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Tuesday August 17, 1:07 am Eastern Time

Lithuania Debugs Nuclear Plant

By MICHAEL TARM
Associated Press Writer

VISAGINAS, Lithuania (AP) -- Like software experts around the world, Aleksandr Mysko is scrambling to ensure the computers at his workplace are free of the millennium bug.

He may be under more pressure than most. His task is to safeguard Ignalina nuclear power plant, the Soviet-built, Chernobyl-style reactor that provides 80 percent of Lithuania's electricity.

But he's optimistic. ``Ironically, vis-a-vis Y2K anyway, we're very lucky this plant is Soviet made,'' he says.

The reason: Ignalina is less sophisticated than Western-built power plants, and thus potentially less vulnerable to the year 2000 problem.

When 1999 comes to an end, computers that use the last two digits of a year to keep track of dates could mistake 2000 for 1900, possibly causing vital systems to crash.

A shutdown at Ignalina would certainly damage Lithuania's economy, but the greater worry is whether a problem with a critical computer might lead to a nuclear accident.

Outwardly, Ignalina hardly inspires confidence. Concrete crumbles off the plant's 15-year-old facade, which is ringed by pot-holed roads and strewn with derelict, rusty cranes.

Nevertheless, Mysko, who heads a 30-man Y2K debugging project, says he's confident the plant will perform safely.

He has some support for that hopeful assessment.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Soviet-built plants like Ignalina aren't as reliant on computers prone to Y2K foul-ups.

``They're built more like work horses than thoroughbreds,'' said David Kyd, a spokesman at the U.N. agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria. ``Their computer systems are more rugged and less sensitive than those in the West.''

Surveys of Lithuania's overall Y2K preparedness aren't so optimistic.

The U.S.-based Gartner Group concluded in a recent report that Lithuania was no better prepared than Afghanistan and Vietnam, which are hardly prepared at all.

Andrea Di Maio, a Gartner nuclear power specialist, said he couldn't speak specifically about Ignalina, but agreed that safety systems at atomic plants, including Soviet-made ones, generally don't depend on time-sensitive computers.

``Overall efficiency (of nuclear plants) could be affected by Y2K problems. Their electrical distribution systems could be disrupted, for instance,'' he said. ``But I wouldn't think people should be worried about mega accidents.''

The report didn't include the two other Baltic states, though regional analysts say Estonia and Latvia seem to be faring better than Lithuania in fixing their computer systems. And they don't have nuclear power plants.

Lithuanians don't seem overly worried.

``I don't think it's going to blow up,'' said Igor Molianoki, an engineer in the capital of Vilnius, 80 miles south of Ignalina. ``The Soviets knew how to build these things right. This plant won't pose a threat, neither on 2000 nor on 2050.''

The world's worst nuclear accident happened in 1986 in Ukraine when one of the Chernobyl plant's four reactors blew up, sending a radioactive chemical cloud over Russia and much of Europe. The plant continues to report chronic malfunctions.

Most Lithuanians don't seem even aware of the potential problem.

Thumbing through a stack of Y2K-related directives, Mysko said he couldn't say if Lithuania as a whole deserved poor marks on preparedness, but insisted Ignalina does not.

The plant ran its first Y2K tests early last year, following detailed procedures developed by the U.S. Department of Energy, he said. He said all of the station's approximately 1,000 computers and all software had been checked and found to be free of year-change problems.

That review also confirmed the safety systems that shut reactors down at early signs of a malfunction are operated either manually or by automatic control, and thus are not reliant on date-sensitive computers or software, he said.

Mysko insisted he is ``100 percent sure we won't have Y2K problems here.''

All the same, he won't be partying to celebrate the end of one millennium and the start of another.

``I'm bringing my bed to the plant that night. Are you kidding?'' he said. ``I wouldn't be anywhere but right here on New Year's Eve, making sure everything's all right.''

-- flb (fben4077@yahoo.com), August 17, 1999

Answers

Oh God- There is that most dreaded and dangerous of words again:**"Confident"**!!!

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), August 18, 1999.