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First millennium bug test

KIEV: Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant, site of the world's worst nuclear energy catastrophe in 1986, passed its first millennium bug best as the year 2000 set in without problem, a duty engineer told AFP.

"The reactor number three is functioning normally and everything has gone very well," Oleksandr Olekseyuk said by telephone. Chernobyl's reactor number four went into meltdown on April 26, 1986, spreading a radioactive cloud over much of Europe and claiming between 3,000 and 12,000 lives, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Reactor number two was shut down in 1991 after a fire and reactor number one was taken out of service in 1996 as part of an international agreement to decommission the plant.

Reactor number three, the last still working, was restarted last month after a malfunction forced a new one-week shutdown. AFP