I just looked at the web site for a nuclear plant located just outside of New Orleans. Their status doesn't look good to me: They just finished the ASSESSMENT phase in December of 1998. Their progress charts show the following:

SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS:

MISSION CRITICAL SYSTEMS: 13 ( 2 have been remediated) IMPORTANT SYSTEMS: 4 ( 0 have been remediated) EMBEDDED:

MISSION CRITICAL SYSTEMS: 33 (9 remediated) IMPORTANT SYSTEMS: 7 (0 remediated)

Would any of you power experts like to comment on this? Is this good, bad or somewhere in between?

-- Scarlett (creolady@aol.com), May 19, 1999

Answers

Scarlett, Call up the nuclear plant and ask to speak with public relations and get their responses (for starters). Also, the NRC often (or maybe always) has inspectors on site. Call them and ask the same questions. There are knowledgeable people on this forum who can point you in the right direction, but it helps to know the company's explantation.

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), May 19, 1999.

I know of a guy who works at a nuclear plant near New Orleans. Last I heard he said "everything is OK." Sounds like they may have started in late 1997. Noticed he seemed to dismiss Y2K as fluff, then as time went on he started taking it more seriously. Can't ask him again -- the subject is taboo. Polite company has been advised it is off-limit topic. And this bizarre edict from a web designer puter person. Oh well, it isn't like the weeples did not have a chance to "see and hear" ...

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-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), May 19, 1999.

Call the River Bend people (you'll need to ask for press/public relations) yourself. Listen to them, write your concerns down, then call the NRC office there if you remain worried.

They (River Bend) are up about 25 miles north of Baton Rouge, itself 60 miles north of New Orleans. (I assume that is what you mean by "close".) To drive up, take the old plantation road from Baton Rouge past the Civil War battlefield a few miles. It's north of the plantation "tourist" town, but the eats there in town are great.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), May 19, 1999.

If you read the second NERC report you'll note that some portions of the electric power industry has a somewhat bizarre definition of the word assessment.

If they assess everything by 2/98, begin remediation on 4/98, finish the first remediated item on 8/98, they then re-assess that remediated item. Ie., with this definition you might be 100% assessed on 2/98, 90% assessed on 8/98, 100% again on 9/98, and down to 80% assessment on 11/98 as more items get finished, back up to 90% on 12/98, hit 100% again on 1/99, and then back down to 90% on 2/99 as something else gets remediated. I do not know if this applies to this particular power plant.

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@earthlink.net), May 19, 1999.

I've seen that effect too - the "nuclear" industry is not following the usual definition of assessment many people are used to.

If "assessment" is considered one independent stage, completed before remediation begins, then you'd be very confused reading a report from the nuclear industry - that considers anything before testing "assessment". It's a shame that they aren't 'standardized" - maybe they will decide on the common definition of everything before the Y10K crisis.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), May 19, 1999.