The Y2K bug will bite Hanford somewhere.

Andy Wirkkala is sure of that.

But he's expecting only a few cybernetic mosquito bites.

Not computer-killing hordes of gigantic radioactive mutant ants such as those from the 1950s sci-fi movie 'Them'.

Hanford will enter the 21st century with roughly 30 people watching at midnight for what happens when thousands and thousands of "99s" tucked away in the site's computer programs and circuitry click to "00."

Wirkkala, manager of the Department of Energy's Year 2000 Project at Hanford, has spent the past 212 years preparing for that moment - along with a few hundred Hanford workers on full- or part-time basis.

"I'm excited. I wouldn't miss this for anything,"Wirkkala said.

Hanford and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory began brainstorming in 1996 about how to head off problems from the world's most famous computer glitch.

But with countless bits and pieces of computer programming at the site, most of which is intertwined with each other, Wirkkala is sure something got overlooked.

"I think some problems will crop up. I don't think any of them will be serious. ... I would be surprised if we didn't have any failures at all. There are too many systems on the site,"he said.

Hanford has taken all sorts of measures to ensure any computer mishaps will be minor.

Top priorities were put on checking and fixing programs dealing with safety and health matters, followed by environmental and security concerns, followed by everything else. DOE's Washington, D.C., headquarters required numerous reports and checks throughout 1999.

Drills were conducted; the latest was Nov. 18. That drill simulated a very stormy New Year's Eve midnight with power losses in the tank farms area. It helped Hanford's computer people and emergency workers check primary and backup communications systems and tweak responses to problems.

In the past few weeks, at least three minor Y2K glitches surfaced. None actually hurt any safety or environmental matters. All were easily fixed.

One apparently was a computer chip that malfunctioned after the Northwest went from Pacific Daylight Time to Pacific Standard Time. Resetting an internal clock at the tank farms did something to the visual display on a monitor screen, causing it to add an extra month every time the date went from a "9"to a "10."

Consequently, January 2000 showed up early on the visual display for that monitor screen. However, this calendar glitch did not affect anything in the waste tanks. And a new computer chip fixed the problem.

Another glitch occurred when "1999"rolled over to become "1900" instead of "2000"on another system. No data were destroyed. Changing two lines of programming code fixed the problem.

And a computer program that tracks people needing new dosimeters recently began factoring "00"into its calculations. It had to subtract "99"from "00"before downloading names of those people. But the computer protested and stalled, saying "00"is less than "99."

Again, this was easily fixed, Wirkkala said.

For New Year's big night, DOE's national headquarters is setting up a central command post with all its sites, including Hanford, reporting in on Jan. 1 at 1 a.m., 5 a.m., and 9 a.m., and then again on Jan. 2.

At Hanford, about a half-dozen people will staff a command post at the Federal Building, while a couple of dozen more will be scattered strategically across the site.

Then everyone will wait, see if anything goes wrong, then respond to problems.

PNNL will take similar measures.

A wrinkle is that all this activity will occur over a holiday weekend, when most equipment will be shut off. Consequently, more checks will be done before Hanford and PNNL crank up on Monday, Jan. 3.

The Hanford Fire Department and Hanford Patrol will be lined up to cope with any emergencies caused by a Y2K failure. Numerous Hanford engineers, technicians and officials will be reachable by pagers during the weekend.

One worst-case scenario is losing electrical power. Both PNNL and Hanford will have backup generators ready to provide up to three days of power. In fact, Hanford has 36 generators lined up.

Wirkkala said: "No one believes we're going to lose power. But we did not want to be the ones to say that we're taking that risk."