December 17, 2002	Tuesday	Shawwal 12, 1423

MOSCOW: It’s sure to grab Hollywood moguls searching for a new angle on mayhem and destruction, and the Russians have kindly given them a working title: “Problem 2003”.

This is the year when many experts predict that dilapidated Soviet-era industrial machinery, heating systems, communications, gas and oil pipelines, maybe even nuclear reactors, will finally wear out and start to break down, plunging the country into an endless cycle of so-called technogenic disasters.

“In the first nine months of this year the number of industrial accidents and disasters in Russia rose 33 per cent, and that is an alarming statistic,” Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said recently in an apparent sign that it’s already begun — even if he avoids referring to a specific crisis in 2003.

While it’s acknowledged that the modern age and nature’s wrath now produce an increasing number of disasters globally, the technical variety can arise at a geometric rate in Russia because of the failure to replace and update aging resources.

And not just in remote regions overlooked by maintenance and investment managers. The Moscow Confederation of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs estimates that 60 to 80 per cent of production equipment in the capital is worn out, TV-Tsentr television reported.

Meanwhile, 2003 is also the year that Russia’s annual foreign debt repayments total a thumping 15 billion dollars, leaving little over for modernization or for tackling major accidents that may occur.

As the government also scrabbles to boost defence and security spending as pledged, savings will be likely made in areas like technical safety, including nuclear safety projects, ecologists warn.

“Those are usually the first candidates to be deleted as the past 10-year experience shows,” the Norwegian environmental group Bellona said in a recent report.

Not very reassuring when nuclear power is at stake. Energy policy critics point to two 20-year-old power stations near the northern city of St. Petersburg and on the Kola peninsular by Norway which reach the end of their design lives in 2003 but now look set to keep working.

If experts have pondered the hazards of aging technology for years, fears of a looming crisis were publicly voiced after a short circuit caused an inferno in Moscow’s Ostankino television tower in August 2000.

Built in the 1960s, the 537-metre structure had no automatic fire- extinguishing system.

“This new emergency shows the poor state of our essential facilities and the country as a whole,” said President Vladimir Putin. “Only the economic development of the country can ensure that in future we can avoid such cataclysms.”

But for all the grim prognostications, the public is generally still none the wiser about what to expect. While no one disputes there is a genuine danger, the time frame of the anticipated breakdowns is a mystery in itself.

A cute detail Spielberg or Cameron might like to add in the blockbuster is that the feasible lifespan of many technical components is simply unknown.

Fearful of retribution if their particular element of a system failed or wore out, Soviet designers often built equipment extra robustly so it would last way beyond the designated service period.

One example was the Mir space station, scheduled to fly for five years but which operated three times as long before controllers reluctant burned it up in the atmosphere in 2001, adamant that it was still good for a few more years.

So which is it to be for Russia’s tired, creaking installations and equipment — to chug on indefinitely like Mir, or flare and burn like Ostankino?—dpa