Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: flatsville who wrote (4909)	3/21/1999 11:16:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

'DARKER THAN YOU THINK: COMMENTS ON THE SENATE REPORT ON Y2K by Bruce F. Webster (www.bfwa.com) [bio information at end of article] -- Chief Technical Officer of Object Systems Group (www.osgcorp.com) -- Co-Chair of the Washington D.C. Year 2000 Group (www.wdcy2k.org) -- Author, _The Y2K Survival Guide: Getting To, Getting Through, and Getting Past the Year 2000 Problem_ (Prentice Hall, 1999, ISBN 0-13-021496-5, www.phptr.com/year2000/survial.html [sic]) The following is an on-the-record, first-pass commentary on "Investigating the Impact of the Year 2000 Problem", a report issued on March 2, 1999 (but dated February 24, 1999) by the US Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem. I may try to do something more in-depth later. Feel free to cite any of my comments below with attribution. The report in its entirity is copyright (c) 1999 by Bruce F. Webster; it may be freely distributed as long as this notice is included. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- OVERALL EVALUATION: -- The Senate report is the first reasonably independent, bipartisan, and objective reference work on Y2K. As such, it will become _the_ canonical Y2K reference and will undoubtedly be (and should be) heavily cited in weeks and months to come. It represents excellent work and still cautiously points out its own limitations. It will likely be far more trusted than anything to come out of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion. -- It is also the first official government document to establish (in considerable detail) the existence and likelihood of Y2K consequences between the two oft-cited extremes of 'a bump in the road' and 'the end of the world as we know it'. This false dichotomy has been a key issue of mine and is the reason why _The Y2K Survival Guide_ (which I'll refer to hereafter as TY2KSG) gives a set of 11 scenarios of escalating impact (see TY2KSG, Chapter 14, "Forecasting the Storm"). -- The report details Y2K problems within the US more serious than I had expected and belies the upbeat tone reflected in some of the sound bites I saw at the press conference held this morning by Senators Bennett and Dodd. I'll comment specifically on some of those below. -- I only take serious issue with one comment in the executive summary: "In general, large companies have dealt well with the Y2K problem, due to greater resources." While large companies have certainly spent a lot of money on Y2K, most have started late and have watched budgets and schedules constantly escalate (as the report notes). More on this later. -- The report, while doing an outstanding job of summarizing the committee's research and findings in the sectors covered, makes little attempt to integrate those findings into an overall picture, nor does it address the individual or collective impact of the Y2K problems for those sectors on the national economy. This is probably the single greatest weakness, though it may be a deliberate choice; when you go through all 160+ pages and sum up all the many areas of "grave concern", the result is darker than you might think from the executive summary alone. ' ... bfwa.com

To: flatsville who wrote (4909)	3/21/1999 11:28:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

' o I spoke with Jared Wermiel of the NRC in the corridor about some of the basic physics of nuclear power plants and on site waste storage. Nuclear power requires off site power to cool the core and the stored spent fuel should the plant go black. If the grid is lost, the plant is required to shut down. Jared gave me a few basic facts about the operation of nuclear power plants. The core of a typical megawatt capacity power plant releases in the neighborhood of 6 megawatts of heat during normal operation. In the event of a failure, the plant SCRAMs, which means that the control rods fall (by gravity) into the core, among a number of other actions. The heat production drops exponentially, such that the thermal output within a few hours. Within a day or two, the residual heat production is on par with that required to keep the spent fuel cool, tenths of a megawatt, that is, one hundred, or so, thousand watts of heat to dissipate. To remove this waste heat, recirculation pumps are required. Since it is an open system (with the spent fuel) evaporation losses must be replenished. The power to run these pumps is a fraction of the residual losses. These pumps draw on the order of 2000 gallons per minute; let me call that 8000 liters in 60 seconds or 133 l/s. If I raise that 133 kg of water 50 meters (against gravity, g = 9.8 m/s^2) we have about 6,500 watts to operate a perfectly efficient pump. So call that 10,000 watts. That is in the realm of ordinary generators. You could buy three and use one for backup and one for maintenance. Say you lose all three, the water temperature slowly will rise and boil. (It will boil off in the case of the fuel - taking heat by vaporization and transport.) It will take time. Wermiel indicated it was the order of days. (If we knew the size of the storage vessel, we could estimate it.) The net result is that I am much less concerned about calls for shutting down the nuclear reactors in summer, to allow them time to cool down, just in case. It's not that much of a 'hair trigger.' I think that for reasons of public policy, communication and confidence and for contingency planning, we should audit the plants now (real audits, not paper audits) and have a clear policy by the summer. Since IV&V can take 40 % or more of a Y2k effort, I've just asked to increase the size of the work substantially and I've asked for this late in the game. If the resources simply are not there, we need to tell the public that, as Senator Bennett has said on several occasions, the we are 'flying blind' in this important area, and to describe the contingency plans that we are taking. It will be interesting to see whether there is public debate on this point. Jared also described the NRC Operations Center in Rockville, MD. The NRC has the ability to monitor plant data (they are tied into all of the plant monitoring systems of the nuclear generating stations around the country) remotely. I wish that I had thought to ask him why the Peach Bottom incident on 1 March 1999 was not picked up by the NRC with no monitoring going on for seven hours. I'll follow up and see what I learn. Anyway, this plant has dedicated telecommunications owned by the NRC and is capable of handling 9 disaster situations simultaneously. The drills the NRC plans for y2k are based on a scenario (not a prediction!) of two simultaneous y2k-induced events. A second command center is located in another state. ... tmn.com

To: flatsville who wrote (4909)	3/21/1999 11:53:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

'It's the dead of winter, and you've just arrived home from work. You settle in, warm and cozy, watching the evening news on TV while supper is cooking on the stove. All of a sudden, the power goes out. "Aw, darn," you mutter to yourself. Reluctantly, you jump out of your easy chair, and grab a flashlight from a kitchen drawer. Maybe a breaker tripped. But looking at the breaker box, all seems well. And then you notice the rest of the lights in your neighborhood are out. So, you light a few candles, and rather than a home cooked meal, your family eats sandwiches for supper. You wait for the power to come back on. And you wait. After awhile, the house starts to get cold. Later in the evening, you try to contact the power company to find out how long it's going to be, but there's no dialtone on the phone line (hey, it takes electricity to operate the phone system). And you wait. What if the power didn't come back on by the morning? Or the next morning? Or the morning after that? Could your family survive, if the power to a whole geographic area was knocked for an extended period of time? Forget about Y2k for a moment - think about the natural disasters that occur around the world every year, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, blizzards and ice storms. For example, in early 1998, an ice storm passed through the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canadian provinces. Homes and businesses were without power for up to a month. In those areas, the modern conveniences that people take for granted were suddenly useless. Food preparation, home heating, and yes; simply lighting a dark room at night, became a challenge. ' .... greenspun.com

To: flatsville who wrote (4909)	3/21/1999 11:57:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

greenspun.com

To: flatsville who wrote (4909)	3/21/1999 12:04:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

'FAA Circling on International Flights Federal Aviation Administration officials warned Congress this week that decisions will be needed soon on whether or not U.S. carriers and code-share flights will be allowed to fly to Y2K non-compliant countries. FAA Administrator Jane Garvey testified this week that the International Civil Aviation Organization is gathering the necessary data and "very hard decisions" will be required after June 30. Speaking of June 30, Garvey said FAA systems will be fixed by that date. A General Accounting Office official questioned whether the agency could meet the date and perform an adequate level of testing.' ____________________________ from ITAA Y2k email report ('ITAA's Year 2000 Outlook')