With apologies to MetaFilter for blatantly ripping off their Friday Flash Fun idea, we offer up AE4RV's Nuclear Plant Operator game. Enjoy!
Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu
Comments
Ingenious summary of how people see nuclear power plants. The fact that maxing out the plant is rather normal, and that a meltdown is only possible after a horrible accident, is somewhat missed. :/
This program is especially guilty of this.
Other interesting details:
-The plant is a 20MWe PWR
-The GUI has 18 annunciator lights, including the comical "Power Output Low" and "Meltdown".
-The GUI outputs four properties that characterize the plant state: Reactor Temperature, Steam Generator Temperature, Cooling Tower Temperature, and Reactor Power, all on analog scales with handy green, yellow and red bands so the operator knows whether the number is OK.
-The operator has control of the Control Rod Positions, Primary Coolant Flow, Secondary Coolant Flow, and Emergency Coolant Flow, all adjustable from 0-100% rated flow.
-The operator can only adjust these variables once per game-day, after which the plant conditions are updated. All transients literally take "days".
I'm a bit curious which equations the simulation is using, but no such information is provided by the website or demo.
Also did anyone else notice the reactor coolant flow diagram? The coolant seems to around the core (down the downcomer, below the core, and back up the downcomer) rather than through it.