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US Nuclear Power Enters the Digital Age

Posted by timothy on from the up-down-up-down-a-b-b-b-a dept.

An anonymous reader writes "South Carolina's Oconee Nuclear Station will replace its analog monitoring and operating controls with digital systems, as part of a $2 billion plant upgrade by its owner, Duke Energy. It will become the first nuke plant in the US to use digital controls, and its upgrade may be quickly followed by others. The main driver for the move is cost savings; worries about reliability and hackers have been the reason digital systems haven't been adopted sooner."

10 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Duke Energy Forever by Tau+Neutrino · · Score: 4, Funny

    And they said it would never arrive...

    --
    Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
    1. Re:Duke Energy Forever by jd · · Score: 3, Funny

      What about the Nukem part? :)

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  2. Great timing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    So let me get this straight. Before, they were too worried about hackers, but now, they feel it's perfectly safe to do this?

    Let me guess. They're installing Windows XP, too.

    1. Re:Great timing. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

      We wouldn't want to fall behind Iran...

    2. Re:Great timing. by jon.siebert1 · · Score: 1, Funny

      no, Sony is going to take care of the security.

    3. Re:Great timing. by Iamthecheese · · Score: 5, Funny

      Windows XP was a stable, hugely popular operating system that has had over a decade of bug and security patches. Give me XP over the latest xnix flavor any day.

      --
      If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
  3. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Absolutely nothing. We went with the proven nuclear-industry reliability of Siemens(tm)(r) brand PLC hardware. Absolutely nothing could go wrong.

  4. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by dotancohen · · Score: 5, Funny

    And do you know what we would call the catastrophic failure event in which Duke Energy might irradiate a large swath of land? Hint: it includes the word Nukem!

    --
    It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
  5. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I hear they're going to shovel hippies into furnaces.

  6. I don't get it... by inthealpine · · Score: 3, Funny

    Don't network any of the systems. That's it. Problem solved.
    Watch the first season of Battlestar Galactica and you have a design model for the cost of a netflix subscription.

    --
    "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"