🚀 go-pugleaf

Yowza, what a crosspost.  Followups set to c.s.y2k only...

DEW wrote:
> I would love to have faith in Daniel�s arguments but I have doubts. I doubt
> an intelligent and well-trained auditor would accept these arguments as
> proof of safety, let alone a scientist. Chernobyl was not supposed to spread
> highly toxic radioactivity over the 100,000 square kilometers that surround
> it but it did. Russians were not supposed to eat radioactive food, but they
> are eating radioactive food. Fins were not supposed to dispose of
> radioactive reindeer, Brits were not supposed to dispose of radioactive
> sheep, but they have had to because of Chernobyl which is miles away. (I
> believe the sheep and reindeer had less radioactivity than the food the
> Russians are eating but when you contaminate the area that feeds your
> people, you have limited choices.) Three Mile Island was not supposed to
> heat to over 4/5th of it's meltdown temperature but it did. Technically
> speaking this could have been worse than Chernobyl, I suppose.

A few minor and not-so-minor corrections.  First of all, Chernobyl is
not in Russia but in the Ukraine, and it was the Ukraine that got
zapped the hardest.  The worst fallout zones were evacuated and I
believe living in some of them is still not officially allowed, but
that hasn't stopped people from moving back.

Second, thanks to high winds, the plume of radioactivity went _over_
most of northern Europe -- including Finland and the St. Petersburg area of
Russia -- and the most of the deposits landed in practically uninhabited
Lapland and the sea (where they were quickly dispersed).  So while
the reindeer did glow in the dark for some time, that didn't matter
as reindeer meat is greasy, expensive and not particularly tasty, and
most Finns eat the stuff only when their guests from elsewhere insist.  =)

And finally, the total of direct and indirect deaths caused by Chernobyl
are generally estimated to be far less than the number of yearly deaths
caused by pollution from a less spectacular energy source, burning coal.
(Never mind driving around at high velocities in flimsy boxes of plastic.)
Nukes just get a lot of attention because mushroom clouds look nasty.

> These �accidents� happened without y2k computer problems. Scientist
> don�t seem to have built y2k into their risk projections for nuclear so
> their
> risk analysis is meaningless. One risk book predicted a slim chance of
> one major accident at an American reactor in the next 100 years. Y2k was
> not mentioned. Y2k drives the needle off the dial. What chance do we have
> when hundreds of nuclear reactors around the world hit thousands of
> computer problems at the same time?

Newer plants tend to be safer, as people have learned from previous
mistakes, and technology has gotten better.  The plants I'm really
worried about are right next door, like the complex at Sosnovyi Bor
which keeps St. Petersburg warm, using Chernobyl-type Soviet reactors.
However, if there's one thing that's commendable about Soviet
engineering, it's that they very rarely added any non-essential
"chrome" to their systems or preferred complex-but-cool to
boring-but-trusty stuff.  The saga of space station Mir last summer
drew a lot of chuckles, but most people don't realize that if those
problems had happened to a US space station everyone on board would
be _dead_, because you can fix Soviet gear with duct tape and bubble gum
but you can't rewire a computer chip by hand.  And Mir is still up there,
chugging away although it was supposed to be retired a decade ago.
Compare this with what happened to the US's Skylab/Spacelab missions,
which were plagued with problems and none of which lasted over a year.

My point being?  I very much doubt Sosnovyi Bor will have significant,
if any, Y2K problems.  It's not high-tech enough for them.

> reassured. Looking closer, I wondered what Ol'Timer was really saying. Are
> heat and pressure sensors not generally analog devices? Computer chips
> don't work at thousands of degrees. They are not likely to be embedded in
> heat sensors. Are analog sensors read manually at reactors? Is the data
> then used to control manual devices? Are fuel rods and reaction control
> substances inserted and extracted by hand? I doubt it. What reactor has an
> "ON/OFF" switch? Don�t the number of fuel rods inserted, how far they are
> inserted and the amount of graphite or heavy water in the reactor control
> the reactions? Don�t elevator computers make up way less than 1% of the
> elevator system? If you�re stuck on the 54th floor because of y2k code in
> the computer chip, it's still a significant exposure. �Year 2000 Outlook�
> doesn�t make a hit on this report using Altavista so it�s either not on the
> web, not indexed to Altavista, or under a different title.

You're barking up the wrong tree.  "No computer chips" does not mean
"by hand", and you don't necessarily need _any_ computers _at all_
for a nuclear power plant.  You might not even need electricity.
I've seen astonishing levels of automation in factories build in the 1700's,
and if you add analog switching equipment you can do just about anything
a computer can do.  Remember, nuclear power plants are designed from
the ground up to be extremely safe and designers are still very averse
to taking risks with untested technology.
 
> drinking and doing drugs on the job.) What exactly will happen in the
> hundreds of nuclear plants in all of these countries? (Argentina, Australia,
> Austria, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic,
> Canada, China, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Democratic People's Republic of
> Korea, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary,
> Iceland, India, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Republic of
> Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Monaco, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway,
> Pakistan, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland,
> Thailand, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic)

Your atlas appear to be more than slightly out of date.  (Hint: the SSRs
became independent quite a while ago and Czechoslovakia exists no more.)

Cheers,
-j.