The Y2K World Atomic Safety Holiday (Y2K WASH) Campaign is up and running.

In the Bay Area, we have two (yet-to-be-paid) coordinators, who have more than 30 years collective experience organizing around nuclear issues. If you know anyone who would like to fund this important work, please contact Options 2000 at 415-868-1900.

We have available a 15-minute video outlining the campaign and the serious threats to health and safety facing nuclear technology in the y2k environment. We also have available two 1-hour audiocassettes (fully produced radio programs with transcripts and organizing material). To order these materials, contact:

wendyt@jps.net.

The Y2K WASH coordinators are now in Berlin meeting with German Y2K activists. They will be holding a press conference on Y2K and nuclear power/weapons to coincide with the meeting of the G-8 this week.

============================================================================ ========= This appeared on the abcnews website: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/y2k_nuclear990909.html

Nuclear Time Out Activists Ask Governments to Take a Y2K Nuclear Pause

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 16  Environmentalists and arms control activists call it a modest proposala kind of Year 2000 insurance policy for the world. Power down the 433 nuclear reactors worldwide. De-alert the 5,000 nuclear-tipped missiles that the United States and Russia keep on hair-trigger status. In a word, observe a year-end, 48-hour atomic holiday to avoid the remote possibility of nuclear disaster during the technology-challenging year 2000 rollover. It could be a matter of life and death, said Yumi Kikuchi, coordinator of a growing international grassroots campaign for a World Atomic Safety Holiday, or Y2K WASH. Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, Kikuchi and fellow activists ticked off reasons for a managed phase-down of reactors to standby, to be completed by Dec. 30. Rather than risk potentially catastrophic malfunctions with nuclear weapons and at nuclear facilities because of the Y2K problem, just give them the weekend off, said Michael Mariotte, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a watchdog group in Washington.

Obvious Move Its a no-brainer, added John Steinbach, co-author of Deadly Nuclear Radiation Hazards USA. Its like insurance. The movement for a year-end pause in atomic business as usual began in Japan, where 52 highly automated nuclear reactors dot a landscape the size of California. Kikuchi, a 37-year-old concert flutist and mother of two, said petition drives were getting under way in Japan and the 30-odd other countries with nuclear power infrastructure. Backers of the move argue that the United States should lead the way not because it is particularly vulnerable to Y2K-related disruptions of its 103 reactors, but because it would set a precedent for countries that are. Ukraine, Russia, Japan, China, Indiathese are all countries that may face severe Y2K difficulties, said Mariotte, who faults the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissions Y2K readiness standards for plant operators here. Kikuchi and a fellow Tokyo-based activist, Gen Morita, were given a chance to deliver their message this afternoon to staff members of the special Senate Committee on the Y2K glitch.

Hearing Them Out Its an initial meeting. Well hear what they have to say, said Don Meyer, a spokesman for the bipartisan panel headed by Utah Republican Robert Bennett and Connecticut Democrat Christopher Dodd. Meyer said the committee was concerned about nuclear safety during the century change, when the Y2K coding glitch could cause ill-prepared computers to crash.

But he said the panel was wary of any group using Y2K fears to push an unrelated agenda such as anti-nuclear power or nuclear disarmament, which fall outside its mandate. The nuclear holiday campaigners say reactors are at risk because they typically depend on offsite power to run their safety systems. The U.S. State Department said Tuesday that Russia and Ukraine were among countries whose power grids could be knocked out by the Y2K glitch. In one of 196 updated consular information sheets designed to alert U.S. travelers of risks, the State Department said Ukraine, home of the worlds worst nuclear reactor accident in 1986 at Chernobyl, seems unprepared to deal with the Y2K problem.

Warnings on Foreign Travel The British Foreign Office, in its Y2K advisories Tuesday, advised against all nonessential travel to Ukraine over the new year and early January until the situation becomes clearer. Next week, Kikuchi and fellow activists are taking their campaign to Berlin, where the G-8 industrialized powers will meet to discuss Y2K contingency planning. She is prepared with an answer to any suggestion that Ukraine, Russia or any other country is too dependent on nuclear power to switch it off during the rollover. Which is better?, she says, to have radioactivity all over the placeor to be freezing for a day. You have a choice. The United States and Russia agreed Monday to jointly staff a temporary military post in Colorado to watch for any Y2K-related false-missile alarms. But no move was announced toward taking missiles off hair-trigger alert. The shared Center for Strategic Stability and Y2K will reduce the chance that a turn-of-the-millennium computer error will create an end-of-the-year security incident, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen said.

Copyright 1999 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

-- Daren Henderson (TryChange@aol.com), September 20, 1999