About Reactor Dynamics
A nuclear power plant you can run in the browser. Learn what operators do and why the plant responds the way it does — operation and dynamics together.
Nothing to install, no account. Desktop or laptop for now.
What this is
A pressurized-water plant in the browser, cold shutdown to full power on one continuous model. You operate the board. Two things to take away:
- What — plant operation: startup order, holding power, procedures, recovery from upsets.
- Why — plant dynamics: how heat, reactivity, inventory, steam, and the turbine couple so the board’s behavior makes sense.
You learn the what by running the plant. You learn the why from how it responds — and from the written model on the Physics page and in the in-sim manual if you want the equations and limits spelled out.
What you can do
- Bring a cold plant to life. Pressurize, start the reactor coolant pumps, heat to hot standby, go critical, raise power, put the generator on the grid, and take the plant to 100%.
- Keep it online. Load changes, boration and dilution, feedwater and level control, holding steady through xenon.
- Work plant casualties. Trips and recovery, stuck valves, pump trips, steam generator tube leaks, loss of heat sink — on your terms or without warning.
Optional: the Three Mile Island sequence (stuck-open relief, inventory loss, recovery). Same plant model for every session — an easier run is a gentler scenario, not a simpler plant.
Operator manuals are in the control room. Free play is always available.
Coming next
In work: a full training campaign, instructor-led scenarios, live checklists that tick off against the plant, step-by-step procedure walkthroughs, and control rooms for the BWR and RBMK plants (their physics engines already exist). See the Roadmap for short descriptions of each.
The plant
A compact pressurized water reactor: about 100 MWe, one coolant loop, one steam generator. Cold shutdown to full power is one continuous path. Other plant types are on the Roadmap.
Where it runs
A modern desktop browser. The simulation runs on your machine — this site, a local copy, or a single downloadable file for offline use.
Contact
Questions, bugs, or “this does not match plant behavior”? Email reactordynamics@gmail.com. In the simulator, Contact has that address and optional session diagnostics to attach.
Physics
For the written why — what the model computes, how systems couple, what is pinned to published data, what is left out — see Physics behind the simulator.
Reactor Dynamics is an educational simulation. It is not a substitute for licensed operator training and must not be used to operate, design, or analyze a real nuclear facility.