany's leading environmentalist group, claimed otherwise. Said he: "We missed a nuclear holocaust by the skin of our teeth."