WikiLeaks: US Worried About Safety of Romanian Nuclear Plant

ATHENS, Greece -- As Japan struggles with the crisis at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, leaked U.S. diplomatic cables have focused a spotlight on another potential hot spot: the Cernavoda plant in Romania.

Documents provided to Romanian media this week by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks indicate that U.S. officials are concerned about Romania's ability to cope with an accident at the facility. The cables, published Monday in the Jurnalul National newspaper, cast doubts on assurances made by the government in Bucharest that the Cernavoda plant has been operating with adequate safeguards in place.

Jurnalul National is a media partner of the Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism, which recently signed an agreement with WikiLeaks for publication of more than 1,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables about Romania.

"There are only seven members of a team, and they train only once a month to handle emergencies," the U.S. cable dated Jan. 28, 2009, read. "That's too few to take care of a leak."

For a continent riveted by the ongoing nuclear emergency in Japan and mindful of the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, the warning is not being taken lightly. Here in the Greek capital, the daily newspaper Ta Nea ran a banner headline saying, "S.O.S. The Fukushima of the Balkans."

To have direct access to water for cooling, Cernavoda was built along the Danube River, about 100 miles east of Bucharest, the densely populated capital. It began operating in 1996 and provides about 20 percent of Romania's electricity needs. A second unit went on line in 2007.

Officials at Cernavoda insist the plant is capable of withstanding stress tests and a powerful earthquake.

In nuclear-free Greece, just 250 miles south of Cernavoda, experts called for caution and calm.

"Even if there is a fallout, we are well outside the immediate contamination zone," Andonis Andonopoulos, a nuclear scientist at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in northern Greece, told the Athens-based Skai television network.

From 1986 to 2000, more than 350,000 people were evacuated and resettled from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, the areas most severely contaminated by the Chernobyl accident.

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About 60 percent of the fallout landed in Belarus, but plumes of radioactive particles drifted over large parts of Eastern and Western Europe, resulting in an estimated 4,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

Since the Fukushima accident, Greece, Germany, Luxembourg and Poland have taken the lead in advocating comprehensive stress tests for nuclear reactors.

Earlier this month, Greek President Karolos Papoulias called on the European Union to block Turkish plans to build a nuclear power plant along a dangerous fault line. "It just doesn't make any sense," he said. "It's like an accident waiting to happen on Europe's doorstep."