Unit Control is Here! (Beta)

For the past few months I've been building the plant's thermal hydraulics: the full steam and water circuitry around the reactor. That work is what makes the next control desk playable. The VIUB (Senior Unit Control Engineer) desk is now operational, along with some of VIUT (Turbine Control Engineer). Until now you could only run the reactor itself from the VIUR desk. Now you can run the systems that keep it cooled and fed: start the main circulation pumps, hold separator levels with feedwater, deaerate makeup water, dump steam during start-up and bring the turbo generators onto the grid. It's still in beta, but it's playable enough to announce publicly.

How to join the beta

• In your Steam Library, right-click Chernobyl Simulator → Properties
• Open the Betas tab
• Select beta from the dropdown
• Wait for Steam to download the update, then launch the game

Beta saves are not be compatible with the stable branch. Back up your saves before switching.

The three desks, briefly

• VIUR: reactor control. Control rods, power, reactor protection.
• VIUB: unit control. Circulation pumps, steam separators, feedwater, auxiliary circuits.
• VIUT: turbine and electrical. Turbine steam admission, generators, grid connection.

What's new in the beta

Almost all of the missing control elements on the VIUB and VIUT panels are now in place.

Main Circulation Circuit

• Steam separators with bubbler-pool safety valves, including their test switches
• Main Circulation Pumps (MCPs) and the natural circulation bypass
• MCP auxiliary systems: oil pumps, seal water and the hydrostatic bearing supply

Feedwater and Water Inventory

• Feedwater pumps (PEN) and Emergency Feedwater pumps (APEN)
• Feedwater supply to the steam separators through the start-up and operating lines, with automatic level control
• Deaerators with steam bubbling (barbotage) heating
• Makeup water to fill and top up the steam separators and deaerators
• SPiR (Blowdown & Cooldown) circuit: cleans circuit water, cools it down during outages and drains excess water

Start-up and Auxiliary Systems

• Technological Condenser: dumps steam during reactor start-up, before the turbine can take it
• Gas Circuit: controls the gas blowers that circulate gas through the reactor channels to carry moisture away
• Control rod cooling and spent water tank controls
• Mnemonic panel switches to light up specific indicator groups on the boards

Turbine and Electrical

• Turbine steam admission valves. Turbine start-up itself isn't implemented yet.
• Turbo generator excitation circuitry
• Turbo generator grid switches. You can't spin the turbine up yet, but you can connect a generator and run it in motoring mode (which was prohibited; Unit-2 accident).
• Electrical grid control (the last two VIUT panels): switch between transformers and monitor grid power

Known limitations

• Some controls aren't fully wired yet, or are wired to the wrong function. The operating manuals that would explain their exact purpose are scarce, so research is ongoing. These will be corrected as soon as we have reliable information.
• Tooltips, tasks and alarms for the new systems are incomplete. They'll be written (or rewritten) once the remaining work is finished.
• The turbine can't be started yet.

Other Features

• MTK (core map) now has its green border and fuel channel markings
• New MTK refresh (load) pattern
• Authentic rod control matrix design, selectable in Settings
• The three buttons on the VU-1 SKALA interface are now functional
• New plotter paper

Fixes

Physics

• Added the missing pressure difference along the reactor channel height, so boiling now develops at the correct elevation in the channel
• Added the missing ~85 MWt of heat from fast neutrons

Gameplay and UI

• Fixed the VU-1 display color
• Fixed mismatched alarms
• Fixed indicator lights misbehaving when their zone is unloaded
• Fixed achievements failing when the control room loaded too quickly
• Fixed the dialog not appearing correctly when loading old saves
• Fixed disconnected players still being counted in the online player total

Testing tips

The beta is about the steam and water side of the plant. If you don't want to control the reactor by hand at the same time, these console commands help:

Enable cheats:

cheats 1

Bypass AZ (reactor protection) trips, or set the setpoints yourself:

bypass_az 1

Have the reactor hold a requested thermal power (0 turns it off):

power_seeker <MW>

Feedback

This is a beta, and your reports directly shape what gets fixed next. If you find a control that does nothing, a value that looks wrong, or a bug, please report it on Discord / Steam forum / in-game feedback. Thank you for playing and for your patience while this came together!