Brazil Says Its Nuclear Power Plants Y2k Ready

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Brazil Says Its Nuclear Power Plants Y2k Ready

Updated 11:34 AM ET August 31, 1999

By Jeremy Smith

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil has completed compliance tests to ensure its controversial nuclear power plants are not floored by the Y2K millennium bug, senior industry officials said Tuesday.

"All the tests have been completed," said Everton Carvalho, institutional relations coordinator for Eletrobras Termonuclear (Eletronuclear).

"It (the test) was very wide-ranging and we are ready to cope with all eventualities," he said. Eletronuclear, based in Rio de Janeiro, administers Brazil's two uranium-fueled nuclear power plants at Angra dos Reis, a picturesque bay 130 km (80 miles) west of Rio de Janeiro.

Only the older of the plants, Angra I, is functioning while the second, Angra II, is scheduled to come online early next year. A third plant is planned for 2005, depending on energy demand.

"We have been working a lot on the millennium bug and I have more than 15 people just dedicated to it, on the software and old equipment," said Kleber Ribeiro Consenza, operations superintendent at the Angra dos Reis complex.

"We are making every effort...we don't expect to have any problems. We have been looking very deeply at all the things that we have and are now building up a contingency plan."

The millennium bug, or Y2K problem, affects computer systems that denote the year in dates by their last two digits after programmers tried to save space in the 1970s and 1980s.

Unless fixed by the end of the year, it could cause mayhem because computers that have not modified their software may read 2000 as 1900 when the new year begins, causing their systems to crash or spew out faulty data.

Consenza said U.S. inspectors had visited the plants and another international team was expected. External consultants had been contracted to make "necessary corrections" in areas where possible Y2K problems had been identified, he said.

But environmentalists, who say Angra I's performance has been less than satisfactory since it began commercial operations in 1985, are less convinced and want harder details of the plant's state of readiness to confront Y2K. "The recommendation that we are giving is for plants to be turned off completely if there is no guarantee of things running properly," said Ruy de Goes, campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Brazil and a specialist on nuclear issues.

"It's the sort of risk which cannot be taken," he said. "What we are also going to do is take this to Congress and ask them for information because they are obliged to respond."

Built while Brazil was still under military rule, Angra I has become notorious for its many stoppages -- nearly a dozen since 1998 -- sparking heated debate about its true safety.

Critics of the plant, citing steam corrosion in piping and minor cracks in fuel rods, say the shutdowns are far more than would be normal for regular maintenance and fuel changes.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Y2K poses only a small risk to nuclear plants as computers play a limited role in energy production, measuring -- among other things -- turbine temperatures, spin rotations and pressures.

"Normally a nuclear power plant is operated by personnel, by hand, not by computer. Computers...only come into the picture for remote measuring," said IAEA spokesman Hans Meyer.

"If there is a...Y2K problem, it is just that you get an alarm sign. We have pointed that out to all our member states and the Brazilians are aware of it. There might be something (a problem) at the distribution, not at the power plant itself."

Experts say that even if computer systems freeze at midnight on New Year's Eve, reactor operators can simply throw a switch to shut them down.

======================================= End

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), August 31, 1999

Answers

"If there is a...Y2K problem, it is just that you get an alarm sign"

Yea, I know this is old news (March), but I just can't resist after reading the above. <:)=

did you all notice this y2k power plant example in that chicago trib story?

**As part of an experiment last year, technicians at the huge Xingo hydroelectric dam on Brazil's Sao Francisco River set the dates on the plant's main computer forward to Jan. 1, 2000.

**What happened next is still sending chills through Latin America.

**"When they put the date forward, the whole control board went haywire," remembers Marcos Ozorio, one of the members of Brazil's presidential Year 2000 commission. "Twelve thousand warning lights flashed all across the board, with all kinds of alarm information."

**Technicians quickly switched back the date, and are now ferreting out the plant's Y2K bugs. But "if you had been surprised by a situation like this, what you'd have had to do is shut down the plant until you found where the failures were," Ozorio said. "Automatically you'd be taking off the energy board 30 percent of northeast Brazil."

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), August 31, 1999.


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