A VIETNAMESE WORKER AT DALAT'S ATOMIC RESEARCH CENTRE, 1997-03-28 (photo)

TO BE RELEASED WITH STORY BC-NUCLEAR-VIETNAM - A worker is dwarfed by a rusting U.S.-built Buck Rogers-style reactor at Vietnam's Atomic Research Centre, containing the deadly plutonium left by the U.S. in March 1975 following the end of the war. Earlier this year Washington officials unveiled classified documents detailing a bungled U.S. covert operation where two sectret operatives, sent to Dalat as South Vietnam fell, mistook a grey cannister containing a relatively harmless alloy of polonium and beryllium for the plutonium. Picture taken March 17. VIETNAM NUCLEAR