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Nuclear Reactor Simulator

dalton-nrs.manchester.ac.uk

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Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#91

Post by jtriangle »

cratermoon wrote: post #86
jtriangle wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an incentives problem. Nearly all of the world's power is generated by spinning a turbine with steam, so, we have a direct, actionable, incentive to make that process as efficient as possible, and we have indeed done this and continue to do this. Modern steam turbines are wildly efficient. That doesn't mean that they are the only thing that can be efficient, just that they're the current best option, and, any ot…

You're correct. The design of nuclear reactors was intended from the beginning to replace steam generation, with the goal of not needed to redesign the entire generating plant and take advantage of the known tech as much as was reasonable. There were ideas around for just replacing existing coal/gas/whatever with reactors, to get the most value out of the capital expended on the plant. There are still studies around…

Just like steam tractors were designed to replace horses.

Which is a fascinating factoid really, because the farm tooling was designed to run at a certain speed (maybe not intentionally, but, over time, that's the design criteria regardless), so the tractors were designed to run about as fast as a horse so all existing tooling could be retained.

It wasn't until much later that tooling was redesigned to work faster.

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#92

Post by druray »

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…

Decades ago, I attended a nuclear engineering course at Hinkley (or perhaps Oldbury - both power stations with gas-cooled magnox reactors.) I recall being told that the reactor had a slightly positive thermal reactivity coefficient. It had an automatic control system that did not work well, so they operated it manually. There was a simulator for training, run at 10X real time, and we all got to try our hand. It was not difficult, even at the sped-up rate.

There were multiple automatic safety systems ready to stop anything bad happening if the operators somehow lost control of it.

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#93

Post by emmelaich »

nullhole wrote: post #59
OedipusRex wrote: post #4

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1428420/Nucleares/ Another nuclear plant simulator, haven't played too much but diving into later today with a friend.

Wow, they got their own steam-themed domain name and everything!

:-) there's also https://store.steampowered.com/app/2381620/Steam_Engine_Simu...

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#94

Post by OkayPhysicist »

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…

Criticality is a result of geometry. If you modify the geometry (by placing the rods in a reactor, by removing control rods, etc), you can vary the system from subcritical, to critical, to super-critical. No external neutron source necessary.

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#95

Post by robryk »

If I start the primary coolant pumps and "increase steam output", I get nontrivial output power for a while until a scram happens. This indicates to me that something is very off with the underlying model: there should be no power generated in the reactor in that situation.

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#97

Post by PaulKeeble »

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.

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 enormous lengths of time stopping only for fuel replacements or other maintenance.

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#98

Post by xattt »

robryk wrote: post #95

If I start the primary coolant pumps and "increase steam output", I get nontrivial output power for a while until a scram happens. This indicates to me that something is very off with the underlying model: there should be no power generated in the reactor in that situation.

And how is it these reactors are operating with half of the bioshield missing within a foot of my face and yet I feel no ill effects of acute radiation sickness?

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#99

Post by omneity »

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.

Do you mean PID controllers?

Re: Nuclear Reactor Simulator

#100

Post by sbierwagen »

Symbiote wrote: post #35
weinzierl wrote: post #23

I must seem completely seem out of place nowadays, but I actually learned that in school in Germany. Not to the nitty gritty detail, of course, but we spent a double lesson on every reactor type. What I've taken from it and remember to this day is that you usually can determine the reactor type from the shape of the building.

Here's the BBC's revision guide for 16 year olds in England and Wales. Only one reactor type: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zyqnrwx/revision/2

Funny that it specifies a graphite moderator. Almost every country uses water as the moderator except Britain, which uses graphite moderated gas cooled reactors.
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