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Just note that robots don't work either, because particle radiation has a nasty way of flipping bits stored in memory. In the presence of a strong beta ray sour
by Tuna-Fish 16y ago
Just note that robots don't work either, because particle radiation has a nasty way of flipping bits stored in memory. In the presence of a strong beta ray source, you can treat sram and dram as good sources of truly random data. :)
- varjag 16y agoThere are of course ways to shield from that (as illustrated by spacecraft and common military electronics), but nuclear station damage control robotics is perhaps too niche application to be implemented.
- joegaudet 16y agoAs I understand it, canadian CANDU reactors use a robotic system to perform online refueling. They also use heavy water as a moderator, and burn unrefined uranium / [can] spent fuel from other reactors pretty impressive machines I think.
- Create 16y agoFRAMATOME/AREVA/etc. also. But they don't always work well, as the history of industrial robotic arms from the nuclear business tells us...
- iuytghyjuyh 16y agoEverybody uses a robotic system for refueling - really it's just a crane that seals to each fuel rod tube cap. The problem with CANDU is that you can't operate them with a fast enough fuel cycle to produce weapons grade Pu so they are only economic in nuclear countries that aren't interested in weapons.
- Create 16y agoFNAL, BNL, CERN ...and KEK all use radhard electronics (obviously not everywhere), admittedly on the fringes of your illustrating application areas. Combined, that is already quite a large area, so to my mind parts for tough (damage) control robotics isn't such a niche. But true, small production runs and spares is a real issue (actually, by the time they are really used, they are already obsolete -- but this is why you have upgrade plans :).
- jpk 16y agoIn fact, an article about this was on HN in the not-too-distant past. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2359081 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2359081