New nuclear simulator at NPRE offers students hands-on, risk-free training in reactor operations

In recent years, NPRE has expanded the educational and research opportunities for its students and faculty, including new labs in and out of Talbot Laboratory and the establishment and growth of the Illinois Plasma Institute.

NPRE now also has a classroom-size nuclear simulator that allows students to learn and make mistakes without the risk of a meltdown.

“The simulator’s most important role is that it mimics, in an excellent way, the control room of a nuclear power plant,” NPRE professor Tomasz Kozlowski said. “What you see on the screen is the simulation of a control room, but behind it is a computational engine that does very accurate simulations of a nuclear reactor, including the vessel, primer system, pressurizer, pumps, valves, even the electrical grid outside of the turbine.”

NPRE’s simulator can emulate the conditions at both a PWR (pressurized water reactor) or BWR (boiling water reactor), the only two types of commercial reactors currently in the United States.

The huge benefit for the department, in teaching and research, is that it’s a full scope simulator. “You could even simulate what happened in Fukushima,” Kozlowski said, referencing the 2011 disaster in which an earthquake and tsunami in Japan which resulted in electrical grid failure and damaged nearly all of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant's backup energy sources.

“Another exciting application is to teach about the consequences of transients and accidents for the existing reactor fleet,” graduate student Anthony Boyd said. “In an accident, it will be a very stressful environment, so training to handle the situations and mitigate correctly is important. Lastly, it will be key for the advanced reactor space to create simulators for these reactors to train future operators and study their potential transients.”

“We're lucky to have a simulator at NPRE that can run operating and accident scenarios for PWR and BWR,” graduate student Sohaib Malik said. “Observing how the reactor responds to different transients has really helped me understand nuclear systems and components better.”

One of the missing components of the educational experience at NPRE has been the absence of a nuclear reactor since the TRIGA reactor was decommissioned decades ago. The university continues to work to bring a microreactor to campus, which is a long and expensive process. The presence of a simulator fills in the gap for the time being.

“In terms of research, there are good opportunities to use the developer modules and functionality in the simulator to design and test various neutronics, fluid flow, and heat transfer models, especially for advanced reactors,” Malik said.

This year, the simulator is being used in required courses such as NPRE 247 (Modeling Nuclear Energy Systems), 455 (Neutron Diffusion and Transport), 449 (Nuclear System Engineering and Design) and other related electives.

Kozlowski says that at some point, every student coming through will have used it for at least one of their classes.

“As a student getting the chance to work with the reactor simulator, I have appreciated the opportunity to see how the systems and components talked about in class are used in a real control room,” Boyd said. “Seeing how the theory we discuss gets applied and impacts the reactor can be helpful for preparing students for the industry.”