[MOD 0.14] Nucular 1.0.4 - Nuclear Reactors and Weapons

[siggboy]

A ratio of 1:2 is only very slightly underpowered, so it would be advisable to use a 1:2 ratio with a storage tank to level out the flow.

This was a really good explanation of the problem. I've found, however, that at the theoretical maximum load, the storage tank doesn't really change anything, you'll still have some oscillation around the 10 MW output. That should not really matter I guess, when you're at 10 MW consumption with one fission reactor you're technically underpowered already.

So the proper ratio of reactors to steam turbines is 5400kW:10000kW = 27:50

Maybe I should change my 250MW setup to actually use 27 pairs of reactors, and unload all the steam into a long snake row of 50 steam turbines. What do you think? Would this work?

[Optera]

A ratio of 1:2 is only very slightly underpowered, so it would be advisable to use a 1:2 ratio with a storage tank to level out the flow.

I came to the same conclusion. I found this 2:4 with bypassed storage tanks to be effective. The bottom two turbines loose steam a bit earlier than the upper two so it's a brown out instead of a sudden black out.

2016-08-26-11-00-01-6456339.jpg (592.32 KiB) Viewed 8104 times

[BlakeMW]

I came up with a pretty neat pattern for making good use of a straight coastline:

individual_cell.jpg (135.54 KiB) Viewed 8096 times

The reactor part can be tiled into larger setups, such as this 270MW setup:

reactors.jpg (169.88 KiB) Viewed 8096 times

(The steam turbines don't tile, you just add 2 per reactor in whatever block layout you please)

blueprint

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[siggboy]

Great stuff, Blake. I really need to see if I can use this for my 250 MW block.

However, in your setup with 27 reactors, wouldn't it make more sense to have exactly 50 steam turbines instead of 55 -- as that happens to be the perfect ratio then as per your earlier explanations.

[BlakeMW]

Great stuff, Blake. I really need to see if I can use this for my 250 MW block.

However, in your setup with 27 reactors, wouldn't it make more sense to have exactly 50 steam turbines instead of 55 -- as that happens to be the perfect ratio then as per your earlier explanations.

That's what you'd do if you want perfect ratio, but I like to be 10% over-ratio on steam engines to accommodate short-term fluctuations in electricity use.

[BlakeMW]

I remember another reason why I always like to be over-ratio on steam engines/turbines. If you are exactly on-ratio then assuming the reactors are working properly the steam level will never deplete (much) even at full load. If you're at over-ratio, then when the system is under greater than full load, the steam level depletes. This is a really neat feature, because you can link a steam storage tank to the circuit network, and use the steam level as a cue to activate offshore pumps to bring up backup steam. Admittedly you can do much the same with an accumulator, although the storage tank method allows direct monitoring of the nuclear setup (I also often output the signal into a row of lights in the center of my factory to give a visual cue if the nuclear setup needs upgrading).

[siggboy]

Yes, good points there. I also use tanks + extra turbines anyway, so being at a perfect ration wouldn't make that much sense.

But I want to make a "perfect" blueprint like the one shown a few pages earlier, and there I'd like to have the ideal ratios.

Having some backup ready at the power plant also is quite useful. The other night when I was messing with my setup (which is theoretically blackout-proof unless there's a fuel shortage), I had a sudden blackout and no way to recover.

The backup tanks + offshore pumps are a great way, requires 0 energy to operate.

With regards to monitoring, I'm not so sure if looking at the steam level is that useful. If it's way below max then it only means that your plant is kind of close to your energy needs -- but that's something that you can also very easily see on the power graph.

[TheTom]

Any plans on a .14 compatible update?

Also, I would like to point out to a very intersting imho improovement - nuclear rockets. Not the small ones, but covering the map. Look at the orbital ion cannon mod for something that uses WMD's from orbit. There it is a "build, never spend ressourcs when firing". Nucular could have something similar but where you have to reload the launchers with larger bombs (that also are more complex to make). This provides a nice (and dirty) endgame weapon

[Simdezimon]

New update for 0.14, also adds translation for german.

And don't forget to check out my other mod Beyond. It adds fusion reactors and lots of other stuff.

[appex213]

Does recycling fuel make fuel production self sustainable ? my setup has been running for more than two hours now on MOX fuel alone, and i'm producing a lot more spent fuel than what I need to make plutonium for MOX fuel production.

[Optera]

Does recycling fuel make fuel production self sustainable ? my setup has been running for more than two hours now on MOX fuel alone, and i'm producing a lot more spent fuel than what I need to make plutonium for MOX fuel production.

If you go for recycling you effectivly burn iron and only tiny bits of uranium ore.
Siggboy explains the ratios for reprcessing in this post: viewtopic.php?f=93&t=21676&start=40#p192325

[siggboy]

Does recycling fuel make fuel production self sustainable ? my setup has been running for more than two hours now on MOX fuel alone, and i'm producing a lot more spent fuel than what I need to make plutonium for MOX fuel production.

Recycling fuel gives you 9 resources for 12 spent fuel rods. Creating fuel requires 12 resources for 12 fresh fuel rods. (Iron plates are not counted.)

That means, for every 4 fuel rods that you spend, 1 resource is missing after the reprocessing step -- this is the Uranium that you need to feed in from the outside.

You also need to feed in the Iron Plates necessary to make the fuel, because these are not returned by the reprocessing.

Above I talk about "resource", which can be Uranium, Enriched Uranium or Plutonium. These are more or less interchangeable, because Uranium can be turned into Enriched U., and Depleted U. can be turned into Plutonium.

[aTeLe]

Where can I download the old 0.12 versions of this mod?

and please stop using exclusively mods.factorio - its awful and not everyone wants to create an additional account just to download mods.

Didn't know that you need an account to download mods. I add the files.

I'm a bit late, but thank you very much

[vanatteveldt]

(viewtopic.php?f=93&t=21676&start=40#p192325) Here's a design for an end-game factory that will produce 250 MW and require 1 raw resource per MW-minute (plus some trace amounts of sulfur). Uses no robots!

Thanks for the design, I was puzzling with finding a good breeder setup.

I've made a smaller version of the design that's not quite optimal but seems to be running 5 reactors full time, plus a sixth to cover electricity use of the power plant itself. It feeds off a single uranium mine + enrichment plant.
I'm pretty new to nucular, so all feedback welcome!

smaller setup

Note that I use wooden poles to prevent mixing the two grids. You can also move the turbines one row down and use steel poles

blueprint

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[siggboy]

I've made a smaller version of the design that's not quite optimal but seems to be running 5 reactors full time, plus a sixth to cover electricity use of the power plant itself. It feeds off a single uranium mine + enrichment plant.
I'm pretty new to nucular, so all feedback welcome!

The hardest part is to find the correct ratios, if you want to minimize the Uranium consumption and want to avoid piling up excess depleted uranium, for which there really isn't much need unless you mass produce Uranium ammunition. In your case the ratios are not perfect but there is enough of everything so you won't run into problems.

The belt-based version that I've posted, and that you've made smaller, can jam up if the outer belt completely fills up with Uranium. Then the reprocessing assemblers won't be able to output anything, and the inner belt will fill with depleted fuel rods -- that will cause a blackout because the fission reactors won't be able to dump their depleted fuel.

In order to avoid that, you should limit the Uranium input. There are various ways, I've used a counting setup (with combinators) that outputs exactly one Uranium for every 4 depleted fuel rods that are consumed. An easier way is to disable the output inserter from the chemical plant while any of the reprocessing plants' output is clogged (that is actually very easy and doesn't even require combinators).

With robots it's easy to avoid all these problems very naturally, but it's a bit boring, that's why I've decided to make a belt-based version.

[vanatteveldt]

The belt-based version that I've posted, and that you've made smaller, can jam up if the outer belt completely fills up with Uranium. Then the reprocessing assemblers won't be able to output anything, and the inner belt will fill with depleted fuel rods -- that will cause a blackout because the fission reactors won't be able to dump their depleted fuel.

In order to avoid that, you should limit the Uranium input. There are various ways, I've used a counting setup (with combinators) that outputs exactly one Uranium for every 4 depleted fuel rods that are consumed. An easier way is to disable the output inserter from the chemical plant while any of the reprocessing plants' output is clogged (that is actually very easy and doesn't even require combinators).

I noticed that . I migrated my setup to your full setup after getting enough fuel to build the reactors. Since I had a lot of uranium left I thought I would use that to bootstrap the plant, but that blocked the reprocessing, which blocked the spent rod output, and everything stopped... fortunately I never removed my old coal plant, so throwing two power switches meant I could easily restart the reactor.

I guess you could put in some buffer chests in-line with a belt to make sure it can continue moving? I agree that a bot-based plant is too easy

[iceman_1212]

I remember another reason why I always like to be over-ratio on steam engines/turbines. If you are exactly on-ratio then assuming the reactors are working properly the steam level will never deplete (much) even at full load. If you're at over-ratio, then when the system is under greater than full load, the steam level depletes. This is a really neat feature, because you can link a steam storage tank to the circuit network, and use the steam level as a cue to activate offshore pumps to bring up backup steam. Admittedly you can do much the same with an accumulator, although the storage tank method allows direct monitoring of the nuclear setup (I also often output the signal into a row of lights in the center of my factory to give a visual cue if the nuclear setup needs upgrading).

i'm having trouble understanding the benefit of being "over-ratio on steam engines". my understanding is that one fission reactor can support just under 2 steam turbines but that it's close enough that, for practical purposes, we can use a 1:2 ratio as long as we're mindful of how close we are to full load.

i very much like the the circuit triggered activation of pumps to both bring in back-up steam and notify us in some way or another. but what i don't understand is what we gain by having steam engines in excess of 2:1 (given we all agree that 100% load is not sustainable for 2:1, even if only just barely). what am i missing?

Also, a question regarding monitoring of our nuclear plant - i forced a few situations such as the spent-nuclear-fuel belt getting backed (which results in an eventual shutdown of the plant) so I could see exactly how the shutdown commences since we'll want to know at the first instance of steam levels dipping meaningfully below maximum. I saw that this dip doesn't necessarily happen at the very last pair of steam turbines in the layout - it could be somewhere in the middle. So am I correct in saying that a proper monitoring will involve a storage tank for each set of steam turbines with a system designed to alert if any of these of storage tanks dips below say 75% (or some other threshold)?

***

Also, if anyone wants to play around with the figures, here is a spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing) that I made to better understand the dynamics of the Nucular mod's power production cycle. Blue numbers are hard-coded values, black numbers are formulas. We can input the target MW in the yellow shaded cell at the top and it will calculate the required number of various facilities to ensure (1) a net balance (i.e., net rate of 0, in the gray shaded cells) of uranium, enriched uranium, depleted uranium and spent nuclear fuel and (2) a positive balance (i.e., surplus) of nuclear fuel. We can also see (3) the negative balance (i.e., the cost) of uranium ore, iron and sulfuric acid.

The relevant table is the bottom-most one (i.e., third from top): going across the columns, we see each item/intermediate in the Nucular mod's power production cycle. Going down the rows, we see each process / facility in the power production cycle. The table simply populates the rate of production / (consumption) of a particular item in a particular process (parentheses denote negative rates, i.e., corresponding to consumption of an item/intermediate). The purpose of this arrangement of figures is so that we can quickly determine the net production/(consumption) rate at an assumed facility count (which is shaded blue) by simply summing down that item's column.

Two notable observations:

[*] Uranium "injections" (into the MOXX fuel assemblers) are not necessary when a system is at full load. We can see in the Uranium column that the uranium production rate of the chemical plant (that's processing uranium ore) is identical to the uranium consumption rate of the assembler that's making enriched + depleted uranium. At the same time, the uranium production rate of the reprocessing assemblers is exactly offset by the consumption rate of the moxx fuel assemblers.

[*] A surplus of nuclear fuel is created at full load, even when all other non-consumable items (i.e., everything but iron, sulfuric acid and uranium ore) amounts staying constant.

In practice, we'll of course still need a set of checks & balances for controlling uranium input to the moxx fuel plants as this perfect equilibrium exists only at full load. I've used the model to scale up to 5gw with no hiccups over many hours. The one difference in implementation from what has already been described is due to the fact that I rely on the depleted uranium as my primary source of ammunition (i play with natural evolution mods). (Although depleted uranium production is zero at full load, it is net positive when we're operating below capacity.) So instead of suppressing uranium output from the chemical plant, my alternative method is simply to direct excess uranium into the enrichment process (which gives me my depleted uranium) and to then send the enriched uranium from this step over to another assembler which converts it into a nuclear warhead (which, when combined with bad aim, ended up getting me the golem achievement for my modded achievement set ).

Atm, I'm assuming 5.4mw per steam turbine. It's prepopulated with 810MW because it works out to a nice set of numbers (75 fission, 75 breeder, 48 moxx fuel, 16 reprocessing, etc.).

[siggboy]

I guess you could put in some buffer chests in-line with a belt to make sure it can continue moving? I agree that a bot-based plant is too easy

I don't think this will really help, because the belt will still be packed with fuel rods, and that will halt most of the fission reactors.

The best way that I've found was actually to stop the output inserter at the chemical plant (or Uranium input) while at least one of the output belts from the reprocessing plants is holding Uranium. Monitor the belt tiles in "hold" mode and connect them to the Uranium output with a simple enable condition ("Uranium = 0").

That's not perfect but it works in practice.

It's always good to keep some sort of backup in place, because a dead power plant cannot bootstrap itself without external energy.

[siggboy]

i'm having trouble understanding the benefit of being "over-ratio on steam engines".

It's only useful to cover load spikes that go over the maximum sustained load. If you put a steam tank behind each row of turbines, that will store quite a lot of MJ, and you can have the plant run over the maximum capacity for a while. So it's a more effective use of turbines and space, since you do not have to provision for the peak load, but only for the average sustained load.

Also, if anyone wants to play around with the figures, here is a spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing) that I made to better understand the dynamics of the Nucular mod's power production cycle.

This is a very nice spreadsheet. I worked out these values manually, which is a bit tricky. Maybe you can go back to my post and see if what I've come up with matches with your spreadsheet's outputs (I'm pretty sure it's correct, but either of us could have made a mistake).

[*] Uranium "injections" (into the MOXX fuel assemblers) are not necessary when a system is at full load. We can see in the Uranium column that the uranium production rate of the chemical plant (that's processing uranium ore) is identical to the uranium consumption rate of the assembler that's making enriched + depleted uranium. At the same time, the uranium production rate of the reprocessing assemblers is exactly offset by the consumption rate of the moxx fuel assemblers.

You have to look at the output of the reprocessing step. It does not output the entire amount of material that went into the fuel rods. After you've reprocessed 4 depleted fuel rods, one Uranium will be missing from the cycle, and that has to be resupplied.

The extra Uranium is what will go into the conventional fuel rod assemblers.

I don't think you can make a completely closed loop that will only require Iron Plates.

[*] A surplus of nuclear fuel is created at full load, even when all other non-consumable items (i.e., everything but iron, sulfuric acid and uranium ore) amounts staying constant.

That's due to the fact that you end up with a tiny bit of extra Plutonium at perfect ratios, and that will be turned into extra fuel. It's not enough extra Plutonium to maintain a closed loop, however. It could be turned into Warheads (it would be my preferred method as opposed to creating extra Depleted Uranium and Enriched Uranium).

In my game I've made a separate facility that produced fuel rods and weapons, and then used the fuel rods to make more reactors for expansions. It was separate from the power plant and not connected to it.

[aka13]

How balanced is the mod to use with Marathon? It does not recognize marathon, does it?