Research on Immersive Simulation of Key Equipment Process Flow in Nuclear Power Plant Based on VR Technology

Nowadays, 3D modeling and virtual reality technology has become a new method to enhance the digitization level in nuclear power engineering field. Reactor pressure vessel head handling, refueling and main equipment installation are the important process flows in nuclear power plant. Traditional measures without digitization and visualization, which need much more experience and technical skills to conduct the staffs on-site construction work. In that case, there are more risks when they do some complicated operations especially the new ones they never know before. This paper presents a technical method to design an immersive virtual environment, which contains the whole 3D model data of the nuclear island buildings in nuclear power plant to simulate the key processing flows. Meanwhile, the paper develops an interactive VR software system to help training workers about their on-site works in a virtual way before they solve on-site problems. On the other hand, another application of this paper’s work is design verification of the process flows themselves, so that the simulation results can tell designer what and where is the optimizing goal. The achievements of this paper have already been applied in the actual HPR1000 nuclear power project of CGN, and bring considerable efficiency return in construction field.