General > General Technical Chat
RBMK nuclear reactor simulator down load
dmills:
The real tell for a weapons Pu producer is the time a fuel element spends in the reactor.
Basically if you leave them in too long and try for a high burnup design you get a mixture of Pu isotopes instead of the pure Pu239 you want for weapons.
If the RBMK neutron energy distribution is anything like that of a UK style MAGNOX (Also graphite moderated, but CO2 gas cooled, of about the same vintage), then 6 months was more or less the magic number by my back of an envelope calcs.
The issue is that one the Pu240 starts to build up the stuff gets difficult to use in a weapon because the spontaneous fission rate increases so the finely timed neutron pulse to trigger the thing gets buried in the spontaneous neutron emission and it will tend to fizzle.
Separating Pu isotopes is of course even more difficult then separating uranium isotopes.
Personally I suspect that both designs were really about Pu production, with the power as a nice biproduct.
schmitt trigger:
We all know that the accuracy of the operating details that one can acquire from a simulator, any simulator, is whole dependent on how accurately the higher order effects are modeled.
To develop and debug those, takes some serious time and effort. Don’t think they would be available with an amusement-grade simulator.
vad:
--- Quote from: dmills on November 25, 2020, 05:51:31 pm ---Personally I suspect that both designs were really about Pu production, with the power as a nice biproduct.
--- End quote ---
This and powering Russian Woodpecker military radar conveniently located few dozen miles from Chernobyl power plant.
S. Petrukhin:
--- Quote from: vad on November 25, 2020, 08:00:34 pm ---
--- Quote from: dmills on November 25, 2020, 05:51:31 pm ---Personally I suspect that both designs were really about Pu production, with the power as a nice biproduct.
--- End quote ---
This and powering Russian Woodpecker military radar conveniently located few dozen miles from Chernobyl power plant.
--- End quote ---
The radar is not Russian for a long time and has long been turned off and almost destroyed.
Berni:
--- Quote from: S. Petrukhin on November 26, 2020, 07:27:13 am ---
--- Quote from: vad on November 25, 2020, 08:00:34 pm ---
--- Quote from: dmills on November 25, 2020, 05:51:31 pm ---Personally I suspect that both designs were really about Pu production, with the power as a nice biproduct.
--- End quote ---
This and powering Russian Woodpecker military radar conveniently located few dozen miles from Chernobyl power plant.
--- End quote ---
The radar is not Russian for a long time and has long been turned off and almost destroyed.
--- End quote ---
Yep, cause they now have much better ways of detecting missiles from the US.
The massive radar was still quite an engineering feat at the time and the powers it operated at was insane.
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