Y2K could harm East Europe nuclear safety -U.S.

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Year 2000-related glitches could undercut safety at some of the 68 Soviet-designed nuclear power plants in nine former Soviet bloc countries, a senior U.S. Energy Department official told Congress on Tuesday.

Energy Department experts "expect the primary safety systems to continue to function properly to shut down the plants safely, if needed, during a Y2K event," Deputy Assistant Energy Secretary Ken Baker said in prepared testimony. "However, there are Y2K issues with other systems important to safety and normal plant operations that, if left uncorrected, could compromise nuclear safety," he told the Senate Special Committee on the Y2K problem.

The Y2K glitch stems from the use of two digits to represent years, like 99 for 1999. Unless fixed, computers may read 00 as 1900 instead of 2000. That could trip critical systems, including power grids, and lead nuclear plants to shut down if they lose "off-site" backup power.

Baker said the 1986 disaster at Ukraine's Chernobyl No. 4 reactor, which spewed radiation over large parts of Europe, "revealed many flaws in the Soviet approach to nuclear power."

"These reactors, including one that still operates at the Chernobyl site, suffer from deficiencies in training, safety procedures, design and equipment," he said.

If not corrected, these conditions pose a "continued risk of a reactor accident" in Ukraine, Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria, Baker said.

"The current year 2000 concerns are only a portion of our continuing concerns," added Baker, principal deputy assistant secretary in the department's Office of Non-Proliferation and National Security.

VITAL NATIONAL SECURITY INTEREST

If another major nuclear accident occurred, the United States and the international community would be forced to deal with the political, economic and environmental destabilization, Baker said.

As a result, the U.S. government has deemed enhancing the safety of Soviet-era nuclear reactors and improving safety infrastructure in countries that operate them "a vital national security interest," he testified.

Energy Department officials have held many meetings with their counterparts in the former Soviet bloc and toured several power plants to evaluate their readiness.

Even without factoring in Y2K, "risk experts calculate that the frequency of a core meltdown accident at a (Soviet-designed) RBMK reactor is approximately 100 times higher than at a typical U.S. nuclear power plant," Baker said.

Unlike U.S. plants, RBMK reactors, the computers of which are "known to suffer from both both hardware and software Y2K vulnerabilities, do not have structures to contain radiation, "making the consequences of a core meltdown even more severe," he said.

He said radiation-monitoring and security-access systems at these plants also were known to have "Y2K vulnerabilities" along with ancillary systems that calculate the state of the reactor core.

Also Y2K vulnerable were the software that calculates power distribution in the core and the system that keeps tabs on nuclear fuel burned, Baker said.

"There is concern that, if not fixed, these problems could result in the simultaneous shutdown of several nuclear plants, causing disruption of power supplies in the middle of winter, he said.

Noting that Ukrainian nuclear power plants produced 47 percent of the nation's electricity in 1997, Baker cited the possibility that authorities might keep plants running even if monitoring systems crashed, "which would then create a safety problem."

"Host-country experts are more concerned that Y2K would cause the nuclear power plants to shut down, which would in turn cause the disruption of electric supplies," he said.

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Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), September 28, 1999

Answers

I'm just the messenger here Ray. <:)=

An update from

Hungary denies U.S. fears of Y2K N-plant flaws

BUDAPEST, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Hungary's Soviet-designed Paks nuclear plant is fully Year 2000 compliant, the plant's general manager said on Tuesday, rejecting a report by a U.S. Energy Department official to the Congress.

``When these plants were designed the Soviet technology was not that advanced to build computerized plants,'' Sandor Nagy told Reuters over the phone.

``We only have one computer system that controls safety in one of our reactors, and that was installed this year by Siemens .''

He added that 99 percent of all other computer systems -- which are not linked to the reactors themselves -- are also Year 2000 compliant.

``Even our check-in system is Y2K compliant,'' Nagy said.

Paks has four Soviet-built WWER pressurized water reactors which became operational between 1982 and 1985. Its last failure was in August 1997 when one of the reactors stopped after one of 37 cooling rods did not fully enter the reactor core.

The accident, categorised as the second lowest grade on the seven-grade international scale of nuclear accidents, was caused by a washer that stuck in an external mechanism moving the rods.

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 28, 1999.

Damned HTML... <:(=

From Yahoo News

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 28, 1999.

is he saying that they never had any other computer in any safety related function? how did they check the temp. in the core...with cooking thermometers?? (overly simplified, but you know what i mean)

-- sarah (qubr@aol.com), September 28, 1999.