ZD has a commentary up about Martins claims of unsafe conditions in various nuclear plants. Take a look

http://www.zdnet.com/zdy2k/1999/01/5566.html

Seems RM has gone from fudging his figures to making them up.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), January 21, 1999

Answers

Mitch Ragclif said in this article:

"The NERC report still suffers from shortcomings, offering little evidence because of the electric industry's desire for confidentiality."

Hmmm...if they're so concerned about public panic, why are holding back all that "good news" Paul?

-- a (a@a.a), January 21, 1999.

Yeah, Roleigh Martin makes up all his facts... Then why did you not ever respond to the FACTS i have published a couple days before...

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000OFo

You can download the NERC EXCEL spreadsheet from their site. That look at the data and evaluate it.

STFrancis

-- STFrancis (STFrancis@heaven.com), January 21, 1999.

There is no way to reconcile what Martin wrote with either the NERC report re. nuclear power or the Chicago Trib article. So he is pulling stuff out of the air to support his position under the assumption no one is checking up.

St. Francis ? - I'll get to you in a bit.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), January 21, 1999.

Analysis of Mitch Ratcliffe's Analysis of Roleigh Martin:

"To its credit, though, the NERC report does deliver some unequivocal information, such as that, with 75 percent of assessments at nuclear plants complete, 'No facility has found a Y2K problem that would have prevented safety systems from shutting down a plant"

[The statement "75 percent of assessments...complete" demonstrates equivocalness in two ways. First, 75 percent does not tell you how long it took and how many resources it took to get to the 75 percent marker... You can take this to mean that they are almost done, or not even close, depending on the total amout of time and resources spent to get this far. Second, assessment is the very first part of a project. Without a complete assessment, scope cannot be determined, and the end of the project remains unknown, unless they actually have no problems at all.

It is nice to know that safety systems won't go down... but doesn't a nuclear plant require more than just safety systems to operate? A system that has been shut down, does us little good when we need to use it for power.]

"Regarding the systems that could cause the plant to 'trip,' or shutdown, all have been fixed."

[Appart from the fact that this article does not provide any evidence that "all have been fixed", the statment reveals that there were systems that were found that *would* have caused the plant to 'trip.' This means no power. (unless I am not understanding something about the word 'shutdown'). A more ballanced way to say "No facility has found a Y2K problem that would have prevented safety systems from shutting down a plant.." might be to say: "Although problems were found that would cause a plant to shutdown, safety systems appear to be ready to shut off the power safely."]

"...offers the rather mild comment that 'To some extent, though, the NERC report glosses over more serious problems being found in power plants. For example, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission audit of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire found 13 separate systems that could have failed and shut down the reactor on Jan. 1. None was reated to safety systems... all have been addressed...' This is hardly damning..."

[First of all, comments like "Hardly damning" and "rather mild" are spin words that I would rather choose to apply myself while reading if I so desire. I don't choose to accept them. Again, are safety systems the only important part of the plant? Are 13 problems in your critical path of operation not a serious problem? Also the NRC evidence does not say that they have finished fixing the 13 problems, it only says they "all have been addressed." What does this mean? It could mean that they are all completely compliant, it could mean that they are currently working on them. When it comes to your critical path, "addressed" is not enough. "Completed" is what we want to hear.]

I understand Roleigh Martin's frustration with what is being reported. I don't necessarily agree with his assessment of motive, but I cannot agree with ZDNet's assessment either. Can you?

-- Reporter (foo@foo.bar), January 21, 1999.

I've read Radcliff's analysis of Martin's response. To me, it's simply a matter of differing interpretation of "facts" "assessment" "safety issues" and "testing". Martin's not wrong, Radcliff presented same "facts" but came out with a different conclusion. I interpret Martin's analysis right, because I've read the reports on the plants and came out with same conclusions. They haven't finished auditing, they found (or at least reported in a way that told me they did) instances of corner cutting practices, and standards not followed.

Bottom line is NERC and NRC don't know enough to make any unequivocal statements.

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), January 21, 1999.

'a', you've somehow jumped from an unwarrented assumption to a foregone conclusion without traversing the space between! The article clearly states that the confidentiality is for legal reasons.

Imagine you were in charge of a power plant, and confident that every last system in it was fully tested and compliant. Even so, would you be willing to make a statement that might later be ruled legally binding, knowing you're heading into uncharted territory? I wouldn't blame you for being hesitant. This 'panic' stuff is the product of your imagination, in no way supported by this report.

Reporter, your observations are wonderful. Does 'addressed' mean 'fixed'? Does 'could have failed' mean 'would have failed'? These reports are very carefully written to be ambiguous, for reasons we can only guess at. They may range from deliberately hiding real problems, to carefully dodging the lawyers, to masking genuine lack of hard information.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 21, 1999.

Sure, but then we hear stuff like this:

Hey Paul, just thought I'd let you know - I just talked to a friend that works for the power generation company that supplies our city. They said the word around the shop is that we will all be in the dark come January. Everytime they test, they lose power. They can't figure out why (haven't finished assessment). This is what their web page says:

Our goal is to have completed all implementation and conversion of mission critical systems by December 1998. Supplier and vendor compliance certifications are part of this goal. Our testing, user acceptance and interoperability goal for mission critical systems is second quarter 1999. Other non-critical peripheral and supporting systems will be either upgraded or replaced after all critical systems issues have been addressed.

Please note that this is intended for informational purposes only and is not legally binding. Santee Cooper does not accept liability for any consequential loss or damage arising from the use or interpretation of this information.

And BTW, this is SE US, not UK we're talking about.

-- a (a@a.a), January 19, 1999.

Surely Roleigh and Rick get this kind of insider information/rumor all the time - and can't disclose it.

All NERC did was compile a bunch of responses to questions, after all. In their opinion, this SC plant is at the final stage of "testing".

-- Lisa (lisab@shallc.com), January 21, 1999.

Reporter - and others,

Slow down a bit and please "reread" what they reported - and consider that "they" are looking for problems, don't know where the problems will be, nor how many, nor exactly what the symptoms will be of the failure - if any.

Okay - so the first thing obviously is to check that a plant can safely shutdown (if running post 2000) if a problem occurs. So look at their words - it makes sense regardless of your spin - if they found a problem in the safety circuits, it would or would not have "prevented" a safe shutdown, right. That's how they reported it. Assume they fixed things that would have prevented a safe shutdown. Now, look at things would prevent or hinder or make routine operations more difficult. Find them, fix them, test them - are you not surprised they are finding problems? If they find them now (yes, it's late) they have time to fix them (replace them), and test them, look for more.

If they found nothing that would have "prevented safe shutdown" - great - hey, not everything will fail! Enough will fail that the stuff still running might fail, but many components are really okay.

I'm critical they are apparently still in the find and remediation mode for routine operation (based on the quotes above), but after all, if the shutdown circuits are at fault, I'd rather the plant not start up all. Yes, fix those first. Then worry about the balance of plant.

So they fixed what they found. Again, great.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), January 21, 1999.

Lisa, I tried to track down some of these rumours. Can't locate either sources or solid info. I do have some info on certain control panels that have problems - not something impossible to fix, not even very hard - just has to be done. Every time I get to real information that I can verify, it really doesn't sound like that much of a problem. Frankly, if I keep digging for treasure and finding nothing, I will eventually conclude there is no treasure here.

FDIC has claimed banks are 95% compliant - anyone doubt they will get there if they were that close in November? NERC seems pretty happy with the progress on the electric front - they have been oversight on the electric utilities for a long time - why would they want the power out now? The embedded controller problem has been addressed - the number of systems affected can be estimated pretty accurately now - and is much much smaller that the original estimates of a couple years ago. So much Y2K software work is finished that COBOL programmers are no longer in great demand. I still think there will be problems - but much less than most on this board think. The primary question those who insist on TEOTWAWKI must answer is: why is everyone in the business lying except those who predict doom. I haven't heard any answer yet that doesn't sound paranoid - honestly people, the govt. is not out to get you. And before I hear about Ruby Ridge and Waco again - tell the whole story this time - including the past history of the people involved and why they were being arrested in the first place.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), January 21, 1999.

Paul, - I think the better analogy than "looking for treasure" is "looking for decay" Try:

"Something smells real bad in this big, deep bag of apples: but I don't know if it is one apple, or ten, or ten dozen. I haven't found a lot of bad ones, just a few with softspots that we cut off. But if we don't find every one of the bad ones, when we make applesauce with the whole bag, all the applesauce will be rancid and make us sick."

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), January 21, 1999.

Here is the single most accurate and relevant statement on the entire thread. Flint said, "These reports are very carefully written to be ambiguous, for reasons we can only guess at."

We are all only guessing. It's all that we can do. We do it with all the intellectual resources at our command. We do it with great passion. We do it constantly and without end. We are still only guessing.

Flint's statement also bears parsing to the extent that we recognize that we are not only guessing at the accuracy of those ambiguous reports, we are guessing at the results of our guesses.

Guessing may be the only option open to us "common folk" in our attempt to decipher what "infospeak" we become aware of, but that is still no guarantee of anything except that we really don't know.

Unfortunately, we are all required to "bet the ranch" on those guesses.

-- Hardliner (searcher@internet.com), January 21, 1999.

Hardliner - I happened to pick up some documents yesterday that addressed what you should and should not do re: Y2K work. These folks recomendations to avoid legal problems were:

1.Create a paper trail to prove you have done all a reasonable person can do to address the problem.

2.Have a contingency plan that is documented.

3.Make no guarentees of continued service.

Seems to me everyone is pretty much doing this. If I had spent years building a business and the lawyers told me that I might tank the whole thing if I issued a statement flatly saying we would have no problems with Y2K, I would probably hedge around the subject. I don't like this - frankly it sucks as far as getting really solid information about what is going on. But what we are getting seems to be right at the limits of what most companies will allow.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), January 22, 1999.