[HN Gopher] Wi-Fi That Can Withstand a Nuclear Reactor: This rec...
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Wi-Fi That Can Withstand a Nuclear Reactor: This receiver chip can
take it
Author : voxadam
Score : 82 points
Date : 2026-04-02 17:05 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| HelloUsername wrote:
| You didn't see wifi on the roof
| robviren wrote:
| For comparison the lifespan of a camera module was about 24-48
| hours for work inside the water of the reactor near the "hot"
| fuel of the reactor. Fields around there were I believe on the
| order of 1000-5000 Rad/hr. Looked like the biggest confetti party
| you ever saw on the image. It was difficult for the encoder
| modules to keep up as well because they compressed so poorly and
| the reactor floors were usually hot and humid with the reactors
| open. I tried to make de-noising algorithms back in the day to
| help smooth out the noise in the reactor. Really hard to make
| electronics work in those places. Turns out constant bit flips
| and ionizing radiation is bad for hardware.
| robotnikman wrote:
| >the lifespan of a camera module was about 24-48 hours for work
| inside the water of the reactor near the "hot" fuel of the
| reactor
|
| Wow, you must have needed many shelves full of replacements
| ready. The whole thing has me curious and full of questions.
|
| How did they even go about replacing them without endangering
| anyone? And why was a camera needed in a place so close that
| they would fail so quickly?
| robviren wrote:
| It was literally a guy's job on the floor to just replace
| modules and other electronics. The equipment itself would not
| become contaminated so it was safe to handle afterwards. It
| just got bombarded by radiation and became useless as a
| camera. Being hit by ionizing radiation does not mean you
| become radioactive. The main issue is if bits of
| contamination would stick to our fancy duct tape we had
| around the cameras.
|
| As for why we needed them it's for a bunch of reasons. This
| is 30 meters down. You gotta inspect welds, replace jet
| pumps, pick crap up that people drop in, pull plugs, help
| guide CRD maintenance. Tons of stuff. You gotta see it all.
| Camera handlers are magical and learn to swim the cameras
| around using puppet like movements. You manipulate these duct
| taped to rope cameras using either the cable or the rope.
| Sometimes we would attach them to stupendously long poles we
| assemble which were also duct taped (this changed
| eventually). The issue is such a long pole is basically a
| pool noodle in terms of handling. Keeping stuff from getting
| stuck and having confidence in where you were was an art. I
| wish I could tell you nuclear inspection used fancy drones
| and super high tech robotics but a ton of the visual side is
| duct taped cameras and talented handlers. Ultrasonic
| inspection is where the robotics took over and where they
| earn their keep. Encoding the position is worth the effort.
| But for visual you can't really get a sub to do much better
| than a guy with a long pole. Haha
| MisterTea wrote:
| A friend works in Brookhaven Labs where his short and thin
| stature made him the perfect candidate for working in the tight
| spaces around the storage ring of RHIC. One of his big jobs is
| changing out radiation cooked wiring harnesses and electronics
| assemblies after accelerator runs.
| deepsun wrote:
| I remember ITER designed internal robotic arms to not have
| electrical components at all, only hydraulics.
| amelius wrote:
| But can it withstand Qualcomm's patent lawyers?
| theamk wrote:
| I don't have full-text access, but from the photo alone, this is
| far from the complete wifi solution. If you look at wifi receiver
| diagram [0], the photo seems to contain "mixer" and "VCO" blocks,
| maybe LNA and filters.. Rest of "frequency synthesizer" is
| possible, but less likely, as it needs much more transistors.
|
| But what's definitely missing is "ADC" and "DSP" parts - you are
| not getting any usable bits out of that chip, the best you can is
| raw analog I and Q signals. You still need a whole bunch of
| complex rad-hard logic to get usable data.
|
| [0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Block-diagram-of-a-
| typic...
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(page generated 2026-04-07 23:01 UTC)