By Suzanna Kerridge, 30 September 1999 00:25
NEWS Russia's power plants are facing a nuclear accident unless action is taken to improve Y2K preparations, according to a top US energy official. Ken Baker, deputy assistant secretary at the US Department of Energy said in a written testimony to Congress, that the shortfalls the reactors currently suffer from in the areas of safety procedures and design, will be exacerbated by effects of the millennium bug. Baker warned that, regardless of Y2K, unless safety upgrades are performed, the chance of a core meltdown accident within certain reactors is 100 times greater than in the US. Factoring in the millennium bug only further increased the risk of a nuclear disaster, he added. Baker claimed Chernobyl is among the 68 nuclear power plants facing possible system failures. Those most at risk are planet process computers that monitor conditions within the reactors, radiation monitoring systems and the security access systems responsible for authorising entry to the plants. But Vivek Wadhwa, CEO at Relativity Technologies and advisor to the Russian government, said it is more likely that the power plants will be shut down until the critical period had passed - leaving people without heat or electricity in the middle of winter. "It's not so much a meltdown, but a potential loss of power. If there are problems it is more likely the plants will be shut down and restarted. There could well be people without heat and power for a period." Graham Titterington, Y2K analyst at Ovum, agreed, but said the shut-down period could be longer than 24 hours. "The bigger the power station, the longer it takes to shut down and then power up. The heat has to be slowly raised otherwise you risk cracking."
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