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#2 - JRL 7251
BBC Monitoring
RUSSIA'S MAIN CLOCK SAID TO BE OBSOLETE AND SLOW - TV
Source: NTV, Moscow, in Russian 1100 gmt 15 Jul 03

(Presenter) Experts say that Russia might find itself lagging behind world technological progress. The country's standard time measurement system has become hopelessly obsolete. (Correspondent Aleksandr Beloglazov) Ships cannot sail the sea, planes cannot fly, space exploration cannot exist and the economy cannot properly run without the data which comes from the standard time device. There is a chance that Russia's standard nuclear clock has become hopelessly obsolete. It is not accurate enough to ensure proper operation of modern military and civil equipment. Several years ago Russia was one of the leading countries in the sphere of time measurement.

(Nikolay Koshelyayevskiy, head of the Standards System laboratory) The accuracy of our state clock is 30 times less than the best time standards in the West.

(Correspondent) Experts are warning the authorities that this state of affairs threatens the country with technogenic disasters and economic chaos. However, the authorities are not taking seriously the threat which is looming.

(Koshelyayevskiy) We are crying out about the problem here, but the more we call out, the less the impact, and they say that the situation cannot be as bad as we make out.

(Correspondent) Another problem is that the keepers of Russia's state time are people of pension age. Young metrology experts have long ago found jobs in the standards laboratories in the USA, Japan and Brazil. In a few years, our country will have no experts able to take accurate readings from its main clock.

(Video shows the time measurement equipment)

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