A little bit more on Japan

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From AP Breaking this morning.

Interesting thing to me is that all I heard about last night was the lone incident at the one Nuke plant.

While none on this appears to be life threatening, I think it's just a tiny speck of what really happened last night throughout the rollover worldwide.

Y2K Problem Interrupts Monitoring System at Japanese Nuclear Plant By Naomi Okada Associated Press Writer

9:10 AM EST

TOKYO (AP) - A Y2K glitch shut down a radiation alarm system at a Japanese nuclear power plant, just three months after the nation's worst nuclear accident ever. The malfunction at Shika Nuclear Power Station, 170 miles northwest of Tokyo, didn't shut down the plant itself, and there were no leaks or safety problems.

The radiation detectors themselves were unaffected. But the computer at the government office that receives information from them went dead shortly after midnight today, said Kohei Fukamoto, spokesman for Hokuriku Electric Power Co., the company that runs the plant.

The problem was detected about 10 minutes past midnight and corrected 17 hours later, officials said.

Although not immediately dangerous, the problem was especially unnerving in the wake of the worst nuclear accident in Japan's history. On Sept. 30, an accident at a uranium-processing plant 70 miles northeast of Tokyo killed one worker, seriously injured two people and exposed at least 150 people to radiation levels that were above normal levels.

The glitch at the Shika Nuclear Power Station surfaced after Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi had already announced on television that no major Y2K problems had arisen.

There were some small snags at other nuclear facilities, but no radiation was leaked and there were no safety problems. Officials were still investigating whether the trouble was brought on by the millennium computer bug.

At a nuclear reactor run by Tokyo Electric Power in Fukushima prefecture, 148 miles northeast of Tokyo, a piece of monitoring equipment malfunctioned early this morning, company official Takashi Kurita said.

Kurita said the problem was probably not related to Y2K, since similar equipment in other reactors was trouble-free. The reactor's operations were not affected.

Other incidents at nuclear power plants mainly involved problems with data transmission among computers, and officials were still looking for causes.

A total of 22 problems were reported to the prime minister's Y2K headquarters by 5 p.m. Saturday, with only six possibly linked to the bug. None were considered serious.

Among other mishaps, Japan's Meteorological Agency reported that some of its systems displayed "100" instead of "00" when the year changed from 1999 to 2000 but said its regular operations had not been affected.

At East Japan Railway, the nation's largest rail company, a Y2K-related glitch caused vending machines for prepaid train cards to stop working in 13 stations for part of New Year's Day, said spokesman Seichiro Ono. The machines were quickly fixed.

-- Darla (darla@holl.net), January 01, 2000

Answers

Great. Thanks.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), January 01, 2000.


one nuke down y2k another from domino....

-- Moore dinty Moore (dac@ccrtc.com), January 01, 2000.

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