Russian Nuke plants y2k oK

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AP-Y2K-Russia Nuclear Russian nuclear plants clear Y-2-K tests (Washington-AP) -- The Energy Department says the age of Russia's nuclear power plants is an advantage when it comes to Y-2-K. Energy officials say tests of the plants' crucial safety andcommunications systems revealed no problems. That's because the components are so old, they're not run bycomputer -- so they can't be hit by the millennium bug. Soviet-era plants in other countries have also fared well intests designed to see what would happen when the calendar turns to January first, 2000. There still could be problems. The Energy Department says other computer systems could fail, such as those monitoring plant conditions. In that case, local residents could find themselveswithout heat or electricity until problems are corrected.

-- Lara Summers (nprbuff@hotmail.com), November 19, 1999

Answers

There could be truth in this. The older design used in the Navy used more realiable (at the time) mechanical and electrical-mechanical components. There were manual operations and backups because this was seen as a neccesity. The problem with Russian designed reactors is the poor or non existent conainment facilities (Chernobyl) and the use of higher efficiency but more unstable coolant designs.

This is also seen as the case with rural Chinese electric power generation plants (before computers). This might mean the peasants in the countryside may have more realiable generation than the sparkling new cities on China's Southern Coastline. China generates a lot of electricity with Coal and transportation of the coal to the plants could be the weak link even for the rural plants.

-- squid (Itsdark@down.here), November 19, 1999.


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