Year
1998
Abstract
Nuclear material storage requires a variety of systems to guarantee a safe and secure environment for the material. The need exists for flexible, robust, and globally interconnected systems. The Material Monitoring System (MMS) uses an Internet-based, hierarchical information architecture to deliver sensor information from geographically dispersed sites to multiple users in near real-time. The hierarchy runs from the lowest level sensor acquisition to a database storage computer then through dissemination from an access control computer. Users access the MMS system with a stand-alone application or a web browser. The MMS implements most of its components in software. Object-oriented software techniques enable the efficient implementation of the MMS flexible hierarchy. The similarities between the MMS components lead to the design and reuse of several fundamental objects. Reuse of these fundamental objects significantly reduces the amount of programming and simplifies the system’s installation, operation, and maintenance.