The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is asking the operators of America’s 66 nuclear power plants to voluntarily upgrade the on-site monitoring systems that report plant conditions to the government.The NRC notes several advantages to doing away with dial-up. For one, in a crisis all the plants could report data to the NRC’s Maryland headquarters simultaneously, without the hassle of busy signals. In addition, “The use of modems inherently introduces cyber security vulnerabilities to the systems to which they are attached.”The ERDS ties into plant computer systems to give the NRC’s 24-hour Operations Center a “near real-time” view of plant conditions around the country, according to NRC regulations — including reactor core and coolant conditions, and radioactivity release rates.Next year, I hear they’re getting cable.