KIEV (Reuters) - The Chernobyl nuclear power station is likely to be affected by the ``millennium bug'' but officials said Friday there was still enough time to fix the computer problem.

Chernobyl, site of the world's worst civil nuclear disaster, has aging Soviet-era reactors. Nuclear experts are worried that computer problems linked to the year 2000 could cause trouble for such plants throughout the former Soviet Union.

``We have already started working on this problem and are sure that Chernobyl will be ready to come into the year 2000,'' Yury Neretin, Chernobyl's deputy chief engineer, told a news conference.

Earlier this year, local nuclear officials said the bug would not affect the ex-Soviet state's nuclear plants because of their unsophisticated computer equipment, but Neretin said this was incorrect.

``We understand the importance of this problem and have to say that it will affect our station,'' he said.

The bug stems from the once common practice of using only two digits for recording the year in computer program dates, like 99 for 1999. That shortcut has the potential, when dates change in 2000, to confuse computers, causing them to reject data or to crash.

Neretin said the problem could threaten only secondary computer programs at Chernobyl, not linked directly with the electricity production or operating a nuclear reactor.

It was 13 years ago this month that Chernobyl exploded, spewing a cloud of poisonous radioactive dust over Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and part of Western Europe.

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-- new (news@hound.dog), April 24, 1999

Answers

Gee....I hope that little ole' war doesn't throw them off schedule or anything like that.....

Mr. K
***remembers when the Soviet response several days after the Chernobyl accident was ....Vell, ve didn't alert other countries...because..it VAS VEEKEND....yah, yah, vas Veekend!!!***

So, just remember, they usually "close the government on da veekend, even in nuclear meltdown situations.... sheesh

-- Mr. Kennedy (here@home.tonight), April 24, 1999.