A few days ago, I read an article referenced on the Yahoo 2K website. The article was called Nuclear Haste and it was a semi-serious interview with a 21 year old who was remediating code at Nuclear Facilities in Illinois. I posted the article to the group here and to the Yahoo forum in the hopes it would generate discussion. Sunday night, I forwarded the article to several news sources. By Monday the reference to it on Yahoo was gone and the entire article had disappeared from Feed's (the webzine) website. I have emailed the magazine's editors twice now in an effort to reach William OShea, the author, and have received no response. I find this deeply disturbing.

After it was taken down, I emailed the editors to find out why, and no response. If this interview is real, and you're out there somewhere Matt Bochneak, my guess is that you're in some hot water. Good luck to you. Good luck to us all.

Here's the full article as I saved it before it dissapeared. The author is William OShea. The webzine is www.feedmag.com ************************************************************ Name: Matthew Bochneak, 21 Gig: Y2K computer consultant for nuclear power plants. Education: I didn't go to college and, well, my high school education is a little sketchy. During high school I had a little run-in with the law because of some shady computer stuff I was involved with, and things turned a kinda ugly -- I got kicked out of my house and out of school. The Feds came to my house one morning, and so my mother knocked on my door, woke me up, "This is Agent whatever from the Secret Service." That's when I got thrown out of my house. I wasn't on the run or anything but they had my girlfriend's phone line tapped and my friend's lines tapped. Previous Jobs: I would literally work 20 hours a day setting up Internet Service Providers. I would sleep there, get up and work more -- and I made $300 a week. That was awesome, it was incredible money for me. I was working full time, every waking moment. In terms of non computer jobs, I did 12 hour shifts of data entry a while back. It destroyed me, I lasted three weeks. I typed library cards for 12 hours a day. All the people there were pretty much Iron Maiden-listening trailer moms.

Labor: I ran the Y2K project and I do other consulting work for the monitoring facilities at the nuclear sites in Chicago and northern Illinois. I don't have a lot of time for fun. Basically I wake up and go to work. I get home and work more. And then I go and sing Karaoke on Wednesdays -- that's my life. In general, though, Y2K work is pretty straightforward, it's all logical stuff. Most of these companies are just building a lot of hype when it's not really necessary.

No one seemed to mind that a I was pretty much running the whole thing, or at least they didn't seem to have any kind of choice. But if most Americans heard about the fact that some 20-year-old kid was fixing their nuclear power plants they probably wouldn't be too happy about it. Then again, most of them can't open up Microsoft Word.

Method: There's nuclear facilities all over the state. So we would drive from plant to plant on this little nuclear road trip. And all the power plants are in the middle of corn fields, in the middle of nowhere. If you get lost, you just drive toward the giant cloud of steam. It's a lot of fun. We found that there were almost a thousand applications that this company was running that hadn't been tested or no one was aware existed because they had been installed a decade ago. And so they were an essential part of how the computer functioned but no one knew how to work them exactly. Some of these computers were the main computers monitoring the power plants.

The work was definitely intense. We would have to take the site down. The risk was very real, because -- I can't remember the exact figures, but something like -- if one of their monitoring facilities goes down for more than 12 hours then they have to take all their reactors down, which costs a lot of money. And then they can't just start it up again, it takes months to get it running again. So if we had screwed up, bad things would have happened.

Cash: We're just doing a million different things now. Soon there's going to be an incredible amount of money coming in and we're going to have to figure out what to do with it. Inspiration: Inspiration: The work can get kind of repetitive. But the Mountain Dew and nicotine get me through. And then outside of work... I just bought a car, just bought a condo -- that's a lot of the inspiration right now. Computer games are good too. Me and my friends, we'll have nerd out. People will bring 10 computers over to my place and we'll play Starcraft for 24 hours straight. And then there's the "X-Files" and "Simpsons" night. After watching TV we usually geek out and play Magic.

Personally, I was homeless for six months. So I guess making money has spoiled me a little. But I went through some spoiled rich kid's hard times. I don't know if you've talked to a lot of hackers, but most of them think they're the shit, because they're making more than their dads. It's pretty unfortunate.

Highlights: The scariest part was when we would go into the nuclear site we would have to put on hard hats and wear a dosimeter and we would go into the main room, and there was this box with a big red button that would turn the reactor off, and anybody could have touched it. There was also this animal preserve right around a power plant, it was overrun with geese. So the preserve hired a hunting club and a bunch of people from the area to shoot the geese, including some people that worked in the plant. And I got to see some guy who worked at the plant, in his cubicle, with a rifle. No one seemed to mind that the guy had brought a gun to work.

The people I work with, they're all 40, and they talk about beer and snowmobiles, and I'm just like, "cool, whatever." It's a little weird to be working with people twice my age. But some of them are really cool and eccentric. I get to work with a lot of crazy people, they're super old and have beards and double Ph.D.'s.

The Down Side: When we were on site, we had to have escorts at all times. They would have to come into the bathroom with us. And if you wanted to be taken on full time you had to have a three day psych evaluation. I didn't take it though. I was like, "I don't have time, and you can watch me go to the bathroom if you want to." Parting Shot: Y2K is really not that big of an issue. The date stamp might be wrong, but it's really not a huge deal. The main problem is the humans that are going and buying too much granola. And yes, I want to be far away on New Year's 2000, somewhere away from people, but it's mostly because I'm just worried about people going crazy.

)1999 FEED ***************************************************************** I think you can see why this might be viewed as sensitive if it were to break to mainstream media. I have now recieved two other emails with similar stories as the above.

Nothing against Matt and his skills, but I'm a little concerned about depth here. Not to mention error rates when consuming massive amounts of Mt. Dew and Nicotene.--

-- Anonymous, June 02, 1999

Answers

Jim,

Why do you think it was pulled?

C'Mon, the nation's largest nuclear utility hiring a 20 year old to be the PROJECT MANAGER? What are you thinking?

The control room with A BOX WITH A BIG RED BUTTON? Hello? It's called a CONTROL ROOM and the reator trip "button" isn't enshrined in some box where "just anyone" can push it. Forget the safety, you're cynical enough not to believe a company with 1175 MWE @ $15.75 a pop is not going to put the reactor trip button where anyone can get it.

A GUN in the protected area? Are you nuts? Read the story! Apply some freaking common sense. What happened was the story got back to the utility, who called FeedMag, told them to think about it, the pending defamation lawsuit and FeedMag woke up and smelled the Mt Dew.

Here's an idea for you. Go to your nearest nuclear station, ask if you can arrange a tour. They'll more than likely be glad to show you around, explain how the plant works, take you inside. The tour will be conducted by a nub, not a neck tie. Ask him real questions, get some answers. Don't listen to what some delusional little kid dribbles into some gullible writer's microphone.

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999

I just about fell out of my chair when I read the part about a guy having a gun at work at a nuke site.

Jim, we just can't get past that kind of craziness to be able to come up with a serious answer.

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999

Gotta admit, I just about spit my Gatorade when I read this. It appears that some college kid had a bit too much time on his hands (and perhaps brewski's in the gut) when this was written.

I couldn't get a pair of fingernail clippers past security at the last nuke I worked at. For those of you unfamiliar, security at the average nuke plant makes airport security look like child's play.

(But then...security is one of those Y2k things high on the NRC's concern list...see their website and documents at www.nrc.gov)

All in all, the author of this piece was definately an FFD candidate. ;-)

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999

Its an obvious hoax. How many nuclear plants are in the middle of a corn field?

I don't use my real e-mail because when I have made clear and concise statement on the Y2K nuclear issue, someone always twists it to say exactly what is does not say. Some of you can't read for crap.

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999

Hey Rick, Security at nuclear plants is weak, how do you explain the woman who started five fires at Calvert Cliffs in 1998 and 1999? Don't get me started on how bad security is. That's the kind of craziness we don't need here if accuracy is your goal.

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999

Believe it or not, there are a few sentences in the article that I find credible...there is a big red button (actually two, one for each train) at the plants I have been too - that will trip the reactor manually, but the'yre on the main control board,not on a "box". And they are generally enclosed to prevent accidental operation.

The gun, the thousand applications that were not tested or "no one knew about", the beards and double PhD's were quite outrageous and funny.

Regards, FactFinder

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999

There is only one utility that fits the description here, so it's not hard to figure out. I participated in a peer assessment of the Y2K project at one of their plants and there was no person by this name listed in the project organization nor does the description of this individual match anyone associated with their Y2K project.

It's obvious that the writer knew just a little about nuclear plants, but not quite enough to make the hoax work for those who have worked at one.

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999

Thanks for all the responses. I'm still not convinced it was a hoax. I still haven't received any response from Feed on why they yanked the article so quickly. I remain sceptical regarding Nukes and thier vaunted security.

I lived through TMI, 50 miles from TMI. It profoundly changed the way I look at safety. I also remember a friend of mine who was doing cleanup work at TMI after the accident. He was a dope smoking beer guzzling stoner. He passed the piss tests by cheating.

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999

hmmmm... how do i put this?

jim lived within 50 miles of tmi... i live alot closer. my family had an insurance agency in a town right down the road. i know an inordinate number of people from every walk of life, both through the business and because my family is very outgoing and involved in certain community affairs.

perhaps it is because of my background and the litiginous society in which we live that i am a tad more cautious than jim.

maybe the engineers on this group know the way 'they always heard it should be.' well, i am here to tell you that that is not the way that it is.

cl, referred to me as being a bit overwrought about the whole tmi affair i'd venture to say he would *drop over* if he knew half of what went on/is still going on there. in this area everyone seems to know or be related to someone else... and many people know someone that works or did work there...right on up the food chain.

btw, most of my life has been spent troubleshooting, i kinda like the 'action' of cleaning up a crisis situation in a business environment. i don't fold and i accomplish what other people say cannot be done.

there are some problems that... when out of control that cannot be 'fixed' by anyone. the smart man knows when to walk away.

tmi is a disaster waiting to happen.

-- Anonymous, June 03, 1999