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Nuclear Reactor Simulator

dalton-nrs.manchester.ac.uk

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Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#51

Post by Obscurity4340 »

dekhn wrote: post #50
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest beef with nuclear (and I've always said this) is its just so unsexy. No mushroom shapes, no passionate explosions followed by restful oblivion at the end. Its just reliable and faithful and keeps on pluggin' away. I like to live a little dangerously, and you should too!

Nuclear isn't just reliable and faithful and just keeps on plugging away- the modern reactor designs require extraordinary engineering to be reliable and require continuous maintanence and monitoring.

That too, I don't normally indulge in high-maintenance ;)

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#54

Post by tiffanyg »

niekze wrote: post #41

Former US Navy submarine nuclear reactor operator here. Adjusting the steam output was kind of strange. On a submarine, the steam used to propel the submarine dwarfs all the other steam loads. As a result, there's a throttleman who controls that. Even though this simulation is simplified, it's not too bad. It does hide some of the really interesting aspects of a water cooled/moderated nuclear reactor. The most intere…

Thank you so much for sharing that! Beautiful / elegant and simple!

It's been decades since I looked at any of the details involved in any of the various types of reactors that have been designed. When I did, in the past, I hadn't even encountered concepts like "control theory" or spent any time with the subject matter of "systems engineering" or even "chemical engineering". I.e., areas where you start thinking about how to combine all of the different simple "laws"* and properties and such of energy and matter to create "robust" (ideally) or even just practical "systems".

Although I had read about the Chernobyl disaster, and "run-away" that occurred - the massive volumes of water being pumped in, partly as a result of such levels, at near boiling ... the steam voids, etc. I'm not entirely sure whether I really encountered the point about temperature and density, but, certainly, it didn't 'click' quite the way it did now when I read your description.

I love this kind of stuff - the "how it all fits together" from what can otherwise be these seemingly dry / 'dead' "laws" and such that can seem too simple / narrow / etc. to do much of use with - even if your teachers spend as much time as possible giving you homework questions etc. that certainly seem practice-oriented - but who gives a rat's-keister about whether comparing the weight of a duck to a putative witch might establish flammability and hence witchcraft when they're 15, right? ;)

* Simplified models describing various types of matter and physical processes - models that are valid (for some definition of ... as the mathematicians &/ Humpty-Dumpty [Alice in Wonderland / Lewis Carroll] might say) given certain assumptions / pre-conditions (on scale, frame of reference, etc.)

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#55

Post by ok_dad »

tiffanyg wrote: post #54
niekze wrote: post #41

Former US Navy submarine nuclear reactor operator here. Adjusting the steam output was kind of strange. On a submarine, the steam used to propel the submarine dwarfs all the other steam loads. As a result, there's a throttleman who controls that. Even though this simulation is simplified, it's not too bad. It does hide some of the really interesting aspects of a water cooled/moderated nuclear reactor. The most intere…

Thank you so much for sharing that! Beautiful / elegant and simple! It's been decades since I looked at any of the details involved in any of the various types of reactors that have been designed. When I did, in the past, I hadn't even encountered concepts like "control theory" or spent any time with the subject matter of "systems engineering" or even "chemical engineering". I.e., areas where you start thinking about…

The Chernobyl disaster was partly because the design was graphite moderated, which does not have the safety that water does since it’s not self regulating due to the GPs explanation about that above. When the reactor started to go supercritical, it was reinforced by the moderator working better to create more neutrons, the opposite of what you’d want.

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#56

Post by djmips »

alyandon wrote: post #48
djmips wrote: post #29

This is cool and takes me back to one of the first cool sim games I ever played as a child. Muse software's Three Mile Island for the Apple II. Mastery of this sim was an amazing feeling at the time. Manual https://archive.org/details/ThreeMileIslandAppleIIManual Game (Note view 7 save/reset state seems to be broken - avoid) https://archive.org/details/a2_Three_Mile_Island_Special_Ver...

Was that the one where you had to perform maintenance on the heat exchanger and coolant loops to prevent fouling?

Yes, planning maintenance out into the future was a huge part of mastering the sim.

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#57

Post by KomoD »

user_7832 wrote: post #27
FergusArgyll wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% I wrote: city: noneof email: yourbusiness@gmail.com

Did you miss the skip button, or hover your cursor over why they ask for the information? The website is of a university, not Facebook. I doubt overworked/underpaid researchers have any interest in tracking people.

> have any interest in tracking people

Yet it injects google analytics and asks for your personal details?

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#58

Post by paulnpace »

niekze wrote: post #41

Former US Navy submarine nuclear reactor operator here. Adjusting the steam output was kind of strange. On a submarine, the steam used to propel the submarine dwarfs all the other steam loads. As a result, there's a throttleman who controls that. Even though this simulation is simplified, it's not too bad. It does hide some of the really interesting aspects of a water cooled/moderated nuclear reactor. The most intere…

> If the water is colder, it is denser and the more likely neutrons will bounce back into the fuel.

My memory is that the denser water thermalizes the neutrons in a shorter period of time and this is why reactivity is increased.

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#60

Post by beachy »

Buttons840 wrote: post #37

This reminds me of a game idea I have. I want to build a game where players assemble various components into engines or systems. Building the required system is itself a bit of a puzzle, but then players must also demonstrate that they can control the system using sensors and switches, etc, despite failures of various components. Can you build a reactor? If something breaks, can you figure out what broke using the se…

When I studied "computer engineering" (a very long time ago) one of our classes involved hardware debugging on PDP-8 minicomputers (which were old even at the time).

The lecturer would use a craft knife to make a tiny cut in a PCB trace somewhere in the machine. Then we would write debugging code, use oscilloscope and multimeter etc. to isolate the failure. A blob of solder repaired it.

That was such great fun and some powerful learning. It would be great if there was an online game/logic simulator that could do something similar.

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