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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Investor-ex! who wrote (3058)	12/28/1998 1:21:00 AM
From: J.L. Turner	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

EX, Someone explained common mode failure in terms of an airplane with 4 engines flying along and suddenly all 4 engines fail at the same time do to lack of fuel.The point being that redunancy is no defense against a common mode failure.Time may be a common mode failure.Y2k may be a common mode failure. Dick Mills tells us that 25% is the rim of the canyon in terms of power failure.Nuclear power is 22% of the total power but Mr. Mills also says: "Wait! There's another alternative. We could temporarily shut down the nuclear plants so that they aren't in operation on midnight 1999-12-31. On a holiday weekend, most business and industry are shut down, so the nation's demand for electricity will be low. We could shut down all the nukes without turning off anybody's lights. On New Year's day, we can begin restarting the plants under extra scrutiny. Control and electronic equipment can be brought into service one-by-one. If and when Y2K related problems show up, the startup can be paused until a work-around or manual bypass is devised. Plants that complete the startup have cause to be much less fearful of Y2K unknowns. Any plants that demonstrate really serious problems would abandon the startup." There doesn't seem to me to be any margin for error if the nuclear 22% is taken off the grid voluntarily.The spread between Mr. Mills best guess and 22% is only 3%.Maybe he's wrong and the grid can survive +25% disruption.Maybe he's right,some of the graphics he uses for the power grid reminded me of the "circle of Dominoes"The logic in the circle of dominoes seems to be beyond my ability to disprove.At this late hour I suffer from "analysis Paralysis" y2knewswire.com Jeff