Discussion -- perhaps a trollette -- re: upgrades !

[Tim]

Tim:
>> I'd imagine that some of /those/ places would run dual computers in
>> control, and one would automatically fallover to the other.  You'd
>> need that sort of redundancy so that you could perform repairs.

Mikkel L. Ellertson:
> I don't know about other countries, but in the U.S., they not only
> have backup computers, but they have backup control rooms for
> reactors. (In case something happens to the main one, or its control
> links.) They even have duplicate control runs that take different
> routes.

You'd hope they all worked that way...

I've only been inside conventional power stations, one coal/gas fired
station in Australia, and another in Britain (that I can't remember how
it was fueled).  They were certainly memorable occasions.  I've never
been in any other places that literally hummed like they did.  The noise
in the air, the building vibrating, you could even feel the outside
ground humming below your feet.  There's a rumble that permeates
everything, even the extremely sound-isolated control rooms.  Though the
one thing that sticks most in my mind, is that the engineering behind
them is just awesome.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

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