Let me rephrase a recently deleted question. (Sorry about that Rick. I had a feeling I was off-topic.)

Does anyone know if Russian or Chinese power plants use U.S. technology, such as the IBM PDP-11 or other systems sold by American computer vendors?

If Russian companies built the equipment that runs their power plants, does anyone know if they were built with the same technology as U.S. plants?

Sorry if this is off-topic again. Does this forum include questions about international electric utilities?

-- Anonymous, December 20, 1998

Answers

I partly found an answer to my question in a post to this forum. The link below states that east bloc reactors are unstable in general, but doesn't mention anything about Y2K problems.

http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1993/ja93/ja93Halverson.html

So is it an accurate assumption that Y2K will not affect these reactors, at least not directly? The article is a little old. Maybe back in 1993 nobody was too interested in whether those east bloc reactors had a Y2K problem so they neglected to research it. Does anyone out there know if east bloc reactors use digital equipment in their safety systems?

-- Anonymous, December 20, 1998

Great rephrase of the question, Adi :-)

Much of the computerized equipment in use in the ex-eastern bloc countries is indeed reverse engineered from western hardware and software. The problem is, no one knows how much of it is in use - or how the use of these "knock off" programs and equipment are implemented in the power and/or defense industries of these countries.

For the most part, the infrastructure in these countries is less automated than western counterparts. But that doesn't mean that computers, integrated circuitry, and complex control systems aren't being used. It's a matter of degree. Some international agencies are trying to pin this down a bit closer right now, but Russia is already on record as saying they won't be able to get everything before it fails. The primary Y2k contingency plan in Russia (and the independent republics) seems to be "fix on failure".

It's kind of hard for a government to be forward thinking about this type of thing when they can't pay their workers, and simply struggle to get food to market for it's citzens to eat.

-- Anonymous, December 20, 1998

Isn't it the case that in the countries of the former USSR and Warsaw Pact, in addition to nuclear power plants, there are many power plants burning fossil fuel ?

-- Anonymous, December 31, 1998