Greenpeace demands Mexican nuclear security review
Date: 07-Jan-00
Country: MEXICO
Alejandro Calvillo, director of Greenpeace Mexico, told reporters the
group had obtained a copy of a report by the World Association of
Nuclear Operators that gives Laguna Verde its lowest security grade, a
five on a one-to-five scale.
He said the report cited an accident at the plant on Oct. 12, 1999, when
one reactor lost water, and another in late 1998, when a technician
arrived drunk at the control room and dropped a nuclear fuel rod when he
was moving rods with a crane.
"It's incredible what is going on.... There's no doubt. Homer Simpson is
managing the Laguna Verde plant," Calvillo said, referring to the
hapless U.S. cartoon character who works in the control room of a
nuclear power plant.
Calvillo said Mexican nuclear authorities had denied the technician was
drunk but acknowledged he walked like a drunk because of a health
problem.
Behind Calvillo, who stood on the steps of the Federal Electricity
Commission building in Mexico City, five white-jumpsuited Greenpeace
activists unfurled a banner reading "Failing grade in safety. Laguna
Verde equals nuclear threat."
Laguna Verde, in the Gulf of Mexico state of Veracruz, began operations
in 1989 and generated 3.67 percent of Mexico's electric power during the
third quarter of 1999, the latest period for which data are available.
A spokesman for the electricity commission, which administers the plant,
told Reuters: "It's one of the safest plants in the world. Its security
systems have received various recognitions."
Greenpeace blasted Mexico's Congress for not heeding the environmental
group's April 1999 call for an independent investigation into safety
issues at Laguna Verde.
Calvillo said the water leakage in October, which occurred after the
last Greenpeace call for an investigation, could have caused nuclear
fusion at the reactor and could have generated an accident as serious as
that in Chernobyl in 1986, the world's worst nuclear power plant
incident.
"We ask ourselves why the government is waiting to carry out an
independent technical audit. An accident? Then it would be too late,"
Calvillo said.
