seeing through walls at i live in science land

i’ve been putting off building a nuclear power plant for a year and i did not know why until this week

up to now, the builds i’ve done have been able to illustrate science concepts as they are (ie, water from a reservoir running through pipes to turn turbines in a hydro-electric dam is easy to imagine without needing to look into the pipes)

the main part of a nuclear power plant is the containment building which is typically airtight and fully sealed and that’s where all the action is

so how do you build a virtual world representation of something that is meant to be fully sealed, whose main purpose is to contain radiation and high pressure (like 200 psi), and “strong enough to withstand the impact of a fully loaded passenger airliner without rupture”

in this illustration, seeing a “cut out” is pretty accepted because it is literally an illustration and not a 3D representation

creating this build with some form of window is not representative of a real nuclear power plant and placing a “disclaimer” explaining that the window is just a way to let you see the inside is not ideal (and messes with that whole immersive “suspend disbelief” philosophy)

hmm, what to do?

how about having one completed containment building and have a second one under construction?

there could be building plans, like the illustration above, which show the main parts and that would seem like a plausible scenario plus raise the topic of a world that increasingly needs more and more energy!

i read somewhere that homes in the 1950s only had a few things plugged in (something like 5 things) whereas today we have loads of things plugged in and that the average home has something like 10 devices with unique IP addresses!

still needs a lot of work

need to make a crane lowering the reactor down & add other construction equipment

uranium heated hot tub?

So nuclear power plants are built with the east half first, then the west half? LOL

But I like it! And there are so many things you can do in 3D…

How about an X-ray vision button — you press it, and the outside becomes transparent?

– Maria

Maria Korolov

17 Apr 12 at 11:51 pm

If you build it in two halves (or maybe 2/3 and 1/3), the second part can have a touch handler that sets those prims to partly or fully transparent. Using something like 75-90% transparency would probably maintain the suspension of belief, especially if it was made transparent in stages (like 25% at a time), and if there was a timer that reset it back to 0% after some time. Or perhaps it’s best for demonstration if it just cycled between those on a timer.

Jim Tarber

18 Apr 12 at 12:27 am

Use a series of buttons that reveal different parts and layers?

I’ll email you an XML of one of my shipyard cranes, Ener :-D

Sarge Misfit

18 Apr 12 at 12:55 am

we didn’t get electricity connected until the quite late fifties. nor water nor anything else. children had to learn how to use matches and candles and oil lamps, and how to build a fire. probably wouldn’t be allowed now.
I wonder if that nuclear power station is actually safer ?
Of course getting electricity and phone cables connected everywhere was the thing we had to have before we could have all the home computers and broadband.

Keith Selmes

18 Apr 12 at 8:22 am

very cool ideas Maria and Jim! i could totally buy that idea and have a sign that says “touch for x-ray vision and see how this works”!!! =)

thanks Sarge, i’d love your crane!

hi Keith – personally, i love nuclear power plants and France has their act together on them, including very cool self-contained concept here

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thinking-tech/frances-latest-green-idea-underwater-nuclear-reactors/6049

from a teaching point of view, we won’t be saying whether nuclear energy is good or bad, just showing how it works. part of subQuark’s activities are current events which will be linked online and that is a place where students can explore the political aspects of it on their own. we are trying to stay objective and just present how things work

Ener Hax

18 Apr 12 at 9:16 am

My PC is powered by Elecricite de France (EDF) ;)

As reactors go, the Thorium type look really interesting.

18 Apr 12 at 11:44 am

Crane sent, Ener :-)

And related to what Keith said earlier, I remember my mother cooking on a wood burning stove. Especially as I was the oldest and had to carry in the firewood :-P That was the early 60′s, rural BC. Only a couple of hundred kilometers from where I live now :-D

18 Apr 12 at 12:51 pm

Of course, you could always build it extremely large, enter the area through a tunnel that makes it seem your avatars are shrinking, when actually everything is getting larger. and view it from inside as molecules or something similar :D

ELQ

18 Apr 12 at 4:34 pm

*looks up Thorium reactors* =)

we had electricity but on the bee farm i grew up on, we also chopped loads of wood and did about 5 cords a year in a wood burning cooking stove and also a smaller wood burning heater

now ELQ, i like that idea a lot! the containment building is actually pretty small and tightly packed (in real life) – doing your approach could let me scale it up say 4 times or so =)

19 Apr 12 at 12:29 pm

A great idea. I have purchased a virtual plant from turbosquid and is being developed in a Unity3D space. I am intrigued to see how your building develops and also how the process of electricity generation via nuclear can be simulated in OpenSim. I am happy to share my developments once under way. Thank you . and I thoroughly enjoy all your posts. Michael (Japan)