We’ve seen a lot of projects based on the Pi Pico, but a nuclear reactor simulation is a new one. This project was created by [Andrew Shim], [Tyler Wisniewski] and another group member for Cornell’s ECE 4760 class on embedded design (which should silence naysayers who think the Pi Pico can’t be a “serious” microcontroller), and simulates the infamous soviet RMBK reactor of Chernobyl fame.
The simulation uses a 4-bit color VGA model. The fission model includes uranium fuel, water, graphite moderator, control rods and neutrons. To simplify the math, all decayed materials are treated identically as non-fissile, so no xenon poisoning is going to show up, for example. You can, however, take manual control to both scram the reactor and set it up to melt down with the hardware controller.
The RP2040’s dual-core nature comes in handy here: one core runs the main simulation loop, and the main graphic on the top of the VGA output; the other core generates the plots on the bottom half of the screen, and the Geiger-counter sound effect, and polls the buttons and encoders for user input. This is an interesting spread compared to the more usual GPU/CPU split we see on projects that use the RP2040 with VGA output.
An interesting wrinkle that has been declared a feature, not a bug, by the students behind this project, is that the framebuffer cannot keep up with all the neutrons in a meltdown simulation. Apparently the flickering and stuttering of frame-rate issues is “befitting of the meltdown scenario”. The idea that ones microcontroller melts down along with the simulated reactor is rather fitting, we agree. Check it out in a full walkthrough in the video below, or enjoy the student’s full writeup at the link above.
This project comes to us via Cornell University’s ECE 4760 course, which we’ve mentioned before. Thanks to [Hunter Adams] for the tipoff. You may see more student projects in the coming weeks.
This reminds me of Chernobyl: The Legacy Continues on Windows 95
man the simulation of reaction byproducts is the only interesting thing imo. without that, it’s just remove rods to increase temperature. you effectively pretend the reactor is stateless, but real reactors very much are not
Very true, but these are computer science grads doing a final project to show off their embedded programming chops, not physicists or nukeEs, so we can perhaps find it in ourselves to forgive them.
They are more inventive than me. I would have just made an RBMK shaped electic kettle, with a top that pops up when the water boils.
But RBMKettles Don’t explode…
But no isotopes of xenon are fissile. Xenon poisoning isn’t because of fission, it’s because 135Xe has an absolute massive capture cross section
Well somebody’s been watching Higgsino Physics! 🤩
https://youtu.be/P3oKNE72EzU
It’s the emoticon that stopped me from clicking that link.
Emoticons are constructed with ASCII. =/
The abomination they used in their post is an emoji.