[HN Gopher] Nuclear Reactor Simulator ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-12-05 23:00 UTC)