The millennium bug - Y2K
The threat to nuclear facilities

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This is the Millennium or Y2k riddle: What happens at a nuclear power station when the lights go out if the nuclear power station itself generates the electricity that keeps its own lights on? Well, the nuclear industry argues that its nuclear power stations, nuclear fuel and reprocessing plants are so well designed that any untoward incident is catered for by the plantŐs inbuilt, automatic safety systems.That is all foreseeable incidents, except those exceptional events such as Windscale, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl whose origins stemmed from human errors and oversight, are covered by the plant safety systems. The problem here is that the passing into new Millennium, and at a number of other key dates, the computers and embedded hardware that maintain both stability and safety of nuclear plants may encounter and fail to cope with the small and seemingly insignificant Y2k glitch. Unfortunately, when many of the computer codes and hardware systems were installed at nuclear plants, nobody foresaw the Y2k glitch which, in itself, arose from human error and oversight. This report reviews the worldwide nuclear industryŐs attempts to resolve the Y2k riddle, how it is trying to untangle the years of layering of successive technologies that make up the operational and safety systems of nuclear plants, how far countries have got with their Y2k audits, the types of contingencies plans that have been laid and, crucially, the state of preparedness for the coming of the new millennium. The review does not venture to identify the types and severities of breakdowns to be expected at Y2k for that, as the worldwide nuclear industry tacitly acknowledges, remains the unsolved the Y2k riddle. Click here to download the report in Adobe Acrobat format