5 ms·

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 pro

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!

druray 3y ago
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.
vannevar 3y ago
Back 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 ago
Thank you for doing this.
jtriangle 3y ago
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.
- PaulKeeble 3y ago
  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.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Yes, thus the term base load power. However, while a 1GW nuclear power plant is only ~6,000$ an hour in fuel costs that still adds up. So, curtailing nuclear in favor of solar/wind with zero fuel costs is still a net gain assuming it’s not going to cause other issues. Further the massive ramp off of these sources is becoming a serious issue for the nuclear industry.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - jtriangle 3y ago
      Solar/wind don't have fuel costs, but they do have maintenance costs, and they tend to get replaced fairly often relative to nuclear installations, and while none of the above lasts forever. Like a modern wind turbine is rated at 20 years, but most installations are operating at half that in favor of installing larger turbines instead of using existing turbines that produce less power. Gridscale solar is much in the same situation, where, the panels themselves are rated for 25-ish years, but, are replaced early in favor of something newer and more productive. The reasons for the early replacement is simple really, land costs alot of money, and not all land is suitable for solar/wind, so, you can't expand your solar/wind farm past a certain point, so it makes sense to get into newer, better, generation devices as cost/subsidy availability allows. Hence why you really have to look at total cost over time instead of just static operating costs, or post-subsidy costs, or just cost/MWH What you'll find is that solar/wind are indeed pretty cheap, but, they're also only pretty available, so you need base load, and if your goal is clean power, you need clean base load, for that job there's nothing even close to nuclear. Really what we should be doing is yanking 100% of the future oil/gas/coal subsidies and shoving them at standardized reactor/plant designs and uranium mining. Then allow that standardized design to bypass existing nuclear regulators, and spin up new regulators and regulations to fast track those standardized designs being rolled out. That's more or less what France did, and it's served them well so far. We can probably run with that model until fusion power is a reality, or we find a way to make solar panels way more efficient (we're running at like 20% currently, but we can get to ~40% in a lab, theoretical maximum is 80%, so room left to grow there), or some other major breakthrough.

druray 3y ago

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.

vannevar 3y ago

Back 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 ago

Thank you for doing this.

jtriangle 3y ago

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.

PaulKeeble 3y ago
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.
- Retric 3y ago
  Yes, thus the term base load power. However, while a 1GW nuclear power plant is only ~6,000$ an hour in fuel costs that still adds up. So, curtailing nuclear in favor of solar/wind with zero fuel costs is still a net gain assuming it’s not going to cause other issues. Further the massive ramp off of these sources is becoming a serious issue for the nuclear industry.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jtriangle 3y ago
    Solar/wind don't have fuel costs, but they do have maintenance costs, and they tend to get replaced fairly often relative to nuclear installations, and while none of the above lasts forever. Like a modern wind turbine is rated at 20 years, but most installations are operating at half that in favor of installing larger turbines instead of using existing turbines that produce less power. Gridscale solar is much in the same situation, where, the panels themselves are rated for 25-ish years, but, are replaced early in favor of something newer and more productive. The reasons for the early replacement is simple really, land costs alot of money, and not all land is suitable for solar/wind, so, you can't expand your solar/wind farm past a certain point, so it makes sense to get into newer, better, generation devices as cost/subsidy availability allows. Hence why you really have to look at total cost over time instead of just static operating costs, or post-subsidy costs, or just cost/MWH What you'll find is that solar/wind are indeed pretty cheap, but, they're also only pretty available, so you need base load, and if your goal is clean power, you need clean base load, for that job there's nothing even close to nuclear. Really what we should be doing is yanking 100% of the future oil/gas/coal subsidies and shoving them at standardized reactor/plant designs and uranium mining. Then allow that standardized design to bypass existing nuclear regulators, and spin up new regulators and regulations to fast track those standardized designs being rolled out. That's more or less what France did, and it's served them well so far. We can probably run with that model until fusion power is a reality, or we find a way to make solar panels way more efficient (we're running at like 20% currently, but we can get to ~40% in a lab, theoretical maximum is 80%, so room left to grow there), or some other major breakthrough.