friendica.eskimo.com

Does no one read or watch science fiction?!

For the First Time, Artificial Intelligence Is Being Used at a Nuclear Power Plant

gizmodo.com/for-the-first-timeā€¦

This entry was edited (5 days ago)

I wouldn't be too worried. Most of the legacy plants are analog/ digital hybrids. The SCADA systems might be digital, but the vast majority of the plant and its operations are quite analog.

Now, the new plants... like Georgia Power's Vogtle 3 & 4, with the Westinghouse AP1000 reactors... those are 100% digital.

And here's the worst part.

The systems and network architecture was signed off by the NRC sometime back in 2008-2010 time frame.

And. It. Can't. Change.

Not without going through another VERY expensive recertification process.

Think of all the advancements in IT that have happened in the last 15 years and realize that the the two most recent nuclear reactors to go online in this Country are using IT gear that is 15 years old.

The whole boiling water and pressurized water reactors are dangerous no matter how they are "controlled", because they rely on mechanical devices for safety and mechanics sooner or later will fail. Molten salt reactors are a much safer option, and molten salt breeders even more so as they can fission most of the actinide waste from existing reactors eliminating the long term nuclear waste issue. Unlike boiling water reactors that have to operate at several hundred atmosphere of pressure in order to allow water to remain liquid at a high enough temperature for any sort of thermodynamic efficiency, because of the much higher boiling point of molten salts, such pressurization is not necessary, also they operate with a negative temperature coefficient and thus are self regulating, and lastly they have a safety shutdown mechanism reliant on no mechanics, only physics which makes them inherently safe. And because there is no water in a molten salt reactor to be split into hydrogen and oxygen thus resulting in Fukushima type explosions that sort of failure is also impossible.