General > General Technical Chat

RBMK nuclear reactor simulator down load

<< < (4/18) > >>

S. Petrukhin:

--- Quote from: wraper on November 24, 2020, 12:55:30 pm ---
--- Quote from: S. Petrukhin on November 24, 2020, 01:14:05 am ---
--- Quote from: Cerebus on November 24, 2020, 12:49:06 am ---
The RMBK reactors are graphite moderated and, notably, use natural (not enriched) Uranium as fuel. The RMBK design was based on the earlier military reactors that were operated explicity to produce plutonium. The Hanford B reactor used to produce the plutonium for the American Fat Man bomb that was dropped on Japan was graphite moderated and fueled with unenriched uranium. So I think we can safely conclude that the RMBK reactors are 'dual use' designs, even if they were only ostensibly operated for power production.

--- End quote ---

Getting weapons-grade plutonium is much more difficult than getting it from a nuclear power plant reactor.  :)
There are special companies for this purpose. Whether they use spent fuel from nuclear power plants or not, I do not know. But I know that fuel assemblies are stored for 3 years next to the reactor in the cooling pool after work.

--- End quote ---
Nuclear reactors is the only place where you get it from. There is no plutonium in nature other than trace amounts. According to Russian wiki, initially RBMK was meant to be dual use (capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium), however during it's design it was changed to single use. It still produces Pu-239 which is used in weapons, however, most of it is turned into higher number Pu isotopes. As I understand, to get Pu-239, you need to extract a relatively fresh nuclear fuel from the reactor.

--- End quote ---

For this purpose special reactors are used in the defense industry.

wraper:

--- Quote from: CJay on November 24, 2020, 12:27:22 pm ---Of course spent nuclear fuel from power plants is used, why would you *not* use it if it contains by products that can be refined and used?

Whywould you waste that valuable fissile material?

--- End quote ---
Spent fuel contains barely any weapons grade plutonium (Pu-239). Other isotopes such as Pu-240, 241 and 242 though technically possible, are not feasible for producing weapons.

Kleinstein:
The plutonium in spend fuel left longer in the reactor still contain quite a lot of Pu239, but also more Pu240,241,.. which make it no longer usably for weapons. So one can separate the plutonium from the fuel, but is would be reactor grade plutonium useful in MOX fuel or in a fast reactor.

The point in the RMBK is not so much that it uses a graphite moderator, but that allow easy access to the fuel and thus if wanted to remove some fuel early to produce weapons material. This also applies to the Canadian CANDU reactors, so not a unique feature.
The more conventional reactors need to shut down the reactor for quite some time to exchange fuel and thus make it less attractive and near impossible to do it in secret. Essentially any reactor could be used to generate weapons grade material, but the RMBK and CANDU are designs that make it easier and less expensive. Anyway Russia, the US and likely even GB and France should have plenty of weapons grade material, so there is no real need to produce new.

CJay:

--- Quote from: S. Petrukhin on November 24, 2020, 12:45:52 pm ---

And I'm surprised: do you really all think that in Russia 38 civilian nuclear reactors are only engaged in producing weapons-grade plutonium?

--- End quote ---

I don't recall saying that.

I do recall form declassified documents and my school education that reactors that were 'built for energy generation' were often *EDITED* dual purpose or no such thing and were often used for the production of material used for weapons.

I'm also old and cynical enough to not 100% trust government declarations.

But as I said, you seem touchingly naive, long may your innocence last.

LaserSteve:
Even if you had access to the full size simulator, without some serious training in how to warm up the beast, you would not get far in the actual control room.
Warming up too fast,  will cause many reactors to level off from poisoning that can take days to recover from.  Other issues  like Wigner effect in the graphite of an RBMK could cause surprises. There are things like  mechanical limits on how many rods you can pull at once, by design.

If you read the translation of one of the more candid  Russian reports on Chernobyl, much of what would be known physics  to a US operator was considered classified need to know  by the Russians at the time, partially  leading to the disaster.  I do not have time to download the sim, but does it require you to pre-warm the coolant by running the pumps before startup?  Do you have to insert a start-up source? Do you have to pull  the low level reactivity monitor out of the core before throttling up?   Not knowing little things like that can halt the sequence easily enough.   


Pulling the hot reactor fuel without a storage  cask or years of cool down in the fuel pool would have you dead in an hour or two, if not in 15 minutes.
You would not live long enough to fab even a dirty bomb working close up  with even a few grams of  hot spent fuel.  There is a reason they have it cool down before transporting to a hot cell.

Pu production is highly specialized, enough that it is very easy to spot on a IAEA inspection. 

Having the training software out there is good for education and understanding. No matter what side of the debate your on, having some experience at running a sim could make you more aware of the care, expense, and  planning that is required to commission,  run, or decommission a reactor.  As my state (Ohio)  is tied up with the House Bill Six reactor bailout  fiasco right now, I can't see how having a bit of education on the issue is a bad thing.

This video  makes it look easy, but note the Cherenkov glow.  That fuel is really, really radioactive, requiring the facilities of a nation-state  to handle.   You think the cranes you'd need to move the fuel  would not be a give away?  Reactor crime would not be a one person effort either.  You think the RO has access to the  the keys to open the  containment, and the fuel pool gates and channels?

https://youtu.be/DogPLc0IzQM

Non-issue.

Steve 

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

There was an error while thanking
Thanking...
Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod