Scalable Nuclear Power Plant

[Lav]

One issue I've had with nuclear setups available here is that they're not really expandable. You may build multiple of them sure, but I've always favored a different strategy: build a usable setup that can be expanded later as the demand for power grows. The closest setup I could find that fit the requirements was this, but it wasn't so much expandable as it was a limited framework that you could fill up to it's specifications - but no further.

So without further ado, a perfectly scalable and expandable nuclear power generation facility.

Screenshot

The primary building block is a huge but narrow (20 tiles wide) strip which by itself is a perfectly functional 8-reactor power plant, which only needs a control panel to start working. The basic idea is that when you need more power, you place another such strip adjacent to the first one - and it starts working without a hitch. An arbitrary large number of such strips can be stacked, only limited by player's ability to supply water.

Further, I've divided the strip itself into individual blocks (reactor block, steam generation, steam storage, power generation, control panel) so it's possible to make some changes between the blocks if necessary (this is mostly useful between steam generation and steam storage blocks as that is where water is supplied - if you need to build more than 4 strips, you will have to leave more space for pipes and/or barrel belts).

It's also perfectly possible to only build a half or a quarter of the base strip - and it will still function properly.

All blocks have anchors (usually power poles or substations) that are used to connect them together.

Control panel blueprint is required to run the plant and will automatically adapt to however many reactors you build.

Nuclear fuel insertion is controlled by monitoring the extraction of used fuel cells. An important note: if you already have a working power plant, and you add more reactors to it, control panel will detect them automatically, and will take them into account for the next refueling cycle. This also means that if you construct the control panel before building any reactors, the power plant will be in "ready" mode from the very beginning, and will start inserting fuel as soon as all reactors are supplied. If you built the control panel when some reactors are already constructed, you will have to jumpstart the system manually - just toggle or remove the constant combinator on the panel.

Blueprint Book

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwIpJy ... sp=sharing

[pieppiep]

I've made this one a while ago, viewtopic.php?f=208&t=46231
But my version was before the change in heatpipe behaviour so it probably won't work optimal anymore.
At the moment I'm not investigating it anymore, since an infinite*2 array with reactors would give 160MW each reactor and with 2*4 reactors the setup would give 28*40/8/160*100 = 87.5% efficiency for your uranium.
If you look at a normal map and calculate how much energy there is in a normal uranium patch you'll see that there's more than enough ore.

[MeduSalem]

At the moment I'm not investigating it anymore, since an infinite*2 array with reactors would give 160MW each reactor and with 2*4 reactors the setup would give 28*40/8/160*100 = 87.5% efficiency for your uranium.
If you look at a normal map and calculate how much energy there is in a normal uranium patch you'll see that there's more than enough ore.

I second that.

Infinite scalable designs aren't worth the trouble... the efficiency is quite good already at 2*4 or 2*5 and they are much easier to design and provide water for. Bigger designs just become ugly or troublesome with the amount of piping and space necessary which eventually limit their scalability anyways.

[Mehve]

I've also found that the mandatory 1c temperature difference between entities starts to add up when you're using a controlled fuel input/steam storage setup. If one end of the reactor pack is 20 or 30 degrees cooler then the other, you can wind up with one string of turbines running out of steam much earlier then another.