Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Nucleares PWR Reactor Simulator Part 1

[RGDk]

What makes nucleares fun is that it's just absolutely batshit insane safety-unconscious plant design. Safety systems? Protection systems? WHAT systems? They give you a wall-mounted iodine injector.

It's all designed with malice aforethought. Zero redundancy all round, and little things: like that running all the coolant pumps flat out causes your one and only backup gen to overload and catch fire. Or that your one feedwater pump can't actually make enough pressure without overloading to feed into the core under NORMAL operating presssure. Y'know, little things like that.

Also basically zero actual feedback control systems - it's all seat-of-the-pants, open-loop with a failable, distractable human in the loop. Trying to balance inherently unstable systems where collapse is just a few mintues inattention away. Closest thing there is the rod height system.

It's all, 'theoretically operable'. Which is what makes it fun, of course, that you get to explore the huge gap that exists between theory and practise. And it includes the virtual hardware enough that you can go out and watch your pumps catch fire. Or what have you.

[Streaky]

Just as an FYI, having played this game, entering the water around the reactor doesn't kill you from radiation or anything, but there is simply no swimming mechanic, so you sink to the bottom of the pool and can't get back out. There is however an air mechanic, so you just drowned.

[pathosfear]

I trained to be control room operator years and years ago, and we went to an actual simulator, basically a 1 to 1 replica of an actual control room, with every little thing simulated and connected to a computer that in real time calculated the result of every knob and every component. It was impressive. However, I managed to cause a SCRAM because i was first up to do the raising of control rods in the procedure. So, I followed the instruction, selected which control rod group to raise according to the step by step procedure, and then, turned the knob.

The thing is, the knob was marked with Neutral (0) and Raise (1) and Lower (-1). So it would always sit at 0 normally, and your turn it up to 1 to raise, or towards -1 to lower. The thing is, I thought it was binary, that it was only one speed, so, 1 would raise it at a certain fixed speed, and the -1 would lower it at a preset speed. So, I just cranked the knob up to 1, but it was actually like a throttle, so I started raising the control rods at max speed, and caused a SCRAM.

This was years and years ago, and the simulator teacher just laughed and said "That always happens with the first person at this console, dont worry about it" and hit reset and I could try again. I was very embarassed, as I was the top student, and my classmates were at other consoles and stuff, and i felt i was made to be an example as the instructor didn't tell me about how the knob worked beforehand. Now tho, I wonder if they still have that knob. Since I never ended up working at a nuclear power plant, I wouldnt know, but it seems pretty crazy to me that the control rods work that way, I mean... What if someone slips or has a random muscle spasm or something while manuvering the control rods.

[pilotbrian]

This was very entertaining to watch, and informative, thank you.

I especially appreciate how much you were willing to say "I guess for a game this can be handwaved away" recognizing that it may not be perfect since it's a game, but also still teaching about how the real version would be.

For the record, the electrical synchronization was added (a bit) in the latest version.

[vylbird]

The upgrade system is not at all realistic, but from a gameplay perspective it makes perfect sense. It has two functions: Give the player some nice goals to aim for, and allow the game to progress in complexity. As you upgrade the plant you get more and more parts to monitor, more dials to watch and knobs to adjust. If you had all those at the beginning new players would be instantly overwhelmed.

[LinkTheHero]

The game has recently updated and added more complex systems for the electrical grid including the synchroscope you mentioned

[mate]

Its an arcade style simulation of the concept of running a nuclear power reactor. The bones are there. I get it that it's not a fully functioning, safety compliant, generating station... it doesn't have to be. The tech tree progression is in the form of adding diesels, steam gens, and electrical systems as you progress because after starting up and stabilizing the reactor, what's the point? There's got to be a goal. It would be really fun if they got much more in depth with it, changed the layout of the facility to make it more realistic etc... once you get used to adding heat to the reactor core... increasing the flow to the secondary system as needed to run the turbine, and then fiddling with the condensor... you've mastered the game as it is in this state. Then it's just a matter of starting it and stopping it as needed to maintain the equipment. I doubt too many people play much farther than the initial start up. It feels like an Early Access title, rather than a full release. I like the idea, just needs to be more in depth.

Here's an idea, make the users manual actually helpful in learning the game and provide checklists in the Tablet to actually run through the processes and procedures of adding and removing fuel, maintaining the core and the rods, servicing the diesels, servicing the steam generators etc. Then you have something to do, and instead of stumbling around going... hmmmm... why does it say pump overloaded? What does that mean? The manual is absolutely useless and its 170 page PDF.... lol Like I was saying, it feels like an early access... the play loop is basic and so much can be added, there's a lot of room for growth that would appeal to the kind of person who might download this type of game in the first place. It's just not there yet.

[RipskyOfficials]

Did you know? Videogame lightbulbs use real electricity.

[IndianaDipper]

TYVM for doing this video, i was one of the ones that emailed you! im so stoked, havent even watched yet and had to leave a comment! ~seth

[kenbowser]

My roommate was a grad student working on her operators license with the TRIGA reactor on the UMD campus and she was able to give me a tour once. That's what this reminds me of. But that one is only 250kW... lol. Maybe they chose to use a research reactor for better gameplay visuals? Do you have a CCTV system to monitor locations inside the containment vessel in a commercial plant? Love your content Tyler, keep it coming! EDIT: You mentioned a TRIGA not 30 seconds after I paused the video to type this.. ;)

[Merennulli]

This looks more like a "swimming pool reactor" or "open pool reactor", like you said, a research reactor. The only reactor I've been in was a swimming pool reactor, the MSTR research reactor, a 200kW (thermal, not electrical) research reactor at the university and it did look a lot like that (albeit rectangular instead of circular). And the control room was next to the room the reactor pool was in, though it was only about twice the size of a dorm room. It was based on the Bulk Shielding Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory if you're familiar with that one. It was built in 1961 and was converted to run on low-enriched (from high-enriched) uranium in 1992.

I toured it in 1997 and they did let us get close enough to look down into the pool. I don't know if that is still how the tour is done or if safety regulations have changed since then. Theirs uses stainless steel control rods, all but one of which have a boron coating. They also like to brag that the chancellor's house is more radioactive than the reactor (it's made with marble that has traces of thorium and uranium).

[jesuz]

Awwww... killed so much buzz bro. Especially with Cherenkov not being visable in reality like that xD

[ElShogoso]

I'd assume the reactor core being right next to the control room is more for gameplay reasons (to allow the player to quickly go take a peek there and such)

[beepbop]

37:53 btw, the developer has already added the syncroscope to the game since the version being discussed here.

[sirjanin]

I love to see you react to nuclear related stuff. You should react to nuclear related content more often.

[Hamstray]

7:57 he better not trip while running up and down the stairs or else it will put a large dent in the safety record.

[TheColinputer]

08:24 I love how there is just a harbor freight cheapo generator hooked upto a set of painters lights on the right.

[JonatanGronoset]

I saw Charlie from The Atomic Age play this game, but they're a nuclear storage engineer and not an operator. So this was fun to see from an operators pov. Personally, I laughed at how janky some of the things were both then and now.

Still, a fun game with a quirky design aestetic.

Next you should do a react video on a game called INFRA and the final mission to *"stop a nuclear reactor meltdown".* I'm sure you'll love it!

[Noone-lwge]

I'm from Brazil and your pronunciation is correct

[wwgtg]

@tfolsenuclear would you consider being an advisor to game devs who want to make a nuclear power plant sim? (I'm not in the games industry btw, just curious.)