Now who would have thought of making a computer game based on operating a nuclear power plant? With all that cool stuff (excuse the pun) like heating, pressure, primary and secondary loops, energy levels and let’s not forget, that delicious radiation flowing among many others. Well Chris Crawford had this idea back in 1980 with an ‘edutainment’ game called S.C.R.A.M. An appropriate title to say the least, aiming to educate people who are concerned about nuclear power plant’s safety. The net result was, even though Chris Crawford mentioned at a much later stage that this ‘stupid game devoid of entertainment value’, I beg to differ as not only it teaches the ins / outs of the nuclear power plant, this game produced one of the most intense experience that I have faced in a long time, in a good way.
Chris’ main inspiration for this ‘edutainment’ is the nuclear power plant event at Three Mile Island. On Wed morning, March 28th 1979, it started with a simple plumbing breakdown. Then a small valve opened to relieve the pressure from the reactor malfunctioned thus failed to close. This, in turn, caused the cooling water to drain from the open valve causing the nuclear core to overheat. The operators, confused with the current situation with contradicted readings, shut off the emergency water systems to cool the core. Well, the net result was a core meltdown that almost caused a major cataclysm. That’s a very simplistic account of the worst nuclear accident in America’s history however I do recommend studying it further as it’s an interesting account of compounding human oversights.
So S.C.R.A.M. has two game play styles – one being a ‘testing ground’ and the other, the real thing. The testing ground is simply just that – muck around with the valves and pumps to see the cause / effects. Also, you need to read the very extensive manual to get an understanding about this simulation. Unless you are a nuclear physicist, you’ll have no hope of succeeding the desire outcome, which is to see how much megawatt (MW-h) the power plant generated before being forced to shut down (i.e. SCRAM). If the power plant goes into a meltdown, it’s an instant loss, no matter how much power that has been generated. To see the target MW-h goals, page 43 in the manual will display this.
Once you have a good feel of the mechanics, then it’s off to the real thing – here is where your internal pressure cooker will rise, just like the operators in real life when alarms are going berserk. There’s nine risk levels to choose from (one being the lowest and nine the highest) and what governs the risks is the length of time between earthquakes. Yes, the power plant is situated on a fault line where quakes occur like there’s no tomorrow. However the manual did mention this in the ‘accuracy of the simulation’ section (page 37) and acknowledges this is not realistic (among others).
So, about these earthquakes, what they do is that it guarantees something will break after a tremor. Because there are three ‘sections’ to this nuclear power plant (not an accurate account of the real thing – see page 37 in the manual), each have a certain number of valves – the primary loop (for which houses the reactor) has four and both the secondary / tertiary loop has two each. So statistically speaking, there a good chance that the primary loop will get hammered the most. However, to memory, I believe the secondary loop gets hammered the most; well during my many play throughs.
To ‘assist’ you, there are also two auxiliary pumps - High Pressure Injection or HPI for which houses close to the reactor and the Auxiliary Feedwater System for which houses close to the secondary loop. Each has four and three valves respectively. These pumps are closed off at the start of the game however if you require to use them, you need to turn on the valve first then activate the pump. So you cannot simply just turn on the pump and hope all is good. So it’s advisable to turn on at least one valve for each of the auxiliary pumps to get yourself ready however there is a catch.
The catch is simply this – if the auxiliary valves are turned off, the quake cannot damage them at all. Once they on, and even though the pumps is not active, they can be damaged by the quake. And before you go on to say why not switch off all the valves around the main plant or at least, knock down one step (e.g. the primary loop has four so why not have three valves operated), you might as well give up and don’t play this game or seek further training.
Anyways, back to the auxiliary pumps, what I do is to turn them all on – yes the four HPI valves and the three Auxiliary Feedwater System valves however I do not turn on the pumps unless necessary. Why that is, is because once a quake occurs, there’s a good chance that it will knock out an auxiliary valve and not the main ones. In effect, there will be no damage made (i.e. temperate fluctuations) as they are an auxiliary, aiming to assist you, meaning it’s not necessary to have them to run the power plant (but don’t tell that to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission). Also this saves workers fixing up the real problem.
And this forms your major anxieties – utilising your workers to their maximum potential. At the start of the game, you have eighty workers and sending them off to fix a valve will cost you five at a time. Note that if the valve is not damaged then it’s a waste of five workers. So in total, you can only have sixteen cracks of fixing the plant before calling the quits, or ‘SCRAM’. So the longer the power plant operates, the more total energy it produces overall. So you can see my method of turning on all the auxiliary valves can extend time. Of course, if you suspect one of the auxiliary valves broke, you can send the workers to fix that issue too.
So how can you tell which valve/s are indeed damaged? The easiest way (however it’s not totally full proof) is to see a drop in temperature in either of the three loops after a quake. Once you have spotted a drop in temperature, send out the workers to fix that valve – if successful, the computer beeps you in happiness however if it’s incorrect (i.e. not damaged) then the computer buzzes you in dissatisfaction. There are times where a quake hits and you get that ‘steam voiding’ alert (i.e. steam building up causing more heat in the power plant) and yet, you cannot see any temperate drops. If this happens, I normally lower the cooling rods first thus slowing down the reactor. What this means there’s a reduction in energy output however doing so, normally stops that ‘steam voiding’ alert. Other than that, turn on the auxiliary pumps to cool things down.
Because the game is written in basic, controlling the game can be a royal pain. Basic in general is very slow to compute comparing to machine language. What this means that your controls (i.e. moving the joystick / pressing the fire button) is very sluggish for this style of game. Also during the higher risk levels, quakes occur more often (once in about five seconds), the joystick controls are too slow to match the quake speed. I guess this is a measurement of realism?
Visually it’s very pleasing to the eye – everything is perfectly colour coordinated and detailed throughout. Nice water / steam effects as seen in the tubes and the melt down, even though it’s a heart stopper, pulsates in pretty pastels. Likewise are the sounds as they play a very important part in the game – more so than the graphics as the sounds are uniquely identified to the event at hand; whether be a steam voiding issue to a successful cheery like beep when you correctly identify a broken valve to an unsuccessful buzz when sending out workers to fix a non-broken valve. Also you can hear the plant producing at full speed to when it slows down to a grinding halt.
My average time to finish off a session is about seven to ten minutes long. That’s basing on risk level six (out of nine). So naturally the lower, the longer and vice versa. Out of my many playing sessions, I never achieved the Senior Reactor Engineer (Risk Level Nine with total output of 500MWH). My personal highest score is Risk Level 7 (producing 400 MWH and above however to memory I only done this only a handful of times). I normally play this game on Risk Level Six and be pretty comfortable with it. That said, I really enjoyed this game no matter the intense pressure I’m under for the most of the time however, because it’s written in basic and the manual is pretty heavy to digest, it takes a certain type of player to appreciate this. If you can get passed that hurdle, this game may teach you how to handle stressful situations a lot better in real life. A marvellous piece of programming from Chris Crawford.
8.5 / 10