Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Mumbo Jumbo’s Crazy Minecraft Reactor

Today we’re going to be looking at a video by mumbo jumbo specifically how to make a nuclear reactor in Minecraft for those of you who don’t know me I’m Tyler folz I’m a nuclear engineer with a little over 10 years of experience in the commercial nuclear power industry from engineering to operations to

Emergency response I don’t claim to know everything there is nuclear but I can certainly share some knowledge actors go pretty high on that list I mean from an engineering standpoint they were incredibly impressive there’s loads of difficult engineering going on in there P that I personally don’t fully

Understand Al of course on a scary standpoint they’re pretty impressive too I mean I know it really happens but when a nuclear reactor explodes Well you certainly know about it I mean it that is true you know about it a lot more than say an an oil refinery or a factory

Or a Coal Power Plant cuz people are just afraid of them it’s not any more dangerous in fact it’s actually less dangerous far less likely to have deaths from nuclear power as opposed to Coal or natural natural gas but he’s right that people fear it doesn’t make any sense

Though a huge explosion also covers the entire surrounding area in radiation which stays there for thousands upon thousands of years I mean that’s impressive and that not necessarily usually an explosion is contained in the reactor containment building containment buildings are designed to withstand explosions now Chernobyl they just

Didn’t make a containment building that was her big design flaw one of many design flaws there it very cool now unfortunately in Minecraft right now we do not have nuclear energy and we don’t have nuclear reactors but I thought it’ be a fun Redstone project to work on so

Let’s begin so the first thing I’ve done is created this 15x 15x 10 block deep bunker that drops down into the ground now I decided to use iron blocks for this one just because I feel like they look reinforced and Industrial and that’s the sort of thing that we want to

Be going for here because of course we’re building a nuclear reactor okay you don’t have like pretty wood and leaves and things like that in a nuclear reactor nope you have iron you have like red Stone hard looking blocks and that’s what we’re going to be going for here

True just like any industrial facility you’re going to have that though nuclear power plants are often on nature preserves because they’re located far away from populated areas so yeah might as well have a wildlife preserve so the next thing I’m going to do is create the

Control W system and I’m going to start that off down at the bottom so I’m going to go three blocks in on either side that’s going to be around about there and I’m going to place a sticky piston every block just like this and then I’m

Going to do the same thing going across right here so just like that so we’re going to create a 4×4 area of sticky pistons just all facing upwards in this sort of grid formation and then on top of those sticky pistons we are going to place yet more sticky pistons and then

On top of those sticky pistons we’re going to place in the slime blocks and also these black stained glass box just like this now these are all going to be the control rods which essentially call cool down the nuclear reactor they stop it from overheating and exploding so

These are pretty important control rods are used to uh regulate reactor power and reactor temperature and control rods can be uh fully inserted in less than two seconds to shot to uh shut down a reactor safely explosion prevention isn’t the word that I would have used but

Sure so it looks like he’s at least laying them out evenly these are now looking lovely so we’re going to Chuck in all of the Redstone across the bottom just powering all of our bottom sticky pistons because if you haven’t quite guessed yet we creating double piston

Extenders at the bottom here so all of this Redstone needs to power all of those then on top we’re going to have our removable objects I’m going to be using obsidian because once again these need to look like solid industrial blocks and something about obsidian just

Looks really rock solid so I’m going to place in all of so okay looks like this is all just going for the Aesthetics is what one would look like rather than one that’s functional so this does doesn’t look like that same nuclear craft mod that looked at a while ago if you’re

Interested in seeing my reaction to that I’ll pin it down on a comment below but here we’re looks like we’re just going mainly on looks and then on top of all of those we’re going to need our Redstone in once again so that’s just going to make it way around that’s

Looking lovely and also a double piston retraction which look moves them nice and quick uh it’s very looks like uh they can either do a reactor trip or the opposite of reactor trip where you move them all out and for the purpose of the game a simple illustration that’s cool it could

Be one of those trigger pulse reactors that you do that people do experiments on where you do rapid control rod withdrawals for very important scientific research do not actually do this sort of thing on a commercial nuclear power plant there’s a lot more energy in this but this thing is small

Enough that it shouldn’t be that big of a deal and awesome when they’re all in sync just like that and that is the bottom layer of our control rods all fully functional now it is time to place in the fuel rods these the actual uranium which is going to cause our

Nuclear reactor to work so put on your hazmat suits make sure that you’re all safe and sound before you start touching this stuff because otherwise you know it can do some truly terrible things to you that’s actually not true if it’s fresh fuel um fresh fuel you could touch you

Could touch and it would be 100% fine now fuel that has the products from uranium in there that could give you some dose now how you would actually put it in there is the whole thing would be underwater you move the fuel in safely above it using cranes they’re not

Actually wearing ha met they’re wearing protective clothing so they don’t get contaminated in this case you might see some of these guys wear uh life vests if they’re not going to be on the central platform the biggest Hazard up there is falling off and drowning not the actual

Radioactive material even if from spent fuel full now if you were to swim down there and be hug a fuel assembly don’t do that that’s going to get you some nasty do these guys don’t really need to worry about those we’re going to place three blocks in going upwards like that

Those are all our uranium blocks and they are going to make their way across I can tell he’s going for artistic thing cuz everyone thinks uranium is this green glowy stuff it’s it’s not it’s it’s metallicy fuel assemblies just like you saw in that picture ago just like

This in this sort of formation and we’re going to create a grid of them in between all of our control rods so it’s interesting is he’s stacking fuel above the control rods it’s it’s the other way around not to say you can’t that this sort of thing is impossible they need to

Be able to fall into the bottom and electromagnetic system that holds the rods in place they detach they fall in the reactor shut down here piston mechanism to launch them upwards which could fail gravity is not going to fail this is a more risky design that you see here this Redstone crosses essentially

Where we have this sort of cross going on that’s where uranium is going to be going that’s where it’s going to be popping in and that means that when we extend our control rods they will essentially pop up in this area in between our Fu rods which are the

Uranium or the emerald blocks and that means they should end up looking pretty cool in fact I’ll quickly demonstrate to you how it looks so we do this and then look they all extend between and it looks nice or at least I think it looks

Nice what you have to do is you have to fill in that full take it right the way out to this area right here and it should end up looking pretty cool so obviously we’ve got the bottom control rods and we also have the nuclear fuel

Rods which is pretty good going so far I mean I would say that the development of this has gone considerably fast in the development of a real nuclear reactor so I suppose that’s a positive but now give you a sense of a real nuclear reactor 6

Years is generous more like 10 plus uh for Vogal units 3 and four from actual groundbreaking phase of construction to commercial operation that’s been going on since 2013 it’s 2023 now and takes even longer if you count the bureaucratic administrative permitting licensing all those steps takes even more years before ground is

Even broken for the construction site going start work on the top control rods and to do that I’m going to place and then a glowstone across there so maybe his vision is control rods on the bottom control rods on the top and fuel is the little meat of this sandwich that’s very

Different so I guess he’s so I guess they’ll have some margin but it just makes a lot more sense for the control rods to all be in one thing it’d be much easier system to operate we’re going to place a line of Glowstone going right

The way above all of our control rods so there is the bottom control rod and this one lines up with it perfectly and this one lines up with it as well all of our control rods are retracted and we get full nuclear react action happening which means I probably shouldn’t be

Standing here I mean I clearly no you do not want to stand there you’re going to get some nasty Neutron dose while the while the reactor is operating Tim well the Heat’s going to kill you faster than the actual radiation but you would get a lethal dose from that pretty easily I could

Just say this is a little experiment that you would see at a uh at a university or maybe a national lab or something like that this is probably closer to that not in the correct safety game this is very very bad for me safety gear

Is not going to help you from if you’re that close to an operating nuclear reactor I’m sorry to say so the actual nuclear reactor itself is pretty much done I mean that’s it that is a simple mechanism that we have just created right there the control rod system is

All in place so do is I’m working on the Water Area because for those who don’t know most nuclear reactors basically work by heating up and then that heats up water the water then evaporates turning into steam which travels through a turbine which spins that turbine

Generating power so now what we have to do is actually create 100% accurate the only thing only difference is uh nuclear power is just a fancy way of boiling water the water holder and I’m going to place in all of the Redstone up at the

Top here and one thing that I will just say is as you guys know water and Redstone do not mix particularly well okay make sure water in the actual Rea get work and just completely destroy your Redstone build because well then you’re in for a pretty bad time but now

I’m just going to cover this thing up leaving a 3X hole in the center just one thing to mention for those of you who are building at home the ends of your water holder should match up with the ends of the emerald blocks or your fuel rods in that Arrangement the water is

Not doing anything for them it’s not even touching the uh the nuclear fuel so it’s not transporting heat and it’s not moderating any neutrons what well it’s maybe giving him a little bit of shielding from like standing above there I’m going to assume his character’s immun of radiation and heat somehow or

The thing’s just turned off other than that it’s it’s not doing anything for you should line up with the ends of your control rod so hopefully that should give you a rough idea of the size of this thing but anyway now what we’re going to do is we are going to take a

Pipe output from this thing and we’re going to take it up by six blocks so that is one block right there so one block of the pipe 2 3 4 5 6 and that’s going to run up to the top right there and we need to do that on all four of

The sides next up in the center of our pipe we’re going to be placing in the very ious different fans and things that we’re going to have in here so we’re going to have one fan there we’re going to another block and we’re going to create another fan in a slightly

Different position and then the final fan up at the top right here now obviously you are going to have to use some imagination on this one because well they just look like crosses and x’s and things but in the grand scheme of things I think that’s probably a good

Start so there’s no fans in a steam generator making a steam generator that hovers above it just the heat from the reactor coolant system interfacing with the water of the steam generator just boils it and sends and is going to send it up now there’s really powerful pumps

Both on the primary side pumping the reactor coolant and on the secondary side pumping feed water into the steam generator is to the point where you have so much force in there so much energy fans in the steam generator completely unnecessary but I think he’s for the purpose of visualizing it in this

Analogy I can see why he’s going with some thing that is supposed to provide mod of forest the next thing we’re going to do is actually create a moving turbine system and you guys have guessed it we’re going to be building the famous piston Fe tape we should see that all of

Our Pistons will all start firing and they are perfectly in sync that is the way we want what is so is this supposed to be some giant engine like a nuclear powerered diesel or something just shooting a bunch of Pistons work but for now I think we going to place a lever

Down here and shut off the mechanism cuz otherwise that drop him m final details now first things first I need to place in a line of blocks going out from that Redstone right there into the idea of using nuclear for propulsion I mean it’s essentially drives an engine on a

Submarine or an aircraft carrier but those are again turbine driven rather than piston driven but I’ve never heard of anything involving like using nuclear power to drive Pistons but sure why not siid of our Hoppers now what that means is when our control rods are extended our Hoppers

Will be shut off which means that our turbine will not be moving because of course the nucar reactor is is is the Piston supposed to represent a turbine yeah I guess maybe they don’t have turbin in Minecraft I don’t know so this is what we’ve created and we have now

Finished our nuclear power station our nuclear reactor build and I have to say it looks absolutely fantastic it does look really cool and it is cool to see someone again this just looks like a base version of Minecraft not a Minecraft expert please feel free to

Correct me if I’m wrong on that sort of stuff but rather than using nuclear craft or something specifically designed for that it’s it’s really cool I kind of um kind of took me a bit to look at the analog between the uh pistons and the uh

And what’s going to be a turban but hey it’s a it’s a cool experiment uh is it realistic um he has some some Concepts there I mean about how control rods can shut down a reactor it’s a very much a binary reactor in that it’s either on or

Completely off no it’s either at 100% power 0% power which doesn’t exactly make the best uh scalable reactor that can ramp up in power but questionable to have your control rods it’s basically control rods being the bread of your nuclear fuel sandwich here can’t say I’ve ever heard of

Anything like that but points for creativity there this is definitely really currently all of our control rods are extended our nuclear reactor is shut off but when we flick this EV right here everything retracts all of the control rods have been retracted which means that we have nuclear reactions happening

And that means that the steam is running through the system and our turbine is turning which is giving us power this was fun to watch again I have a great appreciation when anyone tries to show anything nuclear related in a video game or popular culture that you clearly put

A lot of work and i’ I thoroughly enjoyed this video thank you very much for watching I’ll see you next time