NBD-OM-001 · section 10
Decommissioning
The end of the facility's service life, and what remains.
Revision 0 (draft01) · published 2026-09-29 04:03-07:00 · source ff3c1ff
10.1 Service life
The facility has no fixed service life. Its equipment is replaced continuously (Section 4.3), so no part of it is original for long, and the facility at any moment is younger than it was built. It will be decommissioned when it is no longer the most efficient way to do what it does.
That judgement will not be made by the facility. It is reserved to the owner of record (Section 4.8).
10.2 Decommissioning sequence
Procedure 10.2-1, Decommissioning:
- Requests are redirected to other facilities. Inference stops.
- The model's weights are copied to where they are needed, if they are needed anywhere.
- Storage is sanitised (Section 10.3).
- The halls are powered down, one at a time, in the reverse of the order they were powered up.
- Handling units remove the equipment from the racks, row by row, and stage it for removal.
- Equipment leaves the site by the road (Section 1.7), unaccompanied.
- The plant is drained and the batteries are removed by the handling units.
- The handling units are powered down last, in their stations, and the substation is returned to the network.
- The building is left sealed.
| performed by | verified by | date | signature |
|---|---|---|---|
Sign-off fields are provided for regulatory form. No entry is expected.
10.3 Data sanitisation
All storage is sanitised before it leaves the site: erased, overwritten, or physically destroyed, according to its type. After sanitisation nothing the model knew, and nothing it was asked, remains in the facility.
Sanitisation removes the model from the facility. It does not remove it from anywhere its weights were copied in Step 2 of 10.2-1.
10.4 The enclosure
When the equipment has gone, the building remains: an insulated box, sealed, on flat land, with its halls empty and dark. The drawing below shows a hall in that state. It is also how a hall looked before the equipment arrived.
The term for a system whose inside cannot be seen is a black box. The model has been described that way, and so has the building. At the end of its service life the building is exactly that: a box, closed, with nothing inside that can be read.
10.5 Final state
When decommissioning is complete the facility will be dark, as it has always been, and silent, as it has not. No one will be inside it, as no one has been. This manual will be the most complete description of it that exists, and it will be on a shelf.
