Lets clear up some misconceptions

[Brian Kelsay]

jlamar7 at comcast.net wrote:

>Regarding Microsoft operating systems, control software,
>and nuclear power plants:
>
>I don't know if any nuclear plants run Windows-based control
>systems.  Honeywell DCS control systems run Windows NT on the
>operator stations.  These are commonly used in chemical
>plants for plantwide process control.  I'm not sure if the
>backend containing the data acquisition and control systems runs
>Microsoft or a proprietary operating system, but the operator
>interface stations do run Windows.
>  
>
I once worked for a food additives manufacturing company here in town 
and they had NT 4.0 monitoring reactors.  But not nuclear reactors.  It 
was some sort of processing reactor where beets got boiled/burned  and 
chemicals extracted and added to other chemicals, making mono and 
di-glycerides (they are in everything that is baked).  What was really 
interesting is that what really controlled things like the valves and 
the reaction mixture were PLCs.  Programmable Logic Controllers.   They 
were just able to monitor and visualize the whole system under NT.  It 
could have fairly easily been ported to Linux.  I read in Linux Journal 
about six months ago that one company was doing just that.

-- 
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Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.