Arguments by F. Girfanov, a petroleum engineer from Ufa, that the U.S.S.R. should rely almost entirely on its own technology and do without imported equipment is paradoxical in view of recent Soviet industrial accident reports.
About the same time Girfanov's letter decrying foreign assistance appeared in the Moscow newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya, major explosions and fires occurred in a phenol-acetone unit at one of Ufa's petrochemical plants. More than 100 persons were hospitalized, and the phenol content in a nearby river was measured at 37,500 times the acceptable limit, Moscow News reported.
The newspaper said renovation of Ufa's petrochemical plants is urgently required "because 70% of the equipment is worn out, unreliable, and ecologically dangerous."
Another serious accident occurred at an Ufa petrochemical plant last April.
The Baskhir Autonomous Republic, of which Ufa is capital, has 15 chemical and petrochemical plants and refineries. Equipment at these facilities "is as worn out as it can be-more than 90%," Pravda newspaper reported.
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