14 ms·
Nuclear Reactor Simulator
- mikewarot 3y agoI 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!
- robryk 3y agoIf 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.
- xattt 3y agoAnd 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?
- WhiteNoiz3 3y agoThis made me feel like a regular Homer Simpson.
- archi42 3y agoHah, next step: Add a simple PLC the players can program to try to control it (or modbus to hook up an actual PLC) ;-)
- RonnieOwnsLexus 3y agowhy am i not able to cause a meltdown
- cben 3y agoReminds me of this android gqme: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.DmitryLomakin.NuclearInc2 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.DmitryLomak...
- loopion 3y agoJust 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 3y agoI tried, but I see only a loading page, it never starts.
- adamredwoods 3y agoI was hoping I'd have to source the fuel, too, but they didn't get into that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- foobarian 3y agohttps://www.satisfactorygame.com/ https://www.satisfactorygame.com/
- OedipusRex 3y agohttps://store.steampowered.com/app/1428420/Nucleares/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1428420/Nucleares/ Another nuclear plant simulator, haven't played too much but diving into later today with a friend.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nullhole 3y agoWow, they got their own steam-themed domain name and everything!
- emmelaich 3y ago:-) there's also https://store.steampowered.com/app/2381620/Steam_Engine_Simulator/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2381620/Steam_Engine_Simu...
- OedipusRex 3y agoThis one is super fun.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Elias-Braun 3y agoMy 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kingnothing 3y ago[flagged]
- johndhi 3y agoagreed, though note that you can click "skip."
- FergusArgyll 3y ago100% I wrote: city: noneof email: yourbusiness@gmail.com
- user_7832 3y agoDid 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 3y ago> have any interest in tracking people Yet it injects google analytics and asks for your personal details?
- forward1 3y agoFor me it's just a logo with an empty "Loading" bar, Firefox 120 with strict tracking protection. Likely not worth my time debugging.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- John23832 3y agoThe reactor keeps tripping for me before I'm out of the first "setup".
- cratermoon 3y agoThe 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 3y agoMight 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-power-plant-simulator/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/62490/the-oakflat-nuclear-pow...
- Duanemclemore 3y agoI never realized this was the one I had on both C64 and DOS! When I played C64 I was too young (4-5yo) to actually play it. And the DOS version came on one of those disks comprised of half freeware games, half bootleg games. (Back when you could still buy those at legit retailers). Anyway that's germane because I seem to remember that once the reactor powered up it would immediately meltdown. I realized at the time - I think this was the developer's copy protection. Which struck me as much more entertaining and clever than just not working if it was a bootleg copy.
- 3y ago
- staplung 3y agoSeems 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 3y agoMy 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 3y agoI'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/sellafield-nuclear-site-leak-could-pose-risk-to-public https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/05/sellafield-...
- dekhn 3y agoNuclear 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 3y agoThat too, I don't normally indulge in high-maintenance ;)
- Obscurity4340 3y agoThe foreplay also takes like 10-15 years, c'mon?!
- rzzzt 3y agoThere 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 https://powdertoy.co.uk/Browse/View.html?ID=5170
- dctoedt 3y agoNo time to check this out now, but I'll be interested in reactions from my fellow (ex) Navy nukes ....
- weinzierl 3y agoI 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 3y agoHere'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 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zyqnrwx/revision/2
- sbierwagen 3y agoFunny that it specifies a graphite moderator. Almost every country uses water as the moderator except Britain, which uses graphite moderated gas cooled reactors.
- crashmat 3y agoI was on AQA and I learned about water as the moderator. Could this be an Edexcel specific thing?
- hot_gril 3y agoIt'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 3y agoYou're controlling the flow of water through the steam generator.
- barkingcat 3y agoThe Music is awesome. reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEgrn7vopZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEgrn7vopZU
- djmips 3y agoThis 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 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_Version_1980_Richard_Orban https://archive.org/details/a2_Three_Mile_Island_Special_Ver...
- alyandon 3y agoWas that the one where you had to perform maintenance on the heat exchanger and coolant loops to prevent fouling?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rzzzt 3y agoMy 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 https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:29043408
- metiscus 3y agoThis bring back memories? https://web.archive.org/web/20020928111017/http://www.simula-c.de/ https://web.archive.org/web/20020928111017/http://www.simula...
- rzzzt 3y agoYep! The German version contains a tutorial and a manual, that's why it's larger; unfortunately the Wayback Machine did not go back in time (since I last saw this page) to capture the source code from 2002. :)
- metiscus 3y agoI emailed the author to see if I could get the source code to update it for a modern platform. Given the amount of link rot since that time it is unlikely that he replies but hope is eternal.
- rzzzt 3y agoAwesome! I started the original in an emulator in the meantime, which reminded me that it had a quite slow simulation rate, which is also tied to responding to keyboard commands.
- Buttons840 3y agoThis 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 3y agoInjured 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injured_Engine
- beachy 3y agoWhen 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 3y agoWow that must've been really fun!
- J5892 3y agoIt'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.
- 3y ago
- benjojo12 3y agoHow 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!
- druray 3y agoDecades 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.
- vannevar 3y agoBack 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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scram_(video_game)
- solidsnack9000 3y agoThank you for doing this.
- jtriangle 3y agoI 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 3y agoFormer 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.
- spacecadet 3y agoYeees, bring on the simulation tools.
- Apocryphon 3y agoThis 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 3y ago12 year old me went in with a single purpose: make it go bang. Damn safety systems are messing up my fun.
- ctom96 3y agoSame
- bobo_legos 3y agoWe need an RBMK simulator with a A3-5 button front and center.
- abrugsch 3y agoAnd dosimeters with a maximum reading that equates to "Not Great. Not Terrible"
- ChatGTP 3y agoWas the first thing I tried to do, was so excited for a meltdown.
- goodpoint 3y ago[flagged]
- 39 3y agoPlease explain
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- einpoklum 3y ago[flagged]
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- EdwardDiego 3y agoHow is it propaganda?
- einpoklum 3y agoWikipedia definition, first paragraph: "Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented."
- nickt 3y agoHere’s a link to a video of a ZX81 version, in a similar vein. https://youtu.be/tB6CC8UbJLU https://youtu.be/tB6CC8UbJLU
- yason 3y agoThe 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.