I'm a reporter in Toledo, Ohio for an Internet news magazine doing a story on Y2K issues in nuclear power plants. Earlier I posted a question about what utility company PR types will tell you about their Y2K preparations. Take a look at the quotes I got from Richard Wilkins, spokesman for First Energy Corp. in Ohio, which operates the Davis Besse nuclear power plant, just east of Toledo, which will undergo a Y2K audit from the NRC later this month --

"The Year 2000 issue isn't as onerous as a lot of people thought it might be at first."

"This is inherent in older equipment, and a lot of our equipment is state-of-the-art, and that takes care of the problem."

"We have been working on this for some time, and we don't see anything that will cause us a problem in the year 2000."

"We've completed inventory and preliminary assessment and found nothing that would effect plant operations." "Basically, the approach we're taking is to use guidelines from the NEI, and using than plan, tailored to our specific needs, plus a contingency plan that will help us deal with any situations that might arise."

"A lot of people assumed that everything would be effected by Y2K, but we have upgraded a lot of equipment, and what we have ordered takes care of that."

"We think we're in pretty good shape, but we're going at this in a very systematic way, and we're pretty far down the list now. We've either fixed it, or know what the problem is."

Any of you experts out there care to comment on whether this seems a little too optimistic or is it possible that this plant will sail into the new millenium with nary a Y2K problem?

-- Anonymous, October 01, 1998

Answers

As far as state of the art equipment goes, Yesterday I tested a Pentium 166 clone for Year 2000 compliance, IT FAILED! State of the Art does not always mean compliant.

-- Anonymous, October 21, 1998

Amen, Steve Watson! I know a couple of consultants (working on systems upgrades in manufacturing companies) who, when in conversation about Y2K with the in-house IT people, were told that the "PC's are all less than two years old, so they're fine." Even though the PC's were outside the consultants area, they offered to do some quick diagnostics "just to make sure". Thirty percent of the PC's were noncompliant, including some that were only 6 months old. Assuming that new equipment has no date problems simply because it was recently purchased is asking for trouble.

-- Anonymous, October 21, 1998