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Nuclear Reactor Simulator
71–80 of 139 posts
Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator
#72Seems impossible to make it meltdown and explode. Shutting off the coolant just makes it automatically SCRAM. No incoming tsunamis threaten to swamp your diesel generators, no xenon pits to slowly climb out of. Booooring. ;-)
I am one of the programmers that worked on this port back in 2013, I can assure you that we (the programmers) also wanted to make a scenario where the plant would explode, however given it was designed to promote nuclear technology to school children (generally speaking), the people funding the project were not so keen to have nuclear technology shown off in that way!
> however given it was designed to promote nuclear technology to school children
... and that was not a problem for you ethically?
Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator
#73Here’s a link to a video of a ZX81 version, in a similar vein.
Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator
#74Former 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…
I know land vs sea is different, but after decades of nuclear submarines working beautifully it's just so sad to me we don't have abundant SMRs by now.
I am of the understanding that part of this is because there are different profit margins in mind with a civilian reactor generating power to be sold and a military reactor powering a vessel.
When that is combined with deregulation (or an anti-regulatory mindset) where things like insulation on water intake is deferred or ignored because it impacts the economics of the power plant, then building one becomes difficult.
Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator
#75Former 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…
I have a question about the control rods: are they normally removed completely when you want the reactor to run? If they are partially inserted, that would seem to mean that the reactor fuel would burn unevenly, with the pellets at the bottom used up sooner than the top. Is that true, and is it a problem that has mitigations?
Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator
#76[flagged]
How is it propaganda?
Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Additionally, they were ordered to disable all safety mechanisms and run the reactor in a known unsafe condition, causing a massive long-term disaster in... the Ukraine. The way I attempt to explain the difference between the negative and positive coefficient of reactivity is it's like one car accelerates by pressing the gas pedal and the other car has an engine running WFO and all you ever do is press the brake peda…
As an aside, "the Ukraine" has mildly offensive connotations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine#English_defini...
Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know land vs sea is different, but after decades of nuclear submarines working beautifully it's just so sad to me we don't have abundant SMRs by now.
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 that is also going to be less expensive - which is a huge factor.
Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator
#79This 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 so…
Wow that must've been really fun!
Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator
#80How 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.