[HN Gopher] Nuclear Reactor Simulator
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Nuclear Reactor Simulator
Author : loopion
Score : 256 points
Date : 2023-12-04 09:50 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (dalton-nrs.manchester.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (dalton-nrs.manchester.ac.uk)
| loopion wrote:
| Just played this game and honestly I'm impressed how it's made.
| Interesting to see how it works even if it's simplified.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I tried, but I see only a loading page, it never starts.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I was hoping I'd have to source the fuel, too, but they didn't
| get into that.
| foobarian wrote:
| https://www.satisfactorygame.com/
| OedipusRex wrote:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1428420/Nucleares/
|
| Another nuclear plant simulator, haven't played too much but
| diving into later today with a friend.
| nullhole wrote:
| Wow, they got their own steam-themed domain name and
| everything!
| Elias-Braun wrote:
| My first thought on the Title "Play and learn how a nuclear plant
| works." this is was lead to this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire
| kingnothing wrote:
| That's certainly a curious decision for this random site to ask
| for my full name, age, gender, home town, and email address in a
| form before showing the content.
|
| No thanks.
| johndhi wrote:
| agreed, though note that you can click "skip."
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| 100% I wrote: city: noneof email: yourbusiness@gmail.com
| user_7832 wrote:
| 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.
| KomoD wrote:
| > have any interest in tracking people
|
| Yet it injects google analytics and asks for your personal
| details?
| forward1 wrote:
| For me it's just a logo with an empty "Loading" bar, Firefox
| 120 with strict tracking protection. Likely not worth my time
| debugging.
| John23832 wrote:
| The reactor keeps tripping for me before I'm out of the first
| "setup".
| cratermoon wrote:
| The very first nuclear plant simulator I ever played with was a
| primitive text-based program, running on a DEC 11/780. To win the
| game you had to average a certain number of MWh over each turn
| (days). It seemed easy, just turn it on and let it run, but there
| was a catch. The game simulated normal fatigue, meaning that the
| longer it ran, the more likely something would go wrong. Also,
| the higher power you ran, the faster things would fatigue. The
| game required you to shut the reactor down for maintenance
| periodically. The longer you ran it, the longer the maintenance
| cycle. Success involved balancing uptime and power generation
| with required maintenance downtime.
|
| As an aside, I learned about how nuclear reactors generate power
| when I was pretty young, so I was surprised to learn, just this
| past year, that there were people who didn't know that nuclear
| reactors just heat up water to make steam, same as any other
| power plant. There's people out there who (quite reasonably,
| IMNSHO) have a model of nuclear reactors directly generating
| electricity from the reaction.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| Might it have been Oakflat Nuclear Power Plant Simulator[1]
| you're thinking of? I'm not aware of a version that ran on the
| DEC but it might very well have existed and it sounds quite
| similar. I can certainly credit it for developing my unhealthy
| fascination with nuclear power. Also perhaps my unhealthy
| tendency to push buttons and see what happens!
|
| [1] https://www.mobygames.com/game/62490/the-oakflat-nuclear-
| pow...
| cratermoon wrote:
| Nope, much more primitive than that. I played it on paper
| terminal in the late 70s/early 80s.
| dekhn wrote:
| I didn't understand how nuclear reactors work until I was in
| grad school and even then I was aghast. You'd think if we could
| split an atom, we'd have a better way to make electricity than
| to make steam to turn a turbine. Of course, there are RTGs, and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device
| jtriangle wrote:
| 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 other option is going to have to show immense promise in
| order to get the funding to catch up to where we are now with
| steam.
|
| The only thing on my radar that bypasses steam entirely is
| what Helion Energy is doing up in washington with their
| experimental fusion devices. The basic idea being that you're
| using a pulsed fusion reaction and intentionally not
| containing it, instead using the energy produced to push back
| on the magnetic containment and generate power. No idea if
| it'll work out to be viable, but it at least makes sense on
| paper.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I got Pi as a score (314) on my first run-through. I've played
| simulators like this in the past, this is the first one that
| required interacting between multiple parameters interactively
| like this, well done!
| staplung wrote:
| Seems 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. ;-)
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| 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!
| jplrssn wrote:
| I'm not so sure. There was a news article today about a leaky
| storage site for nuclear waste, coincidentally not too far
| from Manchester. [0] There are more ways than explosions to
| cause ecological devastation.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/05/sellafie
| ld-...
| dekhn wrote:
| 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.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| That too, I don't normally indulge in high-maintenance ;)
| rzzzt wrote:
| There are some user-submitted levels in The Powder Toy that
| cover a subset of your requirements:
| https://powdertoy.co.uk/Browse/View.html?ID=5170
| francisofascii wrote:
| They should have a "Chernobyl mode" where it CAN happen. Add
| graphite tips to the control rods (or whatever else was the
| problem)
| benjojo12 wrote:
| 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!
| einpoklum wrote:
| > however given it was designed to promote nuclear technology
| to school children
|
| ... and that was not a problem for you ethically?
| krelas wrote:
| Yeah at least let us put graphite tips on the control rods.
| dctoedt wrote:
| No time to check this out now, but I'll be interested in
| reactions from my fellow (ex) Navy nukes ....
| niekze wrote:
| I gotta be both the reactor operator _and_ the throttleman?!?
| djmips wrote:
| I have a friend who was a 'Navy nuke' but was discharged for
| wiring up the superbowl for the crew while on duty. You don't
| see THAT in the simulators!
| weinzierl wrote:
| 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.
| Symbiote wrote:
| 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
| hot_gril wrote:
| It's neat. What exactly am I controlling with the steam generator
| lever, the pump at the bottom? With the control rods it's more
| obvious since they move on the diagram.
| scrlk wrote:
| You're controlling the flow of water through the steam
| generator.
| barkingcat wrote:
| The Music is awesome.
|
| reminds me of
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEgrn7vopZU
| djmips wrote:
| 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...
| alyandon wrote:
| Was that the one where you had to perform maintenance on the
| heat exchanger and coolant loops to prevent fouling?
| djmips wrote:
| Yes, planning maintenance out into the future was a huge part
| of mastering the sim.
| alyandon wrote:
| What an awesome game that was - even more awesome to know
| there are people that remember it. :-D
| rzzzt wrote:
| My favorite classic NPP simulator is SIMULA-C by Ralph Reuhl. I'm
| only finding this report [1] (from my comment history, hah), but
| both the C source code as well as MS-DOS executables were
| available. Back when I knew what the URL is, the Wayback Machine
| could fetch the .exe files but not the source archive.
|
| Anyone remember this one? A screenshot can be found in the PDF at
| the end.
|
| [1] https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:29043408
| Buttons840 wrote:
| 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 sensors
| you placed? Can you fix the system with the switches you placed?
|
| My favorite thing about flight simulators was always the
| simulated avionics. I get to click simulated buttons and watch
| simulated gauges, I love it.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Injured Engine is a similar game where you have to maintain a
| car engine and repair any part that breaks due to wear (but
| don't need to put it together):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injured_Engine
| abraae wrote:
| 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.
| Levitating wrote:
| Wow that must've been really fun!
| J5892 wrote:
| It's not really similar to your idea, but your idea unlocked a
| memory of playing Gizmos and Gadgets as a kid.
|
| Edit: So I decided to go and play it on an online archive site.
| It's just as fun as I remember.
| spydum wrote:
| I mean that's kind of what some security CTFs are built this
| way. They build a working system/application with some flaws,
| and you find them and break them. Sometimes in the more
| advanced CTFs like NetWars, you have to also fix the flaws and
| defend against your competitors.
| benjojo12 wrote:
| 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 ) so that it could be run on interactive
| events for schools and such. It's definitely more optimised for
| fun than realism. I remember a few good memories of various
| people who were actually nuclear engineers complaining that
| realistically the demand would never change that fast on any
| commercial nuclear power plant!
| jtriangle wrote:
| 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.
| niekze wrote:
| 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 interesting thing is
| that water makes the reactor self-regulating because of its
| negative temperature coefficient of reactivity. I'll explain.
|
| When a uranium-235 atom absorbs a stray neutron, it becomes
| unstable and splits. This releases more neutrons. Very few of
| these neutrons will be absorbed by surrounding uranium-235 atoms.
| This is a good thing. Most will escape the fuel, and some will
| bounce around in the surrounding water. This slows the neutrons
| down, and some of them will bounce back into the fuel to be
| absorbed for more fission reactions.
|
| Let's say 1,000 fission reactions occur. If the result is that
| 800 neutrons from those fission reactions are absorbed by other
| uranium-235 atoms, you'll have 800 more fission reactions. The
| reactor is sub-critical as the reaction will not be self-
| sustaining.
|
| If 1,000 fissions cause 1,200 neutrons to be absorbed and react,
| you'll have 1,200 resulting fission reactions. The reactor is
| super-critical as the number of fissions will increase.
|
| If 1,000 fissions occur and the result is that 1,000 neutrons are
| absorbed and cause 1,000 more fission reactions, the reactor is
| critical. "The reactor is critical" means the number of fission
| reactions is self-sustaining and neither increasing nor
| decreasing.
|
| How can we affect how many neutrons bounce back into the fuel? We
| can change the density of the water. It makes sense if you thing
| about it. The denser the water, the more likely neutrons will hit
| a water molecule and head back into the fuel.
|
| How can we change the density of the water? We change the
| temperature of the water. If the water is colder, it is denser
| and the more likely neutrons will bounce back into the fuel.
|
| How do we change the temperature of the water? We pull more/less
| heat of out it by using more/less steam.
|
| Putting this all together, as steam demand goes up, more heat is
| pulled out of the water. This causes colder water to enter the
| reactor. Colder water will reflect more neutrons. More neutrons
| means more fission. More fission means more heat. More heat means
| warmer water and this will attenuate the increase in fission
| until an equilibrium is reached.
|
| If you're creating too much power, the coolant temperature will
| increase and the power output will lower. If you're creating too
| little power, the coolant temperature will decrease and the power
| output will rise. That's why water is a great coolant/moderator:
| its negative temperature coefficient of reactivity.
| tiffanyg wrote:
| 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.)
| ok_dad wrote:
| 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.
| tiffanyg wrote:
| Excellent point - you are 100% correct, parent comment etc.
| were specifically about water-moderated types.
|
| I was too grabbed by some of the later description and just
| connected it somewhat haphazardly to not very organized or
| accurate info rattling around in my head from years ago.
|
| Thanks for pointing that out!
| paulnpace wrote:
| 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 pedal. It isn't a perfect analogy, but I
| think it gets the general concept across.
| dgroshev wrote:
| As an aside, "the Ukraine" has mildly offensive
| connotations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukrai
| ne#English_defini...
| paulnpace wrote:
| > 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.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| 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.
| exabrial wrote:
| 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.
| niekze wrote:
| 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.
| shagie wrote:
| 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.
| 39 wrote:
| Dope explanation!
| gosub100 wrote:
| 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?
| niekze wrote:
| The rods are not completely removed. Control rods ravenously
| gobble up free neutrons. As they're pulled up, more neutrons
| get to the uranium. You are correct in that fuel at the
| bottom is used up sooner. As more fuel is used, the rods will
| have to be pulled up higher than they were before for the
| same effect. The design takes this into account.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Regardless of control rod use, there is non-uniform burnup.
| Fuel manufacturers use different enrichment levels in fuel
| pellets throughout the length of the rod to partially
| compensate for the non-uniformity.
|
| _The majority of PWR fuel assemblies have similar axial-
| burnup shapes - relatively flat in the axial mid-section
| (with peak burnup from 1.1 to 1.2 times the assembly average
| burnup) and significantly under-burned fuel at the ends (with
| burnup of 50 to 60% of the assembly average). Figure 1 shows
| a representative PWR axial burnup distribution. As is
| typical, the burnup is slightly higher at the bottom of the
| assembly than at the top. This variation is due to a
| difference in the moderator density. The cooler (higher
| density) water at the assembly inlet results in higher
| reactivity (which subsequently results in higher burnup) than
| the warmer moderator at the assembly outlet._
|
| Quoted from "ORNL/TM-1999/246: Review of Axial Burnup
| Distribution Considerations for Burnup Credit Calculations"
|
| https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/763169
| vectoral wrote:
| 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 or maintain temperature.
|
| When the reactor is operating at power, the control rods are
| used primarily to 1) control steady state coolant temperature
| and 2) provide a safe and reliable way to shut the reactor
| down quickly (by dropping them to the bottom of the core --
| this is called a reactor scram). If you have a short-duration
| power transient for any reason, you can "shim" the rods in to
| prevent a power spike that might cause a protective action to
| occur (you shouldn't really ever have to do this except for
| during emergency drills).
|
| If the rods were drawn outside of the fuel region at power,
| they wouldn't be able to absorb any neutrons and wouldn't
| give you any way to control temperature or power. During some
| specific maintenance when the reactor is shut down, you
| sometimes might pull one rod further out for testing.
|
| Your question on uneven burning of fuel is insightful. That
| can happen, and it's caused by an uneven neutron flux (# of
| neutrons traveling through a unit surface area per unit time)
| distribution. The core designers take rod positioning into
| account when determining how to distribute fuel throughout
| the core in order to maintain a "flat" flux profile.
| spacecadet wrote:
| Yeees, bring on the simulation tools.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| This reminds me that I have a disc somewhere of a ton of
| different Java applets, one of which was a basic nuclear reactor
| simulator. There was a dining philosophers one too.
| exabrial wrote:
| 12 year old me went in with a single purpose: make it go bang.
|
| Damn safety systems are messing up my fun.
| goodpoint wrote:
| There's a bit of propaganda going on...
| 39 wrote:
| Please explain
| einpoklum wrote:
| "Pro nuclear power propaganda game for kids"
|
| Did you know? It's perfectly clean and very safe! And is in no
| way related to the UK's nuclear weapons program either! And don't
| you worry your pretty little head about the price.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| How is it propaganda?
| nickt wrote:
| Here's a link to a video of a ZX81 version, in a similar vein.
|
| https://youtu.be/tB6CC8UbJLU
| yason wrote:
| The only destined purpose of a nuclear reactor simulator is to
| gradually let a massive meltdown happen, with gauges slowly
| increasing in tandem with thrill in anticipation of the upcoming
| drama and fireworks until you discover a bit too late that...
| it's too late.
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(page generated 2023-12-05 23:00 UTC)