Nuclear power or steam power

[MeduSalem]

Smart reactors 101:
The basic idea of a smart reactor is to turn on when you need it and stay off when you don't. You don't want to suffer any energy shortage and you don't want to waste excess heat at 1000C. You can do this with circuits.

It's very tricky to tell inserters to ADD fuel to the reactor. Using the inserters requires a sustained command signal (more effort) and it the command will fail if there is no fuel to immediately grab. This makes an insertion based Smart Reactor very difficult to do. Don't try building a reactor this way.

Incorrect. You can feed from a belt - if there is no fuel on the feeding belt or chest (which can be detected with circuit signal) you can hold off fuel feeding across your entire reactor cluster until all of the fuel feeders are ready. Then simply activate all of the inserters at once (set to override stack, insert one fuel only) and use the slow basic inserters. You can detect fuel being on the inserters hand and use that as a signal to prevent more fuel from being inserted until the reactors are ready for the next burn cycle, which should happen when:
- Steam buffer below set treshold.
- Reactor has ejected a spent fuel cell (also detect this from the ejection inserter).
- Fuel is ready
- Spent fuel belt or chests are empty.

This is the setup I am using:

Overview

Power Plant v3.jpg (168.15 KiB) Viewed 2599 times

Basically your average infinite design always using 2x5 reactor blocks. Currently I am running 3 such blocks for 30 combined reactors for a total of 4640MW.

Control Circuit

Power Plant v3 detail1.jpg (427.54 KiB) Viewed 2599 times

Blueprint

The blue print of 1 reactor including the control.

Code: Select all

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1. Basically I have a global decider that outputs a signal on the "reactor" channel depending on steam level wether the reactors should run or not. That's the decider in the lower left.
2. The green wire then goes to the input inserter, which only inputs if "reactor" signal is greater than "fuel" signal, the fuel signal coming over the red wire. If the fuel signal is present it means that an fuel cell is already inside the reactor, if it is not present it means the reactor lacks fuel. If the reactor signal is present it means the reactor should run, if it is not present it means the reactors shouldn't run. The inserter is obviously overriden to stack size 1.
3. If the input inserter moves, which it does after the first setup since the fuel cell signal is not yet present, it outputs a pulse on the fuel cell channel to the red wire.
4. That fuel cell signal then gets input to the decider, which checks if the fuel cell signal is greater than the empty fuel cell signal. If so it outputs the fuel signal to red wire... and looping the signal back to itself, basically acting as a latch/memory cell, preventing more fuel from being inserted since the fuel cell signal stays active.
5. The decider only gets reset from the output inserter once the reactor outputs the empty fuel cell. The pulse of the output inserter is fed to the decider, which then resets because empty fuel cell is no longer smaller than fuel cell.
6. Which in return cancels the fuel cell signal, bringing the contraption back to state 1. Rinse and repeat.

Absolutely failsafe. Have been using the contraption ever since nuclear power was added and it never let me down. Ever.

Each reactor's fuel insertion progress is tracked/controlled individually and they only share the "reactors should run"-signal for synchronization.

Doesn't matter if there is fuel cells present or no fuel cells present on the belts/chests... As long as there is no fuel cell inside the reactor and the "reactors should run" condition is met the Input inserter is always in "waiting for input"-state. So it automatically starts up once fuel cells become available. So no kick-start is required.

Can be used with belts or bots... as the chests aren't even touched at all with circuits.

I am using bots. The output chest is an active provider chest outputting into my central storage system from where it is taken to reprocessing, so it is impossible to run full, hence why I don't need to check back on that with Circuits.

The trick for a smart reactor is that you can STALL the reactor. Fill it up with 50 dead fuel cells, burn 1 extra cell, and it won't be able to burn any more. It'll be forced to wait because the output is clogged, keeping the reactor off line. To turn the reactor back on simply extract a dead cell to unclog the output and turn it back on. Extraction is MUCH easier than insertion because you only need to send a 1 frame pulse to the inserter. No tricky timings, just set the condition and let it rip. An extraction-themed smart reactor can always keep fresh fuel ready to go, making the process super reliable even if your belts struggle to stay saturated with fuel.

These kinds of reactors are a pain in the neck to expand since freshly placed ones don't come with 50 spent fuel. Also, if one of the reactors de-syncs for any reason you're going to have an out-of-sync fuel burn. It works, it's just... more complex then the latch-based insertion ones. And more can go wrong.

Urgh... while I never thought of doing it this way, I agree with Aeternus that it is painful having to wait for 50 spent fuel cells before the throttle system starts to work at all.

By the way my approach may have an out-of-sync burn if you run out of fuel cells (or when you initially plop it down with the blueprint) due to the individual reactor control ... but if enough fuel cells are available at the next burn then all reactors are in sync from then on because they share the steam level input.

A two stage smart reactor will never need more than one steam storage tank (place it towards the COLD end of your reactor!) for the sensor and may struggle to even get above 700C. If the steam starts going down it sets the first stage, which turns some of the reactors online. If the steam gets critically low it trips the second stage, turning ALL the reactors to go online (the first stage reactors get hit twice!). As the steam level gets restored the stages reset. If the steam level stays low, you need to monitor and keep extracting dead cells every 200 sec or it will stall. Anything beyond a 2 stage reactor is overkill. The reason is that no matter how big your nuclear system gets, it doesn't matter if the power demand immediately stops. Half of the reactors will never be able to overheat the entire system in one shot.

You're promoting an uneven burn? That's... wasteful. Turn all on/off simultaneously to get a maximum payout from the neigbour bonus, and make sure your reactor either can buffer all energy it produces, or your plant has a high enough draw to dissipate enough energy.

I again agree with Aeternus... it is wasteful. Either all Reactors of a block should run or none. Just have enough tanks ready if you don't need the power all at once in low power mode. It is not like a few more tanks make much of a difference spacewise when you have that many turbines and heat exchangers already.

[vanatteveldt]

I agree with Aeternus / MeduSalem. It's not that difficult to add a steam tank to each pair of turbines and insertion throttling is pretty easy, you don't even need to use combinators if you keep the spent fuel in a 'memory' chest from which it is removed when steam < X, and use the pulse from the removal to insert the next rod (viewtopic.php?f=208&t=47687).

I still use this design I posted a while ago, I feel that 2x6 is a nice plant size, producing 1.7GW but small enough to easily fit somewhere and only requires 22 tiles water.
viewtopic.php?f=208&t=47895#p304962

[mrvn]

I think water is the hardest part of the reactor setup if you don't have waterfill. You have to find a nice big lake (or lakes) where all the pumps end up in water. Then landfill to leave just the water holes for pumps. And one wrong click and you have to start over somewhere else.

So I would like to see some designs with water trains. Would make placement a lot easier if you can just ship in water from wherever.

[vanatteveldt]

I think water is the hardest part of the reactor setup if you don't have waterfill. You have to find a nice big lake (or lakes) where all the pumps end up in water. Then landfill to leave just the water holes for pumps. And one wrong click and you have to start over somewhere else.

So I would like to see some designs with water trains. Would make placement a lot easier if you can just ship in water from wherever.

Water is absolutely the biggest hurdle... that's why I don't think infinite plants really work. For the 1.7G plant I linked above you need a 22 tile waterfront, which isn't that big. Of course you still need to landfill to get a straight edge and again for the second row of pumps, but both are straight lines so they are easy to do.

I would think that you would need an awful lot of water wagons for any decent sized plant. But if you truck in water you might as well truck out the steam and separate the turbines from the plant

Actually, the 1.7G plant I linked above has 308 turbines so needs 18480 steam=water per second, which I guess isn't too bad. If you use a four-wagon train you would need to get a train in every 5.5 seconds or so, which is doable with a couple of unloading stations. Not sure it's really that much easier though, unless you're gunning for an infinitely tileable plant.

[Aeternus]

I think water is the hardest part of the reactor setup if you don't have waterfill. You have to find a nice big lake (or lakes) where all the pumps end up in water. Then landfill to leave just the water holes for pumps. And one wrong click and you have to start over somewhere else.

So I would like to see some designs with water trains. Would make placement a lot easier if you can just ship in water from wherever.

Trains are just impractical for water. 2 offshore pumps fill a tanker wagon in just over 10 seconds. This can supply 12 heat exchangers for the same amount of time. For a small plant it can still be viable... but for something that needs to generate upwards of 5GW? It's just waaay too much water to not produce locally. You'd be hard pressed to keep the trains coming fast enough.

[mrvn]

Using the above figures from the 12 reactor setup (1.7GW, 18480 water/s) i figure a reactor needs 25k Water every ~16s.

If you build a terminal station every 4 reactors that leaves space for pumps and tanks on both sides of the track for maximal unloading speed. With 4 wagons that would be one train every 16s. Too many to scale. I would try LLFFFFFFFFLL trains. Maybe use pumps only on one side and squeeze tanks between the pumps or no tanks. Smallest station you can build is 6m or more than 3 times as many as with the fastest stations. Or 5 stations for every 6 reactors and one 8 wagon train every 32s per station.

That should still be doable with terminal stations.

[MeduSalem]

you don't even need to use combinators if you keep the spent fuel in a 'memory' chest from which it is removed when steam < X, and use the pulse from the removal to insert the next rod (viewtopic.php?f=208&t=47687).

While simpler... it requires a kickstart for each reactor after setup, so just blueprinting doesn't cut it.

And if you run out of fuel cells for some reason... you are also screwed for the same reason that it can't start up on its own anymore.

Then landfill to leave just the water holes for pumps. And one wrong click and you have to start over somewhere else.

Save in regular intervals and reload the savegame on mistake. That is what I am doing.

Of course that doesn't work in multiplayer except if you are the admin.

That said I usually carefully line out the edges first. Afterwards it is not much of a problem to fill up the rest anymore.

Water is absolutely the biggest hurdle... that's why I don't think infinite plants really work.

They work, more or less. You just need to have nice lakes... that are either horizontally or vertically stretched out... and then landfill the crap out of it. That is the only cumbersome thing about it.

Map View

Here is one of my peaceful maps where I am experimenting and toying around with all kinds of setups and other stuff which I then implement in non-peaceful maps:

Map View lake.PNG (83.42 KiB) Viewed 2569 times

That's only 30 reactors there in the middle. I could probably place several hundred additional reactors before I reach the bottom and top of the lake. Realistically seen I won't ever need the entire lake... because of how the UPS would become unbearable long before that if I ever expanded my base so far to require that much power output.

So one such bigger lake is probably enough to deal with all the energy needs you are ever going to face.

I think water is the hardest part of the reactor setup if you don't have waterfill.

But I agree with that... without waterfills it may be problematic in some not so fortunate maps, but it is largely a matter of water settings when creating the map.

It would be nice if cliff explosives would have more than one role... also allowing to bomb puddles/canals (which are so shallow that Biters/Spitters could still cross them so that they can't be abused for defense. or only maybe to slow them down).

Then one would be more independent from such lakes like shown above.

[mrvn]

It would be nice if cliff explosives would have more than one role... also allowing to bomb puddles/canals (which are so shallow that Biters/Spitters could still cross them so that they can't be abused for defense. or only maybe to slow them down).

Then one would be more independent from such lakes like shown above.

The SeaBlock pack has explosives (like cliff explosives but different color) that leave a water hole. Expensive water fill and it damages surrounding buildings but that's fine for building a water pump every now and then. But way to late in the game for my taste. In SeaBlock landfill should imho just be reversible. Like deconstructing stone paving.