Author Topic: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?  (Read 4417 times)

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Offline AlbertLTopic starter

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For now it's just a simulator - actually a simulation of a simulator if I understand correctly.

Anyway, what I want to know is - can it simulate this? https://youtu.be/nemYBeT4aQY?t=170
 

Offline Cubdriver

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2021, 04:19:41 pm »
I think there are things (like nuclear plant controls) that should probably remain as physical things.  Items such as those 'rotary switches' they were touching, for instance.  In an emergency, you might have to switch a whole row of them.  With physical things, you can look for the first one, get your hand on it and twist, then with minimal if any observation of the control board can then work quickly along the row throwing each in turn while perhaps monitoring something more important.  With a touch panel, you need to look at each to be sure you touch the right spot on the smooth, featureless panel, and then confirm that the control has actually toggled (I admittedly don't know what if any feedback is provided when the controls are actuated, but doubt it'd be as clear as the tactile click you'll feel when turning a physical switch).

And lord help you if the panel BSODs on you, or decides it doesn't like your finger today because it's too dry, or too moist, or...

It strikes me as an interfacing fail, but that's just me - I'm old school and prefer dedicated knobs and switches to soft controls.

-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 

Online Gyro

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #2 on: August 16, 2021, 04:37:52 pm »
Really nice... until the cleaner comes in with his/her trolley and starts cleaning all of the fingerprints off the screens!  :-DD
Best Regards, Chris
 

Offline AlbertLTopic starter

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #3 on: August 16, 2021, 04:55:28 pm »
...and the night-shift operators discover that holding down the Auxiliary Feedwater Pump #1 Start and Stop buttons together for five seconds opens a PornHub.com window.
 
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Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #4 on: August 16, 2021, 05:04:09 pm »
All things have failure modes, and for important stuff you need redundancy and work arounds for when that happens.  I can imagine doing touchscreens for nuclear plant control, but doubt that it would be implemented in a way that would make me feel good.  Dedicated screens for all controls - no nesting or modal presentation of information (having a supervisor panel for observation with nested screens to allow observation of anything is ok, but I don't want an operator to have to page through screens to scram the reactor).  Back up systems that are completely independent on failure modes.  Different hardware, different software and different OS.  And a whole list of other stuff.  By the time the dust settled the old steam gauge approach might end up looking pretty cost effective.  So if it happens it won't be good enough.
 

Offline AlbertLTopic starter

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #5 on: August 16, 2021, 05:33:10 pm »
One thing that's pretty funny - at 1:24 in the video, there's a screen showing ancient electromechanical protective relays and watthour meters.  Imagine programming for a simulation of a technology that's close to 100 years old! 
 

Offline elekorsi

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #6 on: August 16, 2021, 07:22:07 pm »
One thing that's pretty funny - at 1:24 in the video, there's a screen showing ancient electromechanical protective relays and watthour meters.  Imagine programming for a simulation of a technology that's close to 100 years old!
to me it looks like live camera, for the visual confirmation of critical components...
 

Offline BrokenYugo

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #7 on: August 16, 2021, 08:01:07 pm »
I consider touchscreens on anything at or above the importance/death potential of an automobile to be an act of gross negligence.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #8 on: August 16, 2021, 09:30:15 pm »
This seems like such an incredibly dumb idea that it's hard to believe anyone would actually try it. While I hate touchscreens, they work ok for non-critical consumer devices but for anything critical they are a total fail.
 
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Offline tszaboo

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #9 on: August 16, 2021, 09:45:26 pm »
This comes to my mind:


But really, what happens if you accidentally pour coffe on the touchscreen?

It is already bad enough that Renault and Teasla think that placing frequently used functions in a car on a touchscreen in a sub menu.
Like you have to fiddle with it for 30 seconds and drive into a ditch because your window fogged up, and its in the menu, and not on a button on the dash...
 
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Offline duckduck

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #10 on: August 16, 2021, 10:41:04 pm »
They should set it all up as an app on iOS so that they could put all of the control screens on an iPad. Then they could swipe, pinch-zoom, and long-press their way through all of the screens. Since it would already be WiFi-enabled at that point, it wouldn't be much more difficult to set it up so that it could be controlled remotely, even from a Starbucks. "Excuse me, the WiFi password written on the chalkboard behind the counter doesn't seem to be working. Can you please look into that on your break?"
« Last Edit: August 16, 2021, 11:02:46 pm by duckduck »
 

Offline Circlotron

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #11 on: August 17, 2021, 12:05:23 am »
AFAIK nobody does car* braking by wire, so why do they think this is a good idea?

*Trailers sometimes.
 

Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #12 on: August 17, 2021, 12:09:06 am »
I've already said what I thought about touchscreen interfaces.
Using them for anything remotely critical is pure nonsense.
 

Offline langwadt

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #13 on: August 17, 2021, 12:18:54 am »
AFAIK nobody does car* braking by wire, so why do they think this is a good idea?

*Trailers sometimes.

afaiu braking and steering are required to be a mechanical connection
 

Offline AlbertLTopic starter

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #14 on: August 17, 2021, 12:43:24 am »
This comes to my mind:


But really, what happens if you accidentally pour coffe on the touchscreen?

It is already bad enough that Renault and Teasla think that placing frequently used functions in a car on a touchscreen in a sub menu.
Like you have to fiddle with it for 30 seconds and drive into a ditch because your window fogged up, and its in the menu, and not on a button on the dash...

In fact, a lot of nuclear plants have a railing or raised lip at the lower edge of the control consoles for just that reason.  Apparently there have been incidents... 
 

Offline BradC

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #15 on: August 17, 2021, 01:02:07 am »
I'm not a fan of touch screens in control scenarios.

Touch screens remove the tactile cues that are essential to effective motor memory on any form of control. They significantly increase operator workload as the operator can no longer rely on motor memory and must divert conscious attention to ensuring the control surface is in the state they need/want it to be in for the next action.
 

Offline amyk

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #16 on: August 17, 2021, 01:08:23 am »
Everything about it can be summed up in one sentence: Mechanical switches are inherently resistant to radiation.

:-- :palm:
 
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Offline langwadt

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #17 on: August 17, 2021, 01:39:35 am »
I'm not a fan of touch screens in control scenarios.

Touch screens remove the tactile cues that are essential to effective motor memory on any form of control. They significantly increase operator workload as the operator can no longer rely on motor memory and must divert conscious attention to ensuring the control surface is in the state they need/want it to be in for the next action.

that's why I'll never want a touch screen remote control, I can feel where the buttons are so I don't have to look.
I'm surprised they are legal in cars
 

Offline m98

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #18 on: August 17, 2021, 02:11:50 am »
Y'all really thought modern control rooms look like the 60's called and want their panel switches back?
This is much more like it:




 

Offline schmitt trigger

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #19 on: August 17, 2021, 02:27:53 am »
Just when when all the alarms are on, and you are seconds away from performing a Scram, Windows decides that it is dandy time for an update.

Hopefully people understand that I am joking.
« Last Edit: August 17, 2021, 02:31:44 am by schmitt trigger »
 

Offline AaronD

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #20 on: August 17, 2021, 02:45:21 am »
Provided that:
  • It runs on a dedicated system that is designed from the ground up with rock-solid reliability at the forefront and NOT a silicon valley playground!*
  • It actively monitors the system and automatically accounts for any faults that might occur, both in well-engineered (not silicon valley) software and in hardware.
  • It uses a fuel that is inherently safe anyway, that naturally shuts down when it gets hot instead of thermal runaway.**
Then a touchscreen on/off button surrounded by pretty pictures might be just fine as the only human interface.

---

*Microsoft and Apple are both strictly forbidden, along with several others that share the "devs' playground" mindset.

**Yes, those fuels exist; they're just not as energy-dense as what we're using today, and so the middle managers don't like them.
 

Offline AaronD

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #21 on: August 17, 2021, 02:50:13 am »
AFAIK nobody does car* braking by wire, so why do they think this is a good idea?

*Trailers sometimes.

afaiu braking and steering are required to be a mechanical connection

Actually, I believe that there *are* 100% drive-by-wire cars now.  (in addition to the autonomous ones that obviously must be DBW)  Again, THIS IS NOT WINDOWS!  It's produced by real engineers, not script-kiddies.
 

Offline trophosphere

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #22 on: August 17, 2021, 03:20:02 am »
The ventilators I use in the hospital are largely touchscreen operated. That being said, I think for specific critical applications if you have to operate something without looking at it and instead rely on tactile feedback then having mechanical controls would probably be better.
 

Offline AlbertLTopic starter

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #23 on: August 17, 2021, 03:39:14 am »
m98 - Where are those plants located - in Germany?  When were they built?

The most recently-built nuclear plant in the US is Watts Bar Unit 2 in Tennessee, which began service in 2016.  But the control room looks like those in much older plants - discrete switches, lights and instruments, with the screens apparently for display only. (photos here: https://www.tva.com/newsroom/watts-bar-2-project/watts-bar-unit-2-timeline
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: 100% touchscreen nuke control room - improvement or abomination?
« Reply #24 on: August 17, 2021, 04:51:02 am »
Aren't touchscreens common in modern aircraft? The important controls still use physical knobs and switches, however.
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