Russia's Lethal Hot Potatoes

IT WAS NOT, OFFICIALS HASTENED TO SAY, ANOTHER Chernobyl. But radiation leaks from an exploding uranium tank at the Tomsk-7 chemical plant in western Siberia did constitute the most serious nuclear accident since the 1986 Ukrainian reactor fire that spewed deadly radiation over Russia, Belarus and much of Western Europe, killing hundreds. Minor pollution and no casualties were reported at Tomsk-7, which lies 1,800 miles east of Moscow and produced, until recently, lethal plutonium for nuclear weapons. Environmental groups, which claim that the Tomsk incident was more serious than reported and blame it on slack safety standards, are calling for Russia to stop producing plutonium altogether. President Boris Yeltsin has called instead for unspecified stronger controls and the inspection of all nuclear facilities by Dec. 1.

Breaking up a nuclear superpower is hard to do. Russian and American scientists think they have a way to put Russia's plutonium to good use, by jointly building a $1.5 billion reactor to produce electricity. The device would be partly fueled from Moscow's huge stockpile of scrapped nuclear warheads. But some officers at a Moscow air-defense unit came up with their own way to enhance disarmament: they were stealing gold and platinum from the circuit boards of missiles and selling it. A captain and two junior sergeants netted $28,000 worth of precious metals before being arrested.