Year
1999
Abstract
The current trend in safeguards area is to deploy instrumentation that has the ability to operate in an autonomous fashion for long periods of time while still having the ability to be operated as a manually operated instrument. This \"dual mode\" concept was first adopted a number of years ago starting with the GRAND developed by Los Alamos and has been proven viable and useful approach to simplifying system design and deployment. While at present, a number of follow-up equipment designs have surfaced, a significant and common deficiency has emerged related to the controlling or \"collect\" computer. Up until now, the Collect Computers have been based on commercial or so called industrial PC based computers. Due to the nature of PC market driving forces, even the best industrial computers are based on the same components used on commercial or home computers, thus reinforcing the well deserved name of Personal Computer or \"PC\". While every effort is made to ensure that the Collect Computer that is selected for safeguards use is the best possible, the PC still suffers from significant problems such as poor thermal management, low MTBF, quick obsolescene of add-on cards and motherboard, high power consumption and poor reliability of operating systems. In recognition of these deficiencies a development project was started as an offshoot of a previous project where a highly integrated VXI based PC-compatible specialized hardware platform is being designed which addresses all of the well known Collect Computer deficiencies and also provides a peripheral set that meets the requirements of a variety of safeguards and SCADA missions. The spin off development consists of a complimentary set of components of which subsets appear similar in concept to commercially available palmtop computers but when combined provide a complete solution for local or dispersed single and multi collect safeguards functions.