Reply To: Competition from the Thorium reactor

[Rematog]

“A purpose built data acquisition and control system would need to be developed to get it to work, however. “

This is referred to as a DCS (Distributed Control System). It would need to be purchased, designed and installed, not “developed”. You can Wiki “Distributed Control System” for background.

DCS hardware is off-the-shelf and available from a number of suppliers, such as Honeywell, Foxboro, Allen Bradly, ABB, Westinghouse, General Electric…

Yes, the system has to be designed, logic written, hardware installed, wiring/fiber pulled and tuning done. The design and logic for each application would be custom, but this is commerically available hardware and services, no problem (if you can pay for it) rough guess for a 100-200 or so FF module site, $5M to $10M installed. Not including the building to put it in.

In addition to control, these systems provide information gathering and storage, alarming (warning that a parameter is outside of set limits) and other services. The same fiberoptic system used for DCS communications can carry information networks and security camera feeds.