An American Chamber of Commerce report issued by Terralink, an IT firm specialising in millennium bug issues, found that Russia could suffer catastrophic consequences because it was "very likely that major infrastructure providers upon whom everybody depends, will experience Y2K failures".

Notably, experts have pointed to concerns about Russia's nuclear power stations, fearing a meltdown similar to Chernobyl, if the power grid fails.

why is there a problem of a meltdown in russia if the power grid were to fail... we don't have that problem in the states... or so they say.

-- Anonymous, July 07, 1999

Answers

oops... i forgot to post the url.

http://38.201.154.108/articles/?a=1999/7/4/140839

-- Anonymous, July 07, 1999

Marianne,

Maybe we are immune to the meltdowns because we have all those fine EDGs (emergency diesel generators) that have been continuously tested, maintained, and certified ready.....or so they say.

-- Anonymous, July 07, 1999

First from what I've read about Russian plants they don't use computers all that much for anything. So I wonder how much of a problem it will be.

Second they use a very different design. Chernobyl uses a design that was only used in the US on the Handford Reservation in Washington State as a small reacotor for making Plutonium. It's been shut down for a number of years.

-- Anonymous, July 08, 1999

well engineer, it seems as though the us government is not quite as sure as you seem to be and design may prove to be the least of it. as i have said before... the situation is a lot more complex than the engineers perceive it to be.

this from airforce:

link

US officials are very concerned that a computer failure in Russia's interconnected power grid could cascade through the entire nuclear system and lead to a massive power outage. Such an event could easily end in catastrophe at one of the 65 Soviet?made nuclear reactors.

Those concerns are heightened by reports that nuclear scientists and technicians at two of Russia's closed nuclear cities-Arzamas?16 and Chelyabinsk?70-staged walkouts last year because they had not been paid in nearly 10 months. An undermanned and unmotivated nuclear workforce raises the possibility that a power outage at a nuclear reactor could lead to a catastrophe through human error.

Moreover, there are worries that the diesel generators designed to provide backup power at nuclear reactors in the event of a main power outage could fail as a result of problems within embedded chips. One audit of the Seabrook nuclear reactor in New Hampshire, conducted by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, revealed that a single nuclear power plant had 1,304 separate software items and embedded chips affected by the Y2K bug. No one believes that the Russian counterpart to the NRC has been as thorough in alerting Russian technicians to the vulnerability.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999