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Link Tuesday, December 28, 1999 Alaskans keep watch on Russian reactor

By WESLEY LOY Daily News reporter

A Chernobyl-style reactor in the Russian Far East will be among the first nuclear facilities in the world to pass into the year 2000, and Russian and American officials will be watching it closely out of concern for the Y2K computer glitch.

The reactor, the closest civilian nuclear facility to Alaska, sits about 750 miles west of Nome, near a half-deserted town in the Russian Far East territory of Chukotka. Although everybody says the Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant should roll into the new year without a breakdown, Alaska, downwind from Russia, will have an array of radiation sniffers switched on just in case.

"There's not going to be Y2K problem at Bilibino," said Tye Blackburn, a U.S. Energy Department official working to find Y2K problems in Soviet-designed nuclear reactors.

In October, Blackburn was among a group of Americans invited to accompany Russian nuclear officials on a Y2K inspection of Bilibino (pronounced Be-LEE-bino).

Alaska has long been wary of nuclear plants in the former Soviet Union and their potential for spewing radioactive fallout east, or over the pole. The Y2K computer bug has only heightened the world's concerns about Soviet-designed reactors.

Many don't measure up to Western design and safety standards. Bilibino, for example, has no heavy concrete containment dome over its four reactors. And the reactors have a graphite and water design like the RBMK, or Chernobyl-style, reactors. The RBMKs are considered unstable, and their design contributed to the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster near Kiev in the Ukraine.

Beyond this are the general concerns about nuclear power in Russia - that plants are starved for money, parts and proper maintenance, and that nuclear plant workers go for months without pay.

But a recent United Nations-supported report on nuclear safety and Y2K generally downplays any immediate threat. Although it notes that many Soviet-designed nuclear plants "contain nonsafety related systems that are not yet Y2K compliant," the report concludes that the world's 430 nuclear plants will operate "as safely as they normally do."

The Energy Department has been helping improve Soviet-era reactors and to train workers, and has participated in Y2K safety drills with the Russians. For the rollover to the new year, two Russian experts will be in the Situation Crisis Center at DOE headquarters in Washington, while two U.S. nuclear experts will be at the Ministry of Atomic Energy in Moscow.

Bilibino has some good points. Although the plant's reactors are similar to those at Chernobyl, they're more stable and relatively simple to operate, said Bob Moffitt, with DOE's International Nuclear Safety Program.

Bilibino's reactors, with a maximum output of 12 megawatts each, are far smaller than the ill-fated Chernobyl reactor, which was rated at 1,000 megawatts, about average for the 103 commercial power reactors in the United States.

Still, eastern winds from the Russian Far East could team with an accident at Bilibino to send significant radiation across north and central Alaska in as little as a day, according to a study by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

In 1996, Alaska officials went with DOE nuclear scientists to Bilibino and signed an agreement with the Bilibino plant manager to improve communications between Alaska, the DOE and the plant, and to provide staff training.

Some of the results of that accord will be in effect come the new year when the town of Bilibino will pass, 21 hours ahead of Alaska, into the new millennium.

Telephone service to Bilibino is iffy - the Daily News was unable to reach the Bilibino plant after repeated tries - but Alaska and DOE officials should be able to talk to the plant via satellite phones the U.S. supplied to the Russian operators.

Air monitoring stations at Point Hope, Kotzebue, Nome, Fairbanks and Seward will be checking the air for radiation, said Doug Dasher, a state air quality specialist.

Even if Bilibino did have a major accident and Alaska got radioactive fallout, the nuclear plant is too far away to create an immediate, lethal threat to people, Dasher said. No evacuations would be ordered; people would not be told to stay indoors, he said.

The main worries would be checking for contamination in subsistence foods such as caribou and in milk-producing livestock, which could pick up fallout while feeding, Dasher said. Also, surface water sources would be checked.

Bilibino's four reactors were switched on in 1973 and 1976 to energize gold mines and supply both electricity and hot-water heat for the town of Bilibino, now occupied by perhaps 10,000 people. It was the first Soviet nuclear plant built above the Arctic Circle, and its reactors were designed to work for 30 years.

Though it doesn't meet Western standards, Bilibino's safety record is considered good compared to other Soviet-era reactors. Since 1993 the plant has sustained eight relatively minor problems classified on the International Nuclear Event Scale, according to the U.S. nuclear safety officials.

In 1996, Bilibino's No. 3 reactor was shut down temporarily after a crack was detected in the cooling system. Also in the mid-1990s, as Russia's economic woes deepened, plant workers were reported to be three months behind on wages. The plant, like the whole of the Russian Far East, suffers from a brain drain of skilled workers.

Most of Russia's 29 operating nuclear power reactors are in European Russia, many time zones to the west of Bilibino. Nestled in the low hills and forests of brutally cold central Chukotka, the Bilibino plant is the life blood of the town, which seems twice too big for the number of people still living there, said Blackburn, the DOE official who visited in October.

What did the plant look like?

"I was impressed, actually," Blackburn said. Though the plant is old, based on 1960s technology, it was clean and the staff seemed knowledgeable and committed, he said.

And they seemed to have aggressively tackled the Y2K issue, Blackburn said. The frontline safety systems - for inserting control rods into the reactor core and sending in cooling water during a "reactor scram" - were found to be bug-free because they don't rely on digital, date-sensitive technology, he said.

Other plant monitoring systems - which tell the control room about things like reactor pressure, flow rates and temperatures - showed some "Y2K vulnerabilities" but were cured, Blackburn said.

Bilibino is low-tech compared to U.S. plants, but that's partly by design. It serves a very distant town with no road access, and ease of maintenance and operation was a big consideration, Blackburn said. Plant managers were "incredibly open," he said, allowing visitors to check out anything they wanted.

The main concern is whether the plant, operating somewhat below its normal staff of about 740 people, can keep enough good help around to run it, Blackburn said. With no alternative power source, the region is expected to rely on the plant at least until 2004.

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), December 28, 1999

Answers

Interesting that Anchorage is not listed as a site with monitoring stations.

This local politics of Anchorage versus the Bush has gotten out of hand. ;)

Got SSKI and a geiger counter?

-- Nelson Isada (isada@alaska.net), December 28, 1999.

Access to the data provided by these ground monitoring staions is provided by none other than our friends at the Chinese 7-11 (Los Alamos). See:

http://newnet.jdola.lanl.gov/

Nice map of Dept of Energy monitoring devices across the country. Look where they have been placed, how they are arrayed, and when installed.

Bilibino has been discussed on this forum a bit over the past year. It was the first negative comment from the White House regarding Y2K in March timeframe.

Something to the effect of we're OK, but they're not OK, particularly that one in the Russian Far East closest to Alaska (meaning Bilibino), without refering to it by name.

Bilibino was the apparent site of an undisclosed problem two years ago. Judging by the way air corridors were opened for a team from the US Dept of Energy with what was rumored a direct call from Boris requesting American assistance, it must have been quite serious!

-- (snowleopard6@webtv.net), December 28, 1999.

Thanks Snowleopard6.

Danger close.

-- Nelson Isada (isada@alaska.net), December 28, 1999.

Nelson: Up the coast from Nome and just south of Tin City is a military site for electronic surveillance , aimed at the Russian Far East. In their toy box are several types of radiation detection equipment. So we'll get some warning if theres a meltdown..

-- Capt Dennis (capden@hotmail.com), December 28, 1999.