Monday August 3, 1998 4:51 am Eastern Time

Chernobyl reactor shut down by transformer problem

KIEV, Aug 3 (Reuters) - The last remaining reactor at Ukraine's
Chernobyl nuclear power plant shut down automatically on Sunday after
the safety system detected a malfunction in a transformer, a plant
official said on Monday, adding that no radiation was released.

``The station's safety system detected a malfunction in the block's
transformer and automatically shut down the third reactor,'' duty
engineer Olexander Yelchishchev told Reuters by telephone from
Chernobyl, scene of the world's worst civil nuclear accident in 1986.

The third reactor is the last of four original reactors still
operating after reactor Number 4 exploded in April, 1986, spewing a
poisonous radioactive cloud over Europe and contaminating large areas
of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

Yelchishchev said the station was looking into the incident, which he
said could have been caused either by a short circuit in a local
electric line or a mistaken diagnosis by the safety system.

He said the station, which has suffered a number of minor problems
since the 1986 explosion and which was visited by U.S. Vice President
Al Gore just a week ago, planned to restart the reactor on Friday.

Ukraine has promised to close the stricken plant by 2000, but is
looking for about $1.2 billion from the West to fund the closure and
build new stations to replace lost capacity.

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