Software Update Shuts Down Nuclear Power Plant

Garabito writes "Hatch Nuclear Power Plant near Baxley, Georgia was forced into a 48-hour emergency shutdown when a computer on the plant's business network was rebooted after an engineer installed a software update. The Washington Post reports, 'The computer in question was used to monitor chemical and diagnostic data from one of the facility's primary control systems, and the software update was designed to synchronize data on both systems. According to a report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, when the updated computer rebooted, it reset the data on the control system, causing safety systems to errantly interpret the lack of data as a drop in water reservoirs that cool the plant's radioactive nuclear fuel rods. As a result, automated safety systems at the plant triggered a shutdown.' Personally, I don't think letting devices on a critical control system accept data values from the business network is a good idea."

Comments

One begs the question

[jo42]

Was it running a Microsoft by-product or not?

Re:One begs the question

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, it's not like it matters if we just chop and change the language to suit ourselves. It's not like we all agreed on meanings in order to communicate specific ideas.

From now on, I'm going to refer to my monitor as a CPU, and my computer as a hard drive. No need to be so pedantic, right?

Moron.