Ukraine Sees No Y2K Problems With Nuclear Reactors

Updated 9:18 AM ET November 23, 1999

By Yuri Kulikov

KIEV (Reuters) - The head of Ukraine's nuclear energy authority Energoatom said on Tuesday the Y2K computer bug posed no threat to the country's Soviet-era nuclear reactors.

"We have checked and tested all equipment at all reactors," Mykola Dudchenko told a news conference. "These checks showed that there is no equipment at our stations susceptible to the year 2000 problem in management, defense or security systems."

Officials in Ukraine, site of the catastrophic 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl atomic power station, have said there can be no repeat of the disaster in the former Soviet republic on January 1, 2000.

Computer experts fear the change of date could wreak havoc in any country with older computer systems which could fail to recognize the last two digits of the year and malfunction.

A U.S. government report earlier this year said Ukraine's electricity, transport, defense and other systems could be vulnerable to possible problems and said checks had been slow.

But a later report said less use of computers made problems due to the millennium bug unlikely -- a position which Dudchenko reiterated on Tuesday, adding that contingency plans had been worked out just in case.

"We have worked out measures and emergency plans of how to act at the atomic reactors in case something does happen after all at the station itself or, as is more likely, if there is a communications problem -- although we've checked that, too," Dudchenko said.

Ukraine's five nuclear power stations provide almost half of the country's electricity needs.

The Chernobyl station has just one remaining functioning reactor, Number Three. The 1986 explosion, which sent radioactive dust billowing over neighboring Belarus, Russia and parts of western Europe, destroyed reactor Number Four.

Another reactor was destroyed in a fire in 1992 and another was shut in 1997 after it reached the end of its safe lifespan.

Ukraine had promised the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations to shut reactor Number Three by 2000. But it has delayed the decision due to a lack of Western funds to help complete two new reactors to replace lost capacity.

Officials said it was still unclear if and when the money would be forthcoming, but said technical considerations would force Chernobyl to shut in the second half of 2000 regardless of whether new capacity was available or not by then.

"Each year the reactor undergoes lengthy repairs. Its idle periods last up to half a year and in theory keeping it in use is becoming loss-making," Dudchenko said, adding that the reactor was due to be switched on this week after repair work.

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-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), November 23, 1999

Answers

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-- squid (Itsdark@down.here), November 23, 1999.