End All Atomic Testing, Soviet Minister Pleads : UCI speech: The minister for environmental protection tells scientists at a conference that nuclear experiments are ‘criminal activity’ that must stop to prevent genetic damage.

IRVINE —  The Soviet Union’s minister for environmental protection made an impassioned plea at UC Irvine on Thursday for an end to all nuclear testing, calling it “criminal activity” that must be stopped to prevent genetic damage to future generations.

“Excuse me for putting it this way, but we are all members of the same Mafia,” Nikolay N. Vorontsov told 100 Soviet, Chinese and U.S. scientists gathered on campus for a three-day conference held by the university’s Global Peace and Conflict Studies Center on the environmental consequences of nuclear development.

Vorontsov called on the scientists to help influence their own governments and those of France, Britain and India to forswear further nuclear testing, saying that unless everyone stops, no one will.

“We have no right to spend money on this, and we have no right to do this at the expense of human life,” said the 57-year-old geneticist, who reluctantly accepted the post of Soviet environmental protection chief in August, 1989. He is only the second person to hold that position, and is also the first non-Communist named to the Cabinet of Ministers.

“We have no right . . . to encourage other countries to begin developing nuclear weapons. But that is exactly what we do,” he said to rousing applause from the visiting scientists, UCI professors and 400 of Orange County’s top high school students attending his keynote address at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Vorontsov’s call for a universal ban on nuclear testing is in line with official Soviet policy. But the U.S. government has insisted that some testing is needed as long as nuclear weapons are required for deterrence. Last spring, both nations signed protocols for two treaties limiting underground nuclear tests for military and non-military purposes.

But Vorontsov’s speech reflects widespread anti-nuclear sentiment among Soviet scientists and the intelligentsia that has emerged with glasnost. As early as the 1950s, the scientist wrote articles in Soviet publications questioning the environmental impact of nuclear testing.

While he agreed that nuclear power plant disasters such as Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island and the long-hushed 1957 reactor accident at Kyshtem in the Central Urals have released far more radioactive fallout than do current underground tests, Vorontsov noted that those were accidents, not deliberate government actions.

“Because they are deliberate, they are therefore criminal,” he said.

The tall scientist-turned-bureaucrat is on a whirlwind U.S. trip. He stopped in Irvine--a city that has proclaimed itself a nuclear-free zone--for just 2 1/2 days to meet with scientists and give the keynote address for the conference, which was largely underwritten by the Irvine Co.

At noon Thursday, he left for Stanford University in Palo Alto, where he delivered a message from Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the university’s 100th anniversary fete.

The minister’s appearance was something of a coup and a measure of the close relationship that UCI professor John Whitely and the peace studies group have developed with Soviet scientists in the last decade.

Vorontsov was particularly delighted to meet with fellow evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala and other professors conducting similar research--something the scientist has little time for now that he works at the ministry 12 hours a day, six days a week.

In an interview, Vorontsov spoke of the challenges his nation faces as it struggles with catastrophic air, water and ground pollution.

There is the Aral Sea, whose coastline has shrunk 40 miles in the last decade as water is diverted from feeder rivers to irrigate nearby cotton crops in the Soviet Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan. As it recedes, the polluted sea leaves behind a desert of pesticide- and salt-laden sand that is carried east by prevailing winds.

Vorontsov said the region now has the highest mortality rate in all of Central Asia.

“People don’t have clean water for drinking or clean water for growing their food,” he said.

The especially high infant death rate is thought to be linked with mothers’ breast milk, which has been found to carry high concentrations of pesticides, he said.

Lake Baikal, one of the world’s largest freshwater lakes, is polluted because of a paper-processing plant and failure to observe government-ordered safeguards. Serious air pollution problems have been reported in more than 100 Soviet cities. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, which spewed radioactive dust across much of northwestern Europe, has left a deadly legacy that cannot be cleaned.

Perhaps the biggest environmental problem of all is information--or the lack of it.

“We have a Russian saying about pushing the illness into the corner so no one sees it,” Vorontsov said. “There are two ways of treating an illness: to surgically remove it, or to bandage it so no one will see it. We used the bandage method. . . .

“Our children were taught that the most polluted city in the world was Los Angeles. But we had more polluted cities in our own country,” he said.

Talk of environmental problems was suppressed and surfaced only in 1980, when a Soviet dissident’s chronicle about them was published. But because of secrecy, and the emphasis on production above all else, today there is little data to work with.

For that reason, Vorontsov said, 200 scientists working for his ministry are trying to document the extent of problems and devise solutions for them.

Just a few years ago, the Ministry for Environmental Protection estimated that it would take the equivalent of about $350 billion to reverse the known ecological disasters, retrofit factories and power plants to prevent new contamination and begin setting aside land as preserves, he said.

Vorontsov, the father of two children, shares his research work with his wife, Elena. He is an unlikely bureaucrat. In fact, he tried to turn down the job, saying he is not qualified to be a minister.

Vorontsov had recommended several other top scientists for the post when he wrote a letter to the former Soviet premier in 1989, urging him to fill the vacant environmental post. When the premier tapped Vorontsov, he thought the reminder that he is not a member of the Communist Party would be enough for disqualification.

That did not work, so next he insisted that he has no administrative skills, but the premier pointed to the outline in Vorontsov’s letter for whoever would take the post.

Today he jokes about being the first non-Communist in his position: “Somebody has to be, and let’s hope I’m not the last.”

He remains hopeful that the current political and economic Soviet crisis will not overwhelm the nation’s environmental agenda. For what is at stake, he said, is the future.

“I think I know what has to be done,” Vorontsov said, his fingers raking his already-tousled hair. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to succeed. But we are trying.”