RE: 356 days till the millenium

["Weiner, Ruth" <rfweine@sandia.gov>]

Oh for crying out loud!  As I'm sure all of you are aware,

1. Nuclear weapons are time independent. 
2.  What the Y2K problem is, in a nutshell, that embedded date-dependent
chips can't subtract 99 from 00 or add 1 to 99, because the result is zero.
There is no philosophical problem.  Y2K is fixable, and the problems arise
in finding embedded date dependent chips.  

Clearly only my own opinion.

Ruth F. Weiner
Sandia National Laboratories 
MS 0718, POB 5800
Albuquerque, NM 87185-0718
505-844-4791; fax 505-844-0244
rfweine@sandia.gov

-----Original Message-----
From: kaplan@bnl.gov [mailto:kaplan@bnl.gov]
Sent: Monday, January 11, 1999 7:35 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: 356 days till the millenium


>Folks - this is being sent for general interest only
>gotten from the S.T.A.R web page (www.noradiation.org),
>NUCLEAR Y2K SYMPOSIUM

>The STAR Foundation (Standing for Truth About Radiation) is an
>organization committed to educating the public about medical and
>environmental impacts of all things nuclear, ranging from contamination
>at old DOE facilities, to the medical implications of nuclear meltdowns
>and nuclear waste, to the final and catastrophic global contamination of
>a nuclear war.

>To this end, STAR convened a two day symposium at the New York Academy of
>Medicine in September 1998 titled  "Recent Studies of Low Level Radiation
>and Implications for Medicine and the Nuclear Industry."  Papers ranged
>from the examination of small doses of external radiation, to large
>cellular doses received from "internal emitters," to the ultimate
>radioactive event -
>nuclear war.  International experts from both sides of the issue
>presented papers, 300 people attended, and Continuing Medical Education
>Credits were provided to attending physicians.

>In a continuing series of similar events, STAR is now organizing a
>symposium on "Nuclear Y2K" to be held in the Canon Caucus Room in the
>Canon Office Building on March 8 in Washington DC. This event will be
>cosponsored by the British and American Security Information Council
>(BASIC) and the Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS).

> 	Y2K or the "millenium bug" is the most urgent nuclear issue of our
time
>demanding immediate discussion, investigation, education and media
>attention.  Though Y2K is a complex and multi-layered problem that cannot
>be adequately summarized here, it can be said that erroneous information
>generated by computer systems - software, hardware and embedded computer
>chips - on January 1, 2000 will compromise the integrity of nuclear
>safety systems, as it will all other computer systems.

>There is acknowledged and widespread uncertainty about the degree to
>which nuclear facilities will be impacted by Y2K. Well-informed opinions
>range from one extreme to the other; the only certainty being that nobody
>can be sure what Y2K will bring. Top level experts from both the Pentagon
>and the nuclear power industry regularly acknowledge that all their
>systems will not be "Y2K compliant," even if these experts could agree
>about the exact definition of this term. 

>Y2K Technical Problem

>The year 2000 (Y2K) technical problem is based upon the potential
>inability of computers to correctly recognize dates beyond December 31,
>1999. The problem will result from computer hardware and/or software and
>embedded chips that use two-digit fields to represent the year: e.g. to
>save space, computer programmers used "97" to denote "1997," instead of
>the full number of digits. When the year 2000 appears, some of the chips
>and systems are likely to read 1900, causing computers to crash, or to
>generate aberrant or faulty data. 

>NUCLEAR Y2K SYMPOSIUM  

>The Nuclear Y2K Symposium will analyze potential and predicted computer
>problems involving both nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. 

>NUCLEAR POWER AND Y2K

>There are 433 operating nuclear power plants globally, some are totally
>digitalized (computerized), as in Japan, and some depend to a minor
>extent on computer control; all are subjects for potential computer
>malfunction on January 1, 2000.  If parts of the electrical grid
>malfunction because of innate computer problems, or if the cooling water
>system fails in a reactor because of an in-built computer Y2K problem, a
>potential nuclear meltdown could ensue.

>The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has stated that the Y2K problem
>at nuclear reactors is "urgent because it has a fixed, non-negotiable
>deadline that is quickly approaching. This matter requires priority
>attention because of the limited time remaining to assess the magnitude
>of the problem, assess its associated risks, and implement programs that
>will achieve a satisfactory resolution of the Y2k problem."  Furthermore
>it says that, "there is a risk that affected plants systems and equipment
>may fail to function properly." 

>Among the systems that the NRC feels may be impacted are safeguard
>systems, computer security systems, emergency response systems, radiation
>monitoring systems, engineering programs and systems and plant process
>display system computers. And this is a relatively controlled nuclear
>power program. Consider the old Soviet-style, Chernobyl type reactors,
>which are known to be at great risk.

>NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND Y2K

>Many nuclear weapons systems such as bombs, missiles, early warning
>systems, nuclear submarines, and planes can be prone to errors.  John
>Pike from the Federation of American Scientists said in 1998 that "in
>principle, STRATCOM and USSPACECOM operating environments, as well as
>those of supporting intelligence activities, represent discrete
>highly-visible mission-critical implementations which are obvious
>candidates for robust Y2K compliance. In practice, this strategic nuclear
>war fighting infrastructure is a vast system-of-systems that constitutes
>the single most complex automated information system currently in
>existenceà" 

>Recent federal government reports say that the Pentagon will not be Y2K
>compliant until the year 2010.     John Koskinen, head of the White House
>Y2K conversion council said that, "if the data doesn't function on the
>nuclear missiles they will actually go off."

>Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, John Hamre, warned that the
>concern was not that the military screens would all go blank on 2000.
>"That would be good news," he said. "We would at least know we have
>problem. The greater problem would be if the screens stay up, but we are
>receiving wrong data and we don't know itàWe know we are in for some
>nasty surprises."  

>Hamre also said in October 1998, "probably one out of five days I wake up
>in a cold sweat thinking Y2K is much bigger than we think, and then the
>other four days I think maybe we are on top of it. Everything is so
>interconnected, it's very hard to know with any precision that we have
>got it fixed." 

>PROPOSED PROGRAM

>Morning - Nuclear Power
>The topics to be addressed will include:  

>1.   Generic overview of Y2K, by Bill Urich who has authored two books on
>the subject.
>2.  How computers and embedded chips might affect plant safety,  and how
>grid failure could impact reactors - David Lockbaum - Union Of Concerned
>Scientists.
>3.  Multiple mode failures in nuclear reactors and weapons - Michio Kaku
>-
>Professor theoretical physics, City University of New York.  4.  Grid
>vulnerabilities - speaker to be announced.
>5.  Back up diesel powered generators and their reliability - Paul
>Gunther -
>Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS).
>6.  Nuclear Regulatory Commission Report, Shirley Jackson, Chair, Nuclear
>Regulatory Commission.  
>7.  Global reactor problems, Joschka Fischer, Foreign Minister, Germany.  
> 8.  Nuclear accidents amidst potential Y2K disruptions - speaker to be
>announced.

>Afternoon - Nuclear Weapons

>1. The Impact of the Year 2000 Problem on US Nuclear Weapons, Michael
>Kraig, British American Security Information Council (BASIC).
>2. Nuclear  weapons of other countries, France, England, China, Russia ,
>and command and control status of each country, Stephen  Young , BASIC.
>3. Generic questions re: nuclear weapons and Y2K, Ted Taylor, Physicist .
>4. De-alerting nuclear weapons, and Command Disintegration, Bruce Blair,
>Brookings Institute.
>5. Action Agenda, What Should Be Done, John Pike,  Federation of American
>Scientists.
>6. Philosophical Questions for the Future: Transformative possibilities
>of Y2K, speaker to be announced.

>GOAL

>The aim of the symposium is to educate the attending public, and to
>attract a national press presence. This will ensure education at a
>national level about Nuclear Y2K.

>FURTHER EVENTS

>1. CONGRESS

>STAR will also help to organize Congressional and Senate hearings the
>following week on pertinent topics addressed in the symposium.

>2. THE UNITED NATIONS

>In April, STAR will organize a small symposium at the United Nations
>during the first week of the Preparatory Committee for the Non
>Proliferation Treaty in order to alert the nations of the world about the
>problem. This conference will be cosponsored by Abolition 2000.

>For further information
>contact STAR at 516-324-0655.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Ed Kaplan, Ph.D.                                     Voice: (516) 344-2007
Brookhaven National Laboratory                        Fax: (516) 344-5810 
 Upton, New York 11973

-----------------------------------------------------------

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