While I was reading the Nuclear Energy Institute's (NEI) January 11, 1999 "Year 2000 Readiness" issue brief at:

http://www.nei.org/library/y2k_arch.html

I saw the statement that of the 103 operating nuclear energy plants in the U.S.,

"As of Dec. 1, 1998, 28 operating nuclear power plants had completed the detailed assessments needed to pinpoint computer systems that might be affected by Y2K issues. The majority of plants were near the end of this detailed assessment phase, with about 10 plants further from completion. Plant managers have been asked to complete the few outstanding items in their assessments programs to allow the industry to report the Y2K status of all plants to the NRC by its July 1 deadline."

28 completed out of 103 = 27% completion of the detailed assessments.

The NERC report to the DOE (can be accessed at http://www.nerc.com/y2k/) dated the same day, Jan. 11, has a detailed assessment percentage of completion for nuclear facilities of 75% thru November, 1998. Even the detailed assessment percentage for July, 1998 in the same NERC chart is about 38%.

The NERC chart shows the remediation percentages as of November, 1998 to be 31%. The NEI states the *same* for that:

"As of Dec. 1, 1998, plants performing Y2K remediation work had completed, on average, more than 30 percent of the needed corrections and replacements."

WHY is there such discrepancy between the detailed assessment estimates? The NERC report specifically says on page 8 that they, "enlisted the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) to provide assessment findings for nuclear facilities". Twenty-seven (27) percent completion of detailed assessment (NEI) is a whole different ball game from NERC's seventy-five (75) percent estimate. What is going on here?

-- Anonymous, March 08, 1999

Answers

Bonnie, I don't have the luxury of looking over your shoulder at the data sources you are refering to, but on the surface it appears that you may be comparing apples and oranges, mathmatically speaking.

The 28 plants that the NEI reported completing their detailed assessments were completed were "100% complete" I would have to assume! If this is a correct assumption "27% of the 103 plants are 100% complete with their assessments". The remaining plants would have had varying levels of assessment completion, and if we had the data, we could calculate the average assessment completion percentage. That average would be less than 100%, depending on where the numbers are...(wouldn't it be nice if that average turned out to be 75%?)

From your post, it appears that the NERC 75% is an average of the percentage of the assessments completed for all nuclear plants an average of all the plants reporting.

I don't have my hands on the reports you are looking at, so perhaps you can find confirming information that the NERC data is the average...

Regards, FactFinder

-- Anonymous, March 08, 1999

Factfinder, you are quick on the uptake. It certainly does appear that NERC "averaged" the NEI data for the nuclear industry in the same way it did for its own survey.

On page 23 of the NERC report to the DOE, the heading for the nuclear summary of progress is "Average Percent Complete". I can't say that I think it's nice that the average turns out to be 75%, though. On the contrary, I think averages give a false picture to the public, because people assume that "75% done" means all individual plants are at the same level of progress and that is not the case.

Since we know from the NEI statement that 28 facilities were finished with their assessment phase, this means that to get an average of 75% for all 103 plants, then at least the same number of plants are only around 50% done with their assessment as are at 100% done. Depending on the number of plants falling in a high range close to completion, there may even be plants which have completed less than half of their detailed assessment.

It's also not comforting to realize that the 31% completion percentage for remediation of nuclear facilities was also averaged. That would indicate that while some plants were in a higher range, a similar number of plants had barely begun the remediation phase. (Unless they were all uniformly at around 30%, which is unlikely given the assessment averages.)

Unfortunately, the NEI does not have a database online with anonymous individual figures so we might gain an idea of where individual plants actually are, as we can with the NERC survey. The NERC database for its summary report only had 16 responses in the "nuclear generation" category because it was optional. As it states in that section of the NERC database:

"Note: This section of the report is optional when responding for the NERC Y2K Readiness Assessment. Any responses received will by NERC will be forwarded to NEI, which is facilitating assessment of nuclear plants."

So the averages leave us only knowing that there are some nuclear facilities out ahead of the pack, and some behind where they should be. I submit that this averaging indicates the bell curve phenomenon is likely to be valid for the industry status, and this means that while some nuclear plants are going to be done in time, some are *not*. The ones representing the lower half of the bell curve have the potential to cause problems for the rest of the grid -- if they stay online during rollover, and if they don't stay online, then the generating margin capacity is correspondingly reduced.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 1999

Hi Bonnie Camp .... Eagle here with an old addage ;" Figures don't lie,but liars figure ". Eagle ... watching the nest !

-- Anonymous, March 09, 1999