A major NRC Y2k nationwide exercise was tentatively planned to take place on October15 to include incident response, information sharing and, from the NRC Y2KContingency Plan, "the planning basis within the NRC Y2K Contingency Plan also assumes that as many as a dozen nuclear power plant licensees may find themselves in a situtation where their technical specifications may require them to shutdown, but where continued operation is in the best interest of public health and safety in a broader sense...Thus, several utilities will contact the NRC response ream requesting enforcement discretion under the Y2K enforcement discretion guidelines." In other words, practice letting the plants continue operating outside their licenses. Does anyone know if this took place? I have seen nothing in the media...

-- Anonymous, October 20, 1999