Radiation and PLC

40mpg

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Dec 2021
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Oakland, CA
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Hello,


This is a wild thought: Have anyone experienced PLCs(ControlLogix) experiencing unrecoverable fault (solid red OK light) due to radiation bombardment, lets say neutron. And lets say the number of PLCs experiencing the unrecoverable fault is high in the range of 10+ in a short time?


Is this possible?
 
Uh, where are you that this is happening?

This is too specific to be a wild thought.

But yes if the radiation is high enough I can see PLCs dying quickly
 
If it can kill cancer, people and all life forms, I would think it can kill a PLC also.

I also would not want to be there and troubleshoot this one....
 
As a side note, I once had a particular bit of memory, which I checked about 20 different ways that it was not being modified in any fashion by the code, flip states one day and caused some major production issues.



I investigated the code quite thoroughly and could not make heads or tails of how it could have happened. Management wasn't satisfied with an answer of "I have no idea" so requested that I reach out to the manufacturer. I contacted them and their best guess was "cosmic radiation".



After googling a bit it seemed plausible.


This thread lead me to google it again years later and I just read an article about cosmic radiation flipping bits in smartphone memory causing bugs.


Very interesting stuff.



Oh and also if you have that much radiation happening in your facility to make this a regular occurrence, maybe get a Geiger counter or something.
 
Last edited:
Thank you for everyone's input. Yes there are research going back as far as the 80s on fast burst neutrons having an effect on electrical circuits.


What gets me is the amount of energy needed to damage electrical component is certainly high enough to cause health issues to the users.


Oh well, I'll send it back to Rockwell and see what they say. Or I may die of cancer in a week, who knows.
 
The simple answer is "yes, but ten controllers in a short time is a lot so the reason is probably something else".

I have the perspective of dealing with the Hanford Vitrification Plant for a decade. We had a sensible agreement with them that any controller or module or motor that couldn't be safely returned to us wasn't eligible for warranty replacement.

The advent of the L6x controllers with error-correcting memory reduced the failure reports from the Vit Plant significantly. But it was "from one every 3 months to one a year", not "ten failed this month".
 
sure!

Look up the story of a lady who magically received a very specific number extra extra votes in an election, 4096. equal to 2^12.... eventually diagnosed as a SEE*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaZ_RSt0KP8 Good video on Veritasium.


although, I don't doubt high levels of radiation would screw with any unshielded electronics though. energy is energy after all.

I'd imagine the error checking then, and now are much different, and the controller would wipe itself if it found a bit flipped that shouldn't be, basically corrupted memory like it's supposed to.
 

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