U.S. Says Y2K Could Harm Eastern European Nuke Safety

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

Tuesday September 28 11:12 AM ET 

U.S. Says Y2K Could Harm Eastern European Nuke Safety

WASHINGTON (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 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 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.

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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