6 ms·

Inside a Nuclear Control Room

21 points by NaOH 14y ago

smoyer 14y ago
That looks familiar ... In the '80s, I built equipment for Westinghouse's nuclear systems division and love the view of the synchroscopes.
- ScotterC 14y ago
  The good old days of Westinghouse. I left there two years ago and all Westinghouse consists of now is the Nuclear division :) A whole lot of subgroups within that though of course.
- joezydeco 14y ago
  Rondout, IL sound familiar to you? =)
illamint 14y ago
Growing up I really wished that I could work on things like that: I love switches, knobs, dials, klaxons, etc. but the best I have is vim and a command line. Obviously usability can be improved but I'll still lament the decline of big clunky switches and blinkenlights.
ghshephard 14y ago
Unfortunately (particularly for those of us with 30" monitors) they don't have a full screen option like the amazing Mars Gigapan: http://gigapan.com/gigapans/113071 http://gigapan.com/gigapans/113071 Edit: Found it - Awesome on a big monitor http://gigapan.com/gigapans/73573 http://gigapan.com/gigapans/73573
dmfdmf 14y ago
I've worked at this plant, I've been in that control room during a refuel outage. I was there back in the 90's to install some feedwater pump vibration monitoring equipment when I worked for GE as an engineer. Later went on to design feedwater (level) control systems for other plants. Brings back some great memories. Edit: I'm just hanging out listening to Giants/Dodgers... if anyone has any questions on the control panel systems, acronyms, etc fire away, I'll try and answer if I can. One memory was the all the acronyms I used to know. AMA
waraey 14y ago
I really hope they plan to change the user and pass they have printed on two seperate labels on the computer on the right wall near the keyboard
- quanticle 14y ago
  Why would they? That computer isn't hooked up to a network, and there's a very small probability that Joe Random Hacker would be able to talk his way into a nuclear control room.
  - caf 14y ago
    Also, it's a simulator control room.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    They blurred out the 345KV error annunciator panel and the names of the contacts on the phones , so clearly they tried to censor some stuff. A password seems like a logical candidate that was simply forgotten.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Very cool, my daughter was an operator on the Reed research reactor [1] and its control room is a lot simpler :-) Of course as an operations guy these days I see all those cool status panels and think it would be fun to pick some up for work. Then to find the gal who did the voice overs for Starcraft "There is a packet anomaly in router one, there is a packet anomaly in router one." :-) [1] http://reed.edu/reactor/ http://reed.edu/reactor/
mikesmullin3 14y ago
somebody needs to introduce a touch screen and some LCD displays to these people.
- jonmrodriguez 14y ago
  more complex software is more likely to be buggy
- tarre 14y ago
  In nuclear power plants you just don't walk in and install new equipment. When upgrading control room to digital, you pretty much also need to upgrade the automation of the plant to be digital and qualifying it to be used in NPP is a real nightmare. In mainstream software markets you can always release bugfixes and add new features afterwards. In NPP your system must work the right way in every possible situation right from the start. I don't think, there are many software companies writing fail-safe programs of that size. And what's even more difficult, you have to prove it to be fail-safe to the regulators.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > I don't think, there are many software companies writing fail-safe programs of that size. And what's even more difficult, you have to prove it to be fail-safe to the regulators. That's not possible. It is not possible to prove a nontrivial program to be fail-safe, any more than it is possible to prove a nontrivial axiomatic system to be internally consistent -- and for the same reason: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. The Turing Halting Problem, and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems, are deeply connected. The second cannot be resolved because the first cannot be resolved. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6dels_incompleteness_theorems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6dels_incompleteness_theo... A quote: "The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an "effective procedure" (e.g., a computer program, but it could be any sort of algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the relations of the natural numbers (arithmetic). For any such system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that such a system cannot demonstrate its own consistency." (Emphasis added.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem A quote: "Alan Turing proved in 1936 that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for all possible program-input pairs cannot exist. A key part of the proof was a mathematical definition of a computer and program, what became known as a Turing machine; the halting problem is undecidable over Turing machines." (Emphasis added.)

21 points by NaOH 14y ago

That looks familiar ... In the '80s, I built equipment for Westinghouse's nuclear systems division and love the view of the synchroscopes.

ScotterC 14y ago
The good old days of Westinghouse. I left there two years ago and all Westinghouse consists of now is the Nuclear division :) A whole lot of subgroups within that though of course.
joezydeco 14y ago
Rondout, IL sound familiar to you? =)

illamint 14y ago

Growing up I really wished that I could work on things like that: I love switches, knobs, dials, klaxons, etc. but the best I have is vim and a command line. Obviously usability can be improved but I'll still lament the decline of big clunky switches and blinkenlights.

ghshephard 14y ago

Unfortunately (particularly for those of us with 30" monitors) they don't have a full screen option like the amazing Mars Gigapan: http://gigapan.com/gigapans/113071 http://gigapan.com/gigapans/113071 Edit: Found it - Awesome on a big monitor http://gigapan.com/gigapans/73573 http://gigapan.com/gigapans/73573

dmfdmf 14y ago

I've worked at this plant, I've been in that control room during a refuel outage. I was there back in the 90's to install some feedwater pump vibration monitoring equipment when I worked for GE as an engineer. Later went on to design feedwater (level) control systems for other plants. Brings back some great memories. Edit: I'm just hanging out listening to Giants/Dodgers... if anyone has any questions on the control panel systems, acronyms, etc fire away, I'll try and answer if I can. One memory was the all the acronyms I used to know. AMA

waraey 14y ago

I really hope they plan to change the user and pass they have printed on two seperate labels on the computer on the right wall near the keyboard

quanticle 14y ago
Why would they? That computer isn't hooked up to a network, and there's a very small probability that Joe Random Hacker would be able to talk his way into a nuclear control room.
- caf 14y ago
  Also, it's a simulator control room.
- jrockway 14y ago
  They blurred out the 345KV error annunciator panel and the names of the contacts on the phones , so clearly they tried to censor some stuff. A password seems like a logical candidate that was simply forgotten.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Very cool, my daughter was an operator on the Reed research reactor [1] and its control room is a lot simpler :-) Of course as an operations guy these days I see all those cool status panels and think it would be fun to pick some up for work. Then to find the gal who did the voice overs for Starcraft "There is a packet anomaly in router one, there is a packet anomaly in router one." :-) [1] http://reed.edu/reactor/ http://reed.edu/reactor/

mikesmullin3 14y ago

somebody needs to introduce a touch screen and some LCD displays to these people.

jonmrodriguez 14y ago
more complex software is more likely to be buggy
tarre 14y ago
In nuclear power plants you just don't walk in and install new equipment. When upgrading control room to digital, you pretty much also need to upgrade the automation of the plant to be digital and qualifying it to be used in NPP is a real nightmare. In mainstream software markets you can always release bugfixes and add new features afterwards. In NPP your system must work the right way in every possible situation right from the start. I don't think, there are many software companies writing fail-safe programs of that size. And what's even more difficult, you have to prove it to be fail-safe to the regulators.
- lutusp 14y ago
  > I don't think, there are many software companies writing fail-safe programs of that size. And what's even more difficult, you have to prove it to be fail-safe to the regulators. That's not possible. It is not possible to prove a nontrivial program to be fail-safe, any more than it is possible to prove a nontrivial axiomatic system to be internally consistent -- and for the same reason: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. The Turing Halting Problem, and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems, are deeply connected. The second cannot be resolved because the first cannot be resolved. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6dels_incompleteness_theorems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6dels_incompleteness_theo... A quote: "The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an "effective procedure" (e.g., a computer program, but it could be any sort of algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the relations of the natural numbers (arithmetic). For any such system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that such a system cannot demonstrate its own consistency." (Emphasis added.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem A quote: "Alan Turing proved in 1936 that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for all possible program-input pairs cannot exist. A key part of the proof was a mathematical definition of a computer and program, what became known as a Turing machine; the halting problem is undecidable over Turing machines." (Emphasis added.)