Did you happen to see this Article regarding the first Nuclear Power Plant going digital? (I found it interesting in regard to the subject matter of your book)

Nuclear plant becomes 1st in US to go digital
By JEFFREY COLLINS, Associated Press – 4 days ago

SENECA, South Carolina (AP) — The digital revolution is finally reaching America’s nuclear power plants.

Sometime in the next few weeks, technicians will finish installing digital controls for the operating and safety systems of a nuclear plant reactor in western South Carolina, a move being closely watched by other nuclear complexes.

In a nation where a digital blender can be bought for about $30 at Walmart, the Oconee Nuclear Station reactor will be the first of the 104 reactors in the United States not controlled with the same analog technology that brought the world cassette tapes.

While digital control of nuclear plants is widespread in Europe and Asia, the U.S. has been on the sidelines as the digital revolution has brought Americans iPods for their music, movies that stream to their cell phones over the Internet and tiny computers connected to satellites to help them find the store that sells those things.

It has taken U.S. nuclear power plants so long to go digital because regulators wanted assurances the new control systems were as reliable as the old ones and could not be compromised by hackers.

“The systems in the plants right now, they are doing an excellent job. The plants are very safe — they’ve been doing their jobs for years,” said Joe Naser, technical executive with the Electric Power Research Institute.

The goal of going digital is to save money. Most systems in a nuclear power plant are monitors with four sensors. If two of them have out-of-whack readings, engineers often have to “trip” the plant, or shut it down, until the problem is resolved. If a nuclear plant sits idle for a day, it can cost a utility company more than $2 million. That isn’t spare change, even for a company like North Carolina-based plant operator Duke Energy, which earned $1.3 billion in 2010.

Unlike a human engineer, who can only take in one measurement at a time from one instrument, the digital system takes in thousands of readings at any moment. The computer can instantly figure out if a sensor is broken and ignore it.

“Those utilities need to keep those plants running. To have unplanned outages as a result of an analog system isn’t doing what we need it to do — that’s a financial risk,” said Jere Jenkins, director of Radiation Labs at Purdue University.

The nuclear plant digital systems will provide operators with much more data about plant operations and a level of precision impossible with an analog system, which often requires the movement of components to get things done.

Other utilities are closely watching. The youngest nuclear plant in the U.S. went online with analog controls in 1996, the same year DVDs were introduced in Japan. More than half of the nation’s nuclear power plants are at least 30 years old, and only three have come on since 1990.

“It’s to the point where you can’t replace that equipment anymore,” Jenkins said.

Other nuclear power plants will likely follow Oconee’s lead as soon as they can afford it if the conversion goes well, said David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“There are a lot of eyes on that. If it goes well, you’ll probably see many people in the queue making it happen. If it doesn’t go well, they are going to wait for Duke Energy to iron out the kinks,” Lochbaum said.

The operators at Oconee Nuclear Station will likely encounter a few unexpected glitches as the new system is put in place, but they should all be minor because of extensive testing, Lochbaum said.

Also, Duke Energy said it made sure its engineers can manually take over all digital processes in case there are any problems.

One of the biggest concerns of regulators was worries the software used to run the new controls might be hacked from outside the plant. Documents given to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission show Duke Energy’s software provider designed a system with no external network connections. Any communication between the reactor operators and the system is heavily restricted and must be authorized by plant operators.

The new control system at Reactor 1 is part of $2 billion in upgrades that Duke Energy is making to keep its three reactors at the station, which opened in the early 1970s, run safely for the next 30 years. The control panel installation coincides with a planned refueling outage. Reactor 2 will get its new digital panel during next year’s refueling, and an upgrade at Reactor 3 is scheduled for 2013. The new panels alone for all three reactors cost $250 million.

Oconee Nuclear Station’s reactor operators have spent months training on an exact replica of what the new control panel will look like. And it looks a lot like the old system.

“One of the goals is to make operators’ life, I won’t say easy, but to make operators more focused on the primary aspects of the job. Just like an airline pilot, you want him to focus on flying the airplane — you don’t want him spending all day trying to get the cabin pressure right,” said Jeff Hekking, a senior reactor operator who helped test the new system.

During a recent simulation, Hekking and two other operators dealt with a problem with the water that cools the reactor and keeps the nuclear reaction in check. Dinging bells, similar to what someone would use in old movies to summon a hotel bellhop, mark when things first go off kilter. The engineers stay back and let the situation get worse. Dozens of tiny red rectangle lights turn green as the control rods fall back into the reactor core to stop the nuclear reaction. Warning sirens sound, but they are subdued wails, not shrieking claxons.

The engineers then start to control the situation, pushing buttons and pulling levers. Commands are double-checked and repeated to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Reactor operators work on 12-hour shifts. At least three are in the control room of each reactor at all times, even eating their lunches at the gray desks behind flat-screen monitors. Others are doing maintenance, checking components or other tasks, but can be brought into the room if needed.

Hekking, 40, has been a reactor operator for 19 years and is used to working with components manufactured around the time when he was born alongside some of the latest technology, like the control panels being put into place at Oconee.

“Nuclear is a really interesting world,” Hekking said. “We have both the oldest and the newest and coolest.”

Jeffrey Collins can be reached at http://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

These are the 22 paired copying and 2 sex chromosomes, 26,0000+ genes on those chromosomes and the mitochondria that work with the genes.
Included is the bubble memory containment of the cell wall and the nucleus storage device for memory and instructions. The female set of 23 chromosomes and the male 23 chromosomes combining into 46 at conception create life and a ‘spark’ to begin startup for new little complete computer and manufacturing system that function from conception to death.

The conception ‘Spark’ begins a sequencing time clock, architectural plan, manufacturing plant with routing mapping device, with the most complete set of instructions ever known. These DNA instructions contain the most sophisticated processes for creating life processes that obviously took millions of years to evolve. The processes for copying the sets of 23 chromosomes and genes and checking them for division and reproduction to make all the parts needed in a human body in a 13 week period continues to make this process more than just chance. It contains ‘intelligent design’.

Each cell is its own little computer system which copies, divides and carries the above along on a logged time line. At the end of the 13 week time period in the development of the computer system it is complete with construction. From week 14 to 40 it is detailing and finishing the final instructions and the 9 month time a complete process is ready for environmental operation. This is birth and detachment.

This greatest computer system in the universe has it’s own zero point or ‘free’ energy sources that are ever changing and adapting from conception to death. The free power comes from the atmosphere (oxygen) for breathing and water is essential for fluids.

In reality it is water powered with hydrogen and oxygen which is a part of water when separated into the two. Without either water or oxygen a human dies quickly.

Basically it is a self powered low voltage circuit system that eventually makes its own brain waves and powers its secure network. It has no batteries or requires no external power supplies. It utilizes what energy sources or building materials it needs from the earth environment for everything. It contains its own language or instructions (the DNA Genome map) from the architectural plan and manufacturing processes.

It physically builds everything it needs for human parts and fluids from its own acquired or manufactured chemicals and makes itself within itself with the materials it needs and has. That’s just for starters! It routes and maps in sequential time all parts and fluids needed. This includes the single function items (heart, brain, nose, mouth, sex organs etc.). Dual function items (eyes, ears, kidneys lungs, arms, legs, lips) that are mirrored for right side and left side functions. Multiple functioned items (fingers, toes, teeth, hair, bones, muscles, tendons, nails etc.).

We start at conception with the fertilization of the egg and the sperm and the “spark” to begin this new computer system based on previous replicated models already functionally available from mommy and daddy. Mommy designs and constructs more than daddy each new little computer system development all over again in reproduction of another one.

Even the most quantum or super computer cannot or will not ever reproduce itself with an offspring in its own image from a free energy source and put a life span on it. Why? It would take at least a million years or longer to do so.

The “Spark” moment starts with sperm penetration of the egg and the internal timing clock (biological) which has to be there to control the sequences for construction. This clock runs the entire life cycle in nearly perfect coordinated time from birth to death.

Where it is located is probably in a nucleus as that is the first item that divides, so the time piece is more than likely to be there. This biological time clock may or may not always be in perfect sync with all cells at all times, hence the changes for late developers and early developers in some humans. The biological clock has to be sequentially coordinated with all cell development and route mapping or construction is screwed up.

Once this time piece is started it is used by every cell for every step of construction. It has to be this way and is probably regulated down to small parts of a second. The time sync cannot be modified in the instructions unless one knows the program code – only stopped by death. Once the time piece is started it runs at a specific rate forever (aging) until death. We believe some clocks run faster or slower than others.

Diona