Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!seismo!mcvax!ukc!cstvax!db
From: db@cstvax.UUCP (Dave Berry)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Russian Nuclear Accident: High Tech Transfer
Message-ID: <110@cstvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-May-86 11:54:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: cstvax.110
Posted: Fri May  9 11:54:53 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 14-May-86 01:22:46 EDT
References: <228@scbhq.UUCP>
Reply-To: db@cstvax.UUCP (Dave Berry)
Organization: Comp. Sc., Edinburgh Univ., Scotland
Lines: 23

Over the past year or so there has been a fair bit of disquiet in the
British computing press about COCOM restrictions on export of "sensitive"
technological material to the Eastern Bloc.  People have been jailed for
selling PDP-11's to Hungary, and so forth.  Some editorials have suggested
that th USA is using these rules to its own commercial gain.

Also, a year or two ago the USA tried to stop European companies from
working on the Siberian gas pipeline, which tranfers gas from the Siberian
gas-fields to where it is needed in the Western USSR.

Speculation - if the USSR was more technologically sophisticated, the
effects of the Chernobyl accident would be reduced.  Maybe we should
relax some of the COCOM rules.

This is not to say that a more open system than the USSR would also
encourage safer reactor designs, and that this might be more important.
Nor is it to imply that there is such a thing as a "completely safe"
nuclear power station.

Comments, anyone?
-- 
	Dave Berry. CS postgrad, Univ. of Edinburgh		
					...mcvax!ukc!cstvax!db