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Nuclear Reactor Simulator

dalton-nrs.manchester.ac.uk

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Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#101

Post by sbierwagen »

gosub100 wrote: post #90
vectoral wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former submarine nuke with a masters in NucE here (it's fun to see us come out of the woodwork for this). Rods are always in the core. To start a reactor that is shut down (with the rods are all the way on the bottom), you withdraw them slowly until the reactor is self-sustaining. From there, you increase power by increasing steam demand (as described in the parent comment above) and continue raising rods to increase…

thank you so much for the response. one more q if you dont mind: on the "how its made" show they show how the fuel comes from ore, to yellow cake, to pellets in zircon rods, to collections of rods in an assembly. This is completely safe (compared to spent fuel), but how do you get the reaction started? do you have to "light" it with a neutron source when you're ready to use the fuel for the first time? or do you "lig…

Fresh fuel pellets are “safe” in that they’re not going to kill you immediately, but they’re still fairly radioactive, not just from alpha decay, but from spontaneous fissioning, which produces neutrons. Pile em up and they’ll start a chain reaction all on their own. There’s even geological evidence of natural chain reactions in some uranium ore seams: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#102

Post by vannevar »

benjojo12 wrote: post #39

How bizarre! Me and a colleague ( who's still a good friend ) wrote this in like, 2012-2013! Well, more accurately we ported this from a older Delphi/Pascal program that was using raw OpenGL calls ( a legitimately very impressive bit of code for what it was written in ) into WebGL ( a relatively new piece of technology at the time ) The primary reason for porting this to a modern platform was ( as far as I understood…

Back in the late 70s/early 80s there was a nuclear reactor simulator for the Atari 400/800 personal computers called SCRAM. I played it on my 400 when I was in high school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scram_(video_game)

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#103

Post by Retric »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #97
jtriangle wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that this is sped up significantly. Also, in real life, there's not a human twisting the dials for "more steam" or "more reactor", that's undoubtedly handled with PIC controllers and software. Humans are just keeping an eye on things and running checklists when the software doesn't respond properly.

Also most nuclear reactors are run at near full capacity and load variance is dealt with by other energy types. The reason is that the cost base isn't really fuel but the construction and running which is all fixed so regardless of energy pricing the reactor is just run at its peak stable performance all the time. This is a process very few nuclear power stations do, they get started and then they stay running for en…

Yes, thus the term base load power.

However, while a 1GW nuclear power plant is only ~6,000$ an hour in fuel costs that still adds up. So, curtailing nuclear in favor of solar/wind with zero fuel costs is still a net gain assuming it’s not going to cause other issues. Further the massive ramp off of these sources is becoming a serious issue for the nuclear industry.

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#104

Post by jtriangle »

omneity wrote: post #99
jtriangle wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that this is sped up significantly. Also, in real life, there's not a human twisting the dials for "more steam" or "more reactor", that's undoubtedly handled with PIC controllers and software. Humans are just keeping an eye on things and running checklists when the software doesn't respond properly.

Do you mean PID controllers?

Programable Industrial Controllers. That can include PID, or it can be far smarter or dumber.

The idea behind them is, you have purpose built, redundant, single purpose controllers for everything, so, swapping one out is no big deal, and doesn't require any knowhow. You load the config, plug it in, done. Usually they're very simple, doing jobs like "read this sensor(s) every X miliseconds, make adjustments to this output signal according to Y math formula".

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#105

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #103
PaulKeeble wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also most nuclear reactors are run at near full capacity and load variance is dealt with by other energy types. The reason is that the cost base isn't really fuel but the construction and running which is all fixed so regardless of energy pricing the reactor is just run at its peak stable performance all the time. This is a process very few nuclear power stations do, they get started and then they stay running for en…

Yes, thus the term base load power. However, while a 1GW nuclear power plant is only ~6,000$ an hour in fuel costs that still adds up. So, curtailing nuclear in favor of solar/wind with zero fuel costs is still a net gain assuming it’s not going to cause other issues. Further the massive ramp off of these sources is becoming a serious issue for the nuclear industry.

[deleted]

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#106

Post by jtriangle »

Retric wrote: post #103
PaulKeeble wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also most nuclear reactors are run at near full capacity and load variance is dealt with by other energy types. The reason is that the cost base isn't really fuel but the construction and running which is all fixed so regardless of energy pricing the reactor is just run at its peak stable performance all the time. This is a process very few nuclear power stations do, they get started and then they stay running for en…

Yes, thus the term base load power. However, while a 1GW nuclear power plant is only ~6,000$ an hour in fuel costs that still adds up. So, curtailing nuclear in favor of solar/wind with zero fuel costs is still a net gain assuming it’s not going to cause other issues. Further the massive ramp off of these sources is becoming a serious issue for the nuclear industry.

Solar/wind don't have fuel costs, but they do have maintenance costs, and they tend to get replaced fairly often relative to nuclear installations, and while none of the above lasts forever. Like a modern wind turbine is rated at 20 years, but most installations are operating at half that in favor of installing larger turbines instead of using existing turbines that produce less power. Gridscale solar is much in the same situation, where, the panels themselves are rated for 25-ish years, but, are replaced early in favor of something newer and more productive.

The reasons for the early replacement is simple really, land costs alot of money, and not all land is suitable for solar/wind, so, you can't expand your solar/wind farm past a certain point, so it makes sense to get into newer, better, generation devices as cost/subsidy availability allows.

Hence why you really have to look at total cost over time instead of just static operating costs, or post-subsidy costs, or just cost/MWH

What you'll find is that solar/wind are indeed pretty cheap, but, they're also only pretty available, so you need base load, and if your goal is clean power, you need clean base load, for that job there's nothing even close to nuclear.

Really what we should be doing is yanking 100% of the future oil/gas/coal subsidies and shoving them at standardized reactor/plant designs and uranium mining. Then allow that standardized design to bypass existing nuclear regulators, and spin up new regulators and regulations to fast track those standardized designs being rolled out. That's more or less what France did, and it's served them well so far.

We can probably run with that model until fusion power is a reality, or we find a way to make solar panels way more efficient (we're running at like 20% currently, but we can get to ~40% in a lab, theoretical maximum is 80%, so room left to grow there), or some other major breakthrough.

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#107

Post by jtriangle »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #97
jtriangle wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that this is sped up significantly. Also, in real life, there's not a human twisting the dials for "more steam" or "more reactor", that's undoubtedly handled with PIC controllers and software. Humans are just keeping an eye on things and running checklists when the software doesn't respond properly.

Also most nuclear reactors are run at near full capacity and load variance is dealt with by other energy types. The reason is that the cost base isn't really fuel but the construction and running which is all fixed so regardless of energy pricing the reactor is just run at its peak stable performance all the time. This is a process very few nuclear power stations do, they get started and then they stay running for en…

Also further down this thread, there's a NE talking about how modern plants basically self regulate based on load, so, the reactor itself isn't throttled manually at all, but instead is moderated by cooling water temperature in a natural equilibrium.

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#108

Post by topherclay »

jtriangle wrote: post #80
benjojo12 wrote: post #39

How bizarre! Me and a colleague ( who's still a good friend ) wrote this in like, 2012-2013! Well, more accurately we ported this from a older Delphi/Pascal program that was using raw OpenGL calls ( a legitimately very impressive bit of code for what it was written in ) into WebGL ( a relatively new piece of technology at the time ) The primary reason for porting this to a modern platform was ( as far as I understood…

I think the idea is that this is sped up significantly. Also, in real life, there's not a human twisting the dials for "more steam" or "more reactor", that's undoubtedly handled with PIC controllers and software. Humans are just keeping an eye on things and running checklists when the software doesn't respond properly.

Why are you telling him what you think the idea is when he is the one who wrote it?

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#109

Post by Kimm0n0 »

niekze wrote: post #78
exabrial wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree... although I do believe part of the problem is that a lot of US Naval reactors run on weapons grade uranium. Someone here probably knows more about this.

The fuel in US Naval nuclear reactors is enriched to a much higher percentage than civilian reactors due to size and longevity considerations. It has to fit the ship and refuels take months/years. A ship undergoing a refuel isn't a ship you can use. In a civilian plant, you can have multiple reactors and refuel them on a rotating schedule to avoid downtime, having a larger reactor vessel isn't a problem, and all of t…

I think the difference i >90% for military use and 3-5% for civilian use.

Some new SMRs are planning on using >5%.

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#110

Post by solidsnack9000 »

benjojo12 wrote: post #39

How bizarre! Me and a colleague ( who's still a good friend ) wrote this in like, 2012-2013! Well, more accurately we ported this from a older Delphi/Pascal program that was using raw OpenGL calls ( a legitimately very impressive bit of code for what it was written in ) into WebGL ( a relatively new piece of technology at the time ) The primary reason for porting this to a modern platform was ( as far as I understood…

Thank you for doing this.
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