It should make you feel better to know that the Laguna Verde Plant fell under the direction of the NRC. There must have been a formal relationship between our two governments requiring the Mexican's to allow the NRC to oversee the operation. Otherwise no fuel delivery..no doubt. It was entirely manned by American Contractors and big subcontractors. The problems I saw revolved around less than American quality in some items purchased locally from Mexican manufacturers say...metal fabricators; a less than knowledgeable work force; and large orders placed based on graft. However, bearing all that in mind, the engineers, designers, QC, QA and alike were American and were complying to U.S. NRC code.

-- Anonymous, December 19, 1998

Answers

I would strongly suspect that in the face of Y2K, Mexican nuclear regulators will follow any lead of the NRC in not allowing plant operations during the Y2K "peak problem" times. Much the same for Canada, too. The respective nuclear agencies do share common safety philosophies.

The safety philosophies of other nuclear countries is where I find cause for alarm. Where safety takes the back seat to political and economic issues. Nuclear power plants that concern me are the ones in countries which are near totally dependent on imported oil and nuclear power. Former eastern bloc countries come to mind first. Among western nations, Japan and France come to mind most prominently. Expect these two western nuclear stalwarts to, both with relatively large numbers of nuclear power plants to keep reactors hot as Y2K occurs.

The French will keep their nuclear plants operating and claim their safety systems will prevent disaster. Of course modern, French- designed systems in any industry emphasize "intelligent systems" over operator intervention. Results with their Airbus automated flight control systems overriding pilot's emergency commands and causing aircraft accidents makes me shudder to think of a Y2K malfunctioning system overriding French nuclear operators at a critical moment.

Japan will be forced to keep its nuclear plants on-line due to the unthinkable result of shutting down the nation. Unfortunately the other unthinkable, one or more serious nuclear incidents is possible. And given the past record of Japan's nuclear operators I don't see where serious consideration will be given to possible unforseen circumstances before the path of continued operation is committed to. Look for really bad news from Japan, if nuclear firms let the news out. Remember how much prodding and time was involved before the near- meltdowns and major coolant leaks were finally acknowledged?

To get back to the original point. Mexico isn't the major Y2K nuclear concern, just the closest. I fully expect that the clouds that we don't want blwing overhead will come from somebody else's nuclear problems and that Mexican nuclear power plants will sit out Y2K the same as US and Canadian plantslikely will.

WW

-- Anonymous, December 24, 1998

I think you are right about the Eastern Block countries being in worse shape than Mexico. At the site for "Hungary" www.meh.hu/ I read that 40% of their electrical power comes from the PAKS Nuclear Plant in Russia. Overall, they import 50% of their power from other countries. Importing from Russia would really worry me.

-- Anonymous, December 25, 1998