Nuclear Decisions in Ukraine : Going one way on tactical weapons and another on nuclear power plants

Ukraine is a nuclear power. It is also nuclear-powered. On both of those counts, the world has reason to worry about this new state in an old nation.

Last week, progress was made on the first count. Leonid Kravchuk, Ukraine’s president, met in Washington with President Bush. He assured Bush that although Ukraine had not yet shipped all its short-range nuclear arms to Russia for dismantling, it would do so by July 1. An earlier report from the Commonwealth of Independent States said that the weapons had already been shipped. On Friday, Kravchuk corrected himself and said that that earlier report was correct.

Confused? The situation itself is confusing.

Ukraine is eager for good relations with the West and, above all, with the United States, but it also fears Russia, its ancient foe and recent ruler, and has clung to its independent nuclear deterrent on more or less the same grounds that Britain and France invoke.

More than we sometimes realize, Ukraine has been asked to run a great risk in the interest of world peace and its own prosperity. Though lost in the blare of Los Angeles’ recent violence, Ukraine’s decision to run that risk is cause for rejoicing.

Emotions of a different sort are aroused by a report in the Financial Times that Ukraine may restart two of the four shut-down nuclear reactors at Chernobyl, near its capital city, Kiev.

Since the catastrophic meltdown of one of the reactors in 1986, all four have been closed. All four are scheduled to be shut down permanently at the end of 1993. But Carlo Ripa de Meana, the European Community’s environmental commissioner, reports that Ukrainian authorities are considering restarting the two reactors they “consider in relatively good shape.”

To put it mildly, we consider the risk of the restart too great to run.

Grass fires and high winds in Ukraine recently created, yet again, severe risk--both inside and outside Ukraine--as radioactive dust from the 1986 accident was carried into the atmosphere.

Safety, like peace, has a price. Europe and America alike hope Ukraine will find the will to pay it.