Activists Push Y2K Nuclear Pause

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Umm.. and how would the world make up the loss of generation if ALL 
world reactors were shutdown for 48 hours? Perhaps these activists 
should review regulatory status reports showing that in the USA for 
one, viable Y2K actions have been taken. But they probably did read 
them, but why pass up another good media attention grabber!

Thursday September 16 4:34 PM ET 

Activists Push Y2K Nuclear Pause

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Environmentalists and arms control activists 
call it a modest proposal -- a 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 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.  

``It's a no-brainer,'' added John Steinbach, co-author of Deadly 
Nuclear Radiation Hazards USA. ``It's 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, India -- these are all countries 
that may face severe Y2K difficulties,'' said Mariotte, who faults 
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Y2K readiness standards for 
plant operators here.  

Kikuchi and a fellow Tokyo-based activist, Gen Morita, were given a 
chance to deliver their message Thursday afternoon to staff members 
of the special Senate Committee on the Y2K glitch.  

``It's an initial meeting. We'll 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 
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 world's worst nuclear reactor accident in 1986 at Chernobyl, 
seems ``unprepared to deal with the Y2K problem.''  

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 
place -- or 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,'' Defense Secretary  
William Cohen said. 

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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