Fewer Computers May Reduce Threat of Failure--or Not

By MAURA REYNOLDS

June 6, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

MOSCOW —

Russia is everyone’s Y2K nightmare--a deteriorating nation with dozens of outdated nuclear power plants and a dangerous arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Although Russia woke late to the danger, though, the fact that it has far fewer computerized systems than most Western countries gives this otherwise backward country a significant advantage in preparing for the triple-zero day.

“In the 1970s, the United States took a giant leap into computers,” said Vyacheslav I. Martinov, vice general director of NPO Mashinostroeniye, a Russian defense contractor working on the problem. “We were late in joining the Information Age. We have no big computer base.”

Most of Russia’s financial and commercial computer systems were installed after the Soviet collapse and are more modern than similar systems in the West. The country has a relatively minor presence on the Internet, and most of its older computers are in small, isolated systems. Moreover, though few ordinary Russians have ever heard of the millennium bug, most specialists have been aware of it for years.

Martinov said he first encountered it in the 1980s when a Russian agency hired an elderly man as a consultant. He was born in 1898, and the computer system balked. “So we added two more digits to the date and that was that,” Martinov said.

Since then, Martinov’s company has developed sophisticated computer programs to seek and destroy two-digit dates hidden in old lines of computer code. It has tried to market the technology to Russians, but all 10 of its clients have turned out to be foreigners, largely Americans. “America is rich, so it’s rich in computers,” Martinov said. “There is no market here for fixing the Y2K problem.”

But that doesn’t mean there’s no problem. And for the most part, it’s in the government’s machinery.

Alexander Krupnov, chairman of the Central Telecommunications Commission, is coordinating the government’s Y2K preparations. An initial assessment last summer indicated it would need about $500 million to fix and upgrade its systems. After a more thorough assessment, he upped that estimate this year to $2 billion to $3 billion--nearly 15% of the federal budget.

Since the government simply doesn’t have that kind of money, Krupnov has urged government agencies to take responsibility for their own computers and seek outside sources of funding, including Western aid.

Krupnov’s list of weak systems is worrisome: fuel supply systems and heating plants, the electric power grid, telephone networks, train dispatching systems, nuclear power stations, the federal aviation system and the Defense Ministry.

But the fact that some systems might have problems does not mean that they will have problems. And it doesn’t mean those problems will be big ones.

Krupnov’s largest fears are for Russia’s corroding infrastructure. In January, when temperatures are likely to be well below freezing, it could be dangerous for residents to be without heat or hot water, which are supplied by central city systems. Telephones could go down, he said, or train schedules interrupted.

However, the chances of any of these problems leading to nuclear Armageddon are minuscule.

In the fields of both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, Russia has fewer automated systems than does the West. At power plants, most of the monitoring systems are mechanical, not computerized.

Moreover, since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the International Atomic Energy Agency has worked to upgrade safety at Soviet-era power plants. The United States has installed improved monitoring systems at about half a dozen Russian plants. As a final precaution, some reactors may be taken offline for a week or two before the end of the year and restarted after Jan. 1.

As a result, U.S. officials who have studied the situation say the danger of a Chernobyl-type accident are “too small to quantify.”

“In fact, the Y2K transition makes such an occurrence even less likely than usual,” one U.S. official said. “Virtually all of the scenarios related to Y2K predict that the most likely failure would result in reactor shutdown . . . not a meltdown.”

Perhaps the greatest fear related to Russia and Y2K is an accidental launch of nuclear weapons. But that is far less likely than any of the other scenarios. Martinov says Russia’s inherent skepticism of computers means launch procedures are not automated to begin with. “At every step there is a person who makes a decision,” he said. “And they will know what day it is.”

Moreover, Russia and the U.S. have agreed in principle to set up an early-warning center for the year-end period to be staffed by both Russians and Americans.

Edward L. Warner, U.S. assistant secretary of defense for strategy, recently led a team of Pentagon experts to Moscow and calls scenarios of an accidental launch “greatly exaggerated.” “Whatever has been their prior attitude, there is no doubt they are taking Y2K very seriously at this point,” he said.

Russians in general remain less alarmed about Y2K. Whereas Americans tend to become distraught when things go wrong, Russians tend to be more fatalistic about technical problems. Russians already live in a world where phones rarely work, where sales clerks use abacuses, where hot water goes out every few weeks.

“If problems crop up, we need to be ready to fix them,” Martinov said. “But I don’t think there will be catastrophes.”

* NO NATION AN ISLAND: The linking of nations’ politics, economics and culture through electronic networks has made the year 2000 problem a truly global issue. A1

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As the World Turns 2000

When the internal time clocks of automated systems worldwide turn over to year 2000, the consequences seem dire for countries that have not prepared. Even those that have done their Y2k homework may suffer minor disruptions, but the less ready could experience widespread and severe interruption of vital services. This map shows the Y2K readiness of various countries, based on a survey released in March.

Level 1: Mostly isolated cases, minor severity

Level 2: Mostly isolated cases, moderate severity

Level 3: A mixture of isolated and regional problems of generally moderate severity

Level 4: A full range of problems, from those that are isolated and minor to those that are widespread and severe

Level 5: No information available

Potential Year 2000 Problems

Power loss/brownouts

Telephone operation disruptions

Natural gas disruptions

Air transportation disruptions

Oil shortages

Shortages of certain foods