3D model I made of the Three Mile Island control room

[ElliotSmith]

TL;DR Summary

This is a 3D computer model I made using Blender 2.8 of the control room at the three mile island NPP.

This took roughly two months to complete from start to finish.

Link to imgur album so that the full-size photos can be viewed.

Rendered in 4K.

 

[anorlunda]

Cool. What was your source for the detailed into needed to make the model?

 

[ElliotSmith]

Cool. What was your source for the detailed into needed to make the model?

I referenced images I got from google image search.

 

[davenn]

Summary:: This is a 3D computer model I made using Blender 2.8 of the control room at the three mile island NPP.

Ummmm ... I don't see any 3D imaging, just a semi-panoramic, different angle views
like what would be in a normal photo
Do you understand what 3D imaging is ?

nice work , but 3D? I don't think so

 

[sysprog]

Ummmm ... I don't see any 3D imaging, just a semi-panoramic, different angle views
like what would be in a normal photo
Do you understand what 3D imaging is ?

nice work , but 3D? I don't think so

The 3D model is at its core mathematically defined. What we're seeing here are 2D renderings generated in accordance with the 3D definition. For @ElliotSmith to produce an acceptably smooth video tour of the 3D space would require rendering of 30 or more of the 2D images for every second of video.

 

[Frodo]

Did you include the cardboard tag which, IIRC, was hanging on a wall panel obscuring one of the two Emergency Core Cooling System, ECCS, warning lights saying the ECCS was disabled as the valves were closed?

Report Of The President's Commission On The Accident At Three Mile Island is an interesting read and is very critical of the control room design.

There are many other examples mentioned in our report that indicate the lack of attention to the human factor in nuclear safety. We note only one more (a fourth) example. The control room, through which the operation of the TMI-2 plant is carried out, is lacking in many ways. The control panel is huge, with hundreds of alarms, and there are some key indicators placed in locations where the operators cannot see them. There is little evidence of the impact of modern information technology within the control room. In spite of this, this control room might be adequate for the normal operation of nuclear power plants.

However, it is seriously deficient under accident conditions. During the first few minutes of the accident, more than 100 alarms went off, and there was no system for suppressing the unimportant signals so that operators could concentrate on the significant alarms. Information was not presented in a clear and sufficiently understandable form; for example, although the pressure and temperature within the reactor coolant system were shown, there was no direct indication that the combination of pressure and temperature meant that the cooling water was turning into steam. Overall, little attention had been paid to the interaction between human beings and machines under the rapidly changing and confusing circumstances of an accident. Perhaps these design failures were due to a concentration on the large-break accidents -- which do not allow time for significant operator action -- and the design ignored the needs of operators during a slowly developing small-break (TMI-type) accident. While some of us may favor a complete modernization of control rooms, we are all agreed that a relatively few and not very expensive improvements in the control room could have significantly facilitated the management of the accident.

In conclusion, while the major factor that turned this incident into a serious accident was inappropriate operator action, many factors contributed to the action of the operators, such as deficiencies in their training, lack of clarity in their operating procedures, failure of organizations to learn the proper lessons from previous incidents, and deficiencies in the design of the control room.

 

[ElliotSmith]

Did you include the cardboard tag which, IIRC, was hanging on a wall panel obscuring one of the two Emergency Core Cooling System, ECCS, warning lights saying the ECCS was disabled as the valves were closed?

Report Of The President's Commission On The Accident At Three Mile Island is an interesting read and is very critical of the control room design.

This is the control room to TMI unit 1, which has a very different layout and appearance than TMI unit 2,