'Cover-up at nuclear plants'

BONN (Reuter) - Germany's Environment Minister, Klaus Topfer, said he had ordered an investigation into allegations that safety inquiries at three German nuclear power plants had been manipulated. Calls for an investigation intensified at the weekend when two magazines said there had been a cover-up in safety tests at the Brunsbuttel, Krummel and Biblis reactors in the 1980s.

Questions were raised in parliament after inspectors said last week that up to 130 cracks, some 6in long, had been found in the seals in the water cooling system at the Brunsbuttel plant near Hamburg. The weekly Focus said safety inspectors had been told in the 1980s not to find too many faults in the plant, which has been idle since August.