I'm not sure how exactly the Soviet autoloader worked, but the US Army declined to add one because of the maintenance of an additional 80-100 parts.
From the cycle time of the Iraqi Soviet built tanks, 20-30 seconds, iirc, it didn't give them any advantage in a real combat situation.
One of my co-workers used to be a loader, and yes, there's NO clearance during the recoil of the main gun. There's a safety gate, however my co-worker told me that it's not used because it gets in the way. He said that it was a very ugly way to find ones self in the hospital with numerous broken bones, and an occassional medical discharge.
He also told me of the time there was a mixup in the round loaded in the main gun, and the calibration switch on the gun sight during a live fire exercise... He told me that the round overshot the target by about 5 miles.
Mark