0.15 Reactor Ratio

[Carl]

FFS, I figured out why the turbines have that odd 5.8 MW rating. You can feed the heat exchangers with steam from boilers (1.8 MW each) and this simply adds to the 10 MW each heat exchanger normally outputs!

The turbines have that odd 5.8 MW rating because it's actually 5.82 MW.

The math is as follows:
Steam turbines use 60 units of water per second (60u/s)
Each unit of water is heated to 500 Celsius degree (500 °C)
Each unit of water is heated from 15 Celsius degree (15 °C)
Water heat capacity is 0.2 kJ per unit per Celsius degree (0.2 kJ/u/°C)

So, final power output is:
60u/s*(500°C-15°C)*0.2 kJ/u/°C = 5820 kJ/s = 5.82 MW.

Regular steam engines output 900 kW just because water is heated to 165 °C and they use 30 units per second:
30u/s*(165°C-15°C)*0.2 kJ/u/°C = 900 kW

The heat exchanger to steam turbine ratio is 291:500

A quick bit of maths makes me think they meant to set it to 515 degrees so we got exactly 6MW out of each turbine which produces a very nice set of ratio's.

[Skyser]

So i've been playing with stability in a 100% loaded system. This is where i'm at.

157MW Stable.
27 Turbines, 16 heat, 2 reactors.

Comments?

Setup

nuclear1.jpg (722.21 KiB) Viewed 8645 times

Power Consumpt/Prod

nuclear2.jpg (479.74 KiB) Viewed 8645 times

[Vxsote]

It's just that everyone is talking about producing power immediately from the steam right after it is produced in heat exchangers, when in reality you can store that steam in storage tanks and produce as much power as you need at any given time later.
[snip]
You can use like 10 of them to get your required 58 MW and not missing that sweet nuclear energy efficiency at the same time, since your reactors in this case will only be active ~10% of the time. Just don't forget to give only 1 fuel cell to reactor at a time and disable inserters and heat exchangers to not waste any cells and temperature.

This is basically the idea I've gone with. Right now my base is still small enough that I only need one reactor, plus I wanted to figure out how to regulate the U consumption before building more. So what I did last night was put tanks between my heat exchangers and turbines. I then feed the steam (water) level from one of the tanks to a pulse generator that sends a single pulse when the level drops below a certain amount. I keep all my fuel in a box next to the reactor, with an inserter that is enabled by the pulse. This worked well, and the inserter reliably put one fuel into the reactor when I was running low on steam.

But I did have a concern that in some conditions the steam level could fluctuate around the low-steam threshold resulting in multiple fuel cells being inserted when I only want one. So I've added a Schmitt trigger in front of the pulse generator. There seem to be a number of different ways to do this, but I just added deciders to the inputs of an SR latch.

[Skyser]

Though this may be nice for people to grab. Attached the text code for blueprint.. need to hook up some water but ye.

[Skyser]

GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY!

As the temps for the Reactor and the Heat Exchanges bottom out at 500 Deg and DO NOT DROP BELOW...from what i could see of 5mins offline for my reactors, steam tanks at 0 and the system completely dead.

This means....SIMPLE wire connections between an inserter and the Storage tank can ensure a Reactor is kept producing only when absolutely needing fuel rather than wasting extra.

Requestor chest (1 fuel item) > Inserter (wire to steam tanks) > Reactor fueled.

My steam tanks provided enough to the system at least 1 minute of sustained reactions in the turbines.

Within 1 min of refueling from EMPTY, two tanks were back to 2k steam, and the system fully back online in 2mins.

With continued smart fueling we could be very 'lean' on fuel consumption. Not to mention system is pollution free.

nuclear3.jpg (840.34 KiB) Viewed 8635 times

[viveks711]

Using water tanks as a buffer for Nuclear production is basically want I also did Here: viewtopic.php?f=208&t=45361

[Dimanper]

So i've been playing with stability in a 100% loaded system. This is where i'm at.

157MW Stable.
27 Turbines, 16 heat, 2 reactors.

Comments?

You are missing ~3 MW (i believe it's 2.91 MW) by using 1 less turbine than your reactors can support.

Using water tanks as a buffer for Nuclear production is basically want I also did Here: *image*

You are also missing something like 2,328 MW. You need to add 1 more turbine for each reactor (so 4 turbines in sum). Also i think with use of storage tanks as buffer it's better to connect them all and use them as one large buffer. This way it's easier to control the setup, increase number of reactors in future and you would need less steam turbines.

P.S. Here is small spreadsheet that i quickly made for myself. Hopefully it will help someone to decide wich setup to efficiently use in his/her particular factory.

Nuclear Reactor values.PNG (44.08 KiB) Viewed 8601 times

There are few assumptions in the spreadsheet: Heat exchangers output 103 steam/s (which i didn't test in the game); energy production of 1 centrifuge rounded to 40 MW (from what it seems to be 39,964 MW) in order to get convenient numbers; calculations for resources use are ignoring all production bonuses and stuff like that and the fact that you can get U-235 from uranium ore processing because: 1) i didn't know exact numbers of getting U-235/U-238 from processing; 2) it was made just to give the basic idea of how much resources to expect to be used, not for exact calculations;

[Optera]

P.S. Here is small spreadsheet that i quickly made for myself. Hopefully it will help someone to decide wich setup to efficiently use in his/her particular factory.

Nuclear Reactor values.PNG

There are few assumptions in the spreadsheet: Heat exchangers output 103 steam/s (which i didn't test in the game); energy production of 1 centrifuge rounded to 40 MW (from what it seems to be 39,964 MW) in order to get convenient numbers; calculations for resources use are ignoring all production bonuses and stuff like that and the fact that you can get U-235 from uranium ore processing because: 1) i didn't know exact numbers of getting U-235/U-238 from processing; 2) it was made just to give the basic idea of how much resources to expect to be used, not for exact calculations;

These numbers get really interesting when you calculate Resources/MW.
Basically what we want by doing all that math is getting most bang for our buck right?

[Dimanper]

These numbers get really interesting when you calculate Resources/MW.
Basically what we want by doing all that math is getting most bang for our buck right?

I didn't see the need to calculate resources/MW for myself since numbers like 0.00006666 vs 0.00005714 U-238/MW per second (4 vs 8 centrifuges) imo dont really give that much of the information about anything. If you want no know how efficient your resources will be used, there is efficiency column (3 vs 3.5 for 4 and 8 centrifuges) for this purpose. I made right part of the spreadsheet to basically give myself the general idea of how much resources per hour i would need to maintain different levels of MW, not for comparing actual setup efficiencies (again there is already column for that purpose).

[milo christiansen]

I was considering storing the output from my first reactor in tanks, but not as a buffer. I think it would be cool to do power production on-site in my various bases, all powered by visits from the "steam train".

Dumb idea? sure, but playing a challenge game where you don't run any long distance power lines could be interesting...

Anyway, back on topic: I had hoped that power production ratio madness would be a thing of the past when they announced that steam would be 1 boiler to 2 engines, but it seems like it just moved to reactors...

[MeduSalem]

Somehow I find it impossible to control the fuel input of reactors... I always end up with more than 1 fuel due not knowing how much is already inside the Reactor. Limiting/overriding the stack size is one thing, but knowing how much is already inside is another.

And I don't want to fiddle around with stupid memory cells and other advanced circuit network crap that's not worth my time.

I just wish that the damn Used up Fuel Cell would be output when the Fuel is finished being consumed and NOT during input... because then we at least would have a trigger-event that could be used to trigger the next input.

So basically I'm wasting a lot of fuel.

That said even if I would be able to control the input... I wouldn't know how to use Storage Tanks to my advantage because of the huge delay it takes for the heat to propagate down the heat pipes. So I might use it to shut the reactors down but when tunring back on it takes forever to heat up again and the Turbines will consume all Steam before the exchangers reach 500 Degree again.


So somehow I think that the devs really didn't think this through about how an average player is supposed to control the consumption without jumping deep into circuit networks which the average player won't care about.

[Dimanper]

I was considering storing the output from my first reactor in tanks, but not as a buffer. I think it would be cool to do power production on-site in my various bases, all powered by visits from the "steam train".

Dumb idea? sure, but playing a challenge game where you don't run any long distance power lines could be interesting...

k, no more power lines to my new outposts, only burning trains on rocket fuel with 500 degree steam on board ardent to deliver it as fast as possible.

[milo christiansen]

@MeduSalem:
Learn to use combinators and the circuit network. Seriously. Proper use of both can make your factory much nicer, more reliable, efficient, etc. Reactors are somewhat advanced, requiring a control circuit for optimal efficiency is (in my opinion) perfectly reasonable. Requiring a complicated controller just makes them a challenge, and everyone needs a good challenge.

k, no more power lines to my new outposts, only burning trains on rocket fuel with 500 degree steam on board ardent to deliver it as fast as possible.

Totally awesome, right? (also totally ridiculous)

[Dimanper]

That said even if I would be able to control the input... I wouldn't know how to use Storage Tanks to my advantage because of the huge delay it takes for the heat to propagate down the heat pipes. So I might use it to shut the reactors down but when tunring back on it takes forever to heat up again and the Turbines will consume all Steam before the exchangers reach 500 Degree again.

Once the heat exchangers reach 500 degree, they don't lose any temperature below this point. In fact there is no temperature losses mechanic in game at all. If something has like 700 degree temperature, it will keep that tempreture until something else (like heat exchangers) use it.

So somehow I think that the devs really didn't think this through about how an average player is supposed to control the consumption without jumping deep into circuit networks which the average player won't care about.

You are an average player and don't want to learn advanced game mechanics - you are using a lot of unefficient stuff and missing a lot of opportunities to increase efficiency, automate, etc. If you want to get maximum efficiency out of things (and not waste any MW/uranium in our example), you need to learn new game mechanics, that's the point of them. Also, i believe the setup to automate nuclear reactor is not really that complicated. You can even get required solutions online any time, if you don't want to "waste" your time on them.

[MeduSalem]

Once the heat exchangers reach 500 degree, they don't lose any temperature below this point. In fact there is no temperature losses mechanic in game at all. If something has like 700 degree temperature, it will keep that tempreture until something else (like heat exchangers) use it.

They lose (or better would be drain) temperature... I have seen them drop below 500 degrees multiple times already if something in the layout/configuration changed, like having an exchanger too much or the heatpipe layout being slightly asymmetric.

@MeduSalem:
Learn to use combinators and the circuit network. Seriously. Proper use of both can make your factory much nicer, more reliable, efficient, etc. Reactors are somewhat advanced, requiring a control circuit for optimal efficiency is (in my opinion) perfectly reasonable. Requiring a complicated controller just makes them a challenge, and everyone needs a good challenge.

You are an average player and don't want to learn advanced game mechanics - you are using a lot of unefficient stuff and missing a lot of opportunities to increase efficiency, automate, etc. If you want to get maximum efficiency out of things (and not waste any MW/uranium in our example), you need to learn new game mechanics, that's the point of them. Also, i believe the setup to automate nuclear reactor is not really that complicated. You can even get required solutions online any time, if you don't want to "waste" your time on them.

I know how to use the circuit network and I also know where to look up stuff if I don't know something.

That said I have reasons for why I dislike the Circuit Network ever since it got upgraded in 0.13. To be honest I think it is way too low level for my taste. It is as if programmers would still have to write in assembly code. It might be fun for short sections but not if the thing gets tedious.

So half the stuff one would like to do is almost impossible without needing at least 50 damn combinators to implement every single operation and that's something that didn't get much better with 0.15.

I really hate that because simple things turn out a total wire mess because of that and I honestly don't know what people find that good about such a mess, because I simply can't agree on it. If I come back in 3-4 months I won't even know what most of the combinators did if I need to change something then. Copy & Pasting something from the forum is also ugly because of how most of the stuff isn't being explained at all and then you have to figure out yourself how it's working to make the necessary adjustments, which is almost as if I had to develop the setup myself from scratch anyways.


Basically all I want is that the damn reactor would at least output its contents with a read signal, then I would spare myself building a memory cell for each reactor, which I just don't feel like doing just because the devs forgot to implement such a quality of life improvement. It's a bandaid for a missing feature in my opinion.

Also on a side note I don't think that it is that good of an idea anyways to make it absolutely necessary for a player to implement his own memory cells out of combinators just to be able to remember how much fuel is inside each single reactor. If building memory cells out of combinators become a required game mechanic so you don't burn through your entire Uranium reserves like wildfire then I simply have to say that it is a dumb game mechanic and more people will complain about it soon because the average players are like 90% of the playerbase and only maybe 10% are willing to go further. Maybe most of the people won't even notice that they are wasting their Uranium because the game basically doesn't even state that it might do that if your energy consumption doesn't meet up with what could be theoretically be produced.

They want you to control the reactor using the Circuit Network... fine. I can live with that, but then I at least expect it to meet me half way by being able to read the information necessary to control it. For a main game feature that isn't too much expected I think.

It's like as if I'm going to dive and the diving gear doesn't tell me how much oxygen is left and I have to take a wild guess or make my own measuring instrument.



[Edit]

For the time being I just resorted on a nasty, very speculative and unprecise workaround of red-wiring all Storage Tanks together and activate the Reactors in a cascade manner once a certain threshold in the Storage Tank is met. Nasty part is that it consumes at least 5 fuel cells before the change becomes effective, because of how I don't check for how much is already inside the reactor.

Let's see if it works. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



Also here's my crappy layout:

nuclear plant v1.jpg (428.13 KiB) Viewed 8517 times

Might change it a little bit but I think it works quite well and is expandable.

[Dimanper]

Once the heat exchangers reach 500 degree, they don't lose any temperature below this point. In fact there is no temperature losses mechanic in game at all. If something has like 700 degree temperature, it will keep that tempreture until something else (like heat exchangers) use it.

They lose (or better would be drain) temperature... I have seen them drop below 500 degrees multiple times already if something in the layout/configuration changed, like having an exchanger too much or the heatpipe layout being slightly asymmetric.

Yes, of course they do change temperature if you are changing the setup, so if you add 1 heat pipe to the system it will "take" some of the temperature from it to itself. But the temperature is not lost in this case, it is "stored" now in that pipe. And there is definetely no way to just "lose" tempreture in the game without destroying something or wasting energy generated from that temperature.

So half the stuff one would like to do is almost impossible without needing at least 50 damn combinators to implement every single operation and that's something that didn't get much better with 0.15.

But you don't need 50 combinators to set up effective nuclear reactor control, you need like only 2-4 of them, and user Skyser in one of the previous posts above showed control system with just connection between storage tank and inserter, which is far from using assambler to program. And you usually need very few circuit stuff to set up to make most things in the game, usually you don't even need combinators. Of cource if you want to have full automatic control over your trains, for example, you need to build systems with 50 and more combinators, but this is not what an avarage player would want to do anyway.

Basically all I want is that the damn reactor would at least output its contents with a read signal, then I would spare myself building a memory cell for each reactor, which I just don't feel like doing just because the devs forgot to implement such a quality of life improvement. It's a bandaid for a missing feature in my opinion.

Also on a side note I don't think that it is that good of an idea anyways to make it absolutely necessary for a player to implement his own memory cells out of combinators just to be able to remember how much fuel is inside each single reactor. If building memory cells out of combinators become a required game mechanic so you don't burn through your entire Uranium reserves like wildfire then I simply have to say that it is a dumb game mechanic and more people will complain about it soon because the average players are like 90% of the playerbase and only maybe 10% are willing to go further.

They want you to control the reactor using the Circuit Network... fine. I can live with that, but then I at least expect it to meet me half way by being able to read the information necessary to control it.

Definitely agree. I was actually surprised that i can't connect reactor to the circuit network first time i was experiencing with it.

[impetus maximus]

Somehow I find it impossible to control the fuel input of reactors... I always end up with more than 1 fuel due not knowing how much is already inside the Reactor. Limiting/overriding the stack size is one thing, but knowing how much is already inside is another.

And I don't want to fiddle around with stupid memory cells and other advanced circuit network crap that's not worth my time.

I just wish that the damn Used up Fuel Cell would be output when the Fuel is finished being consumed and NOT during input... because then we at least would have a trigger-event that could be used to trigger the next input.

So basically I'm wasting a lot of fuel.

[snip]

[edit] the folowing is sloppy and risky way of disabling the internal buffer. use at your own risk.
with one fuel cell in the reactor hook a wire to both the fuel cell inserters.
the one loading the fuel cells with the condition 'if empty fuel cell > 0, stack size 1.
set the inserter removing the empty one 'mode of operation none', read pulse.
empty one leaves, new one enters.

blueprint string

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

[edit2]here is a fuel cell controller to be used WHEN NO FUEL CELLS are in the reactor buffer.

combinator fuel cell controller

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

it's not compact so you can figure out how it works and wire your own.

<back on topic of RATIOS> [/edit2]

[MeduSalem]

with one fuel cell in the reactor hook a wire to both the fuel cell inserters.
the one loading the fuel cells with the condition 'if empty fuel cell > 0, stack size 1.
set the inserter removing the empty one 'mode of operation none', read pulse.
empty one leaves, new one enters.

i do something similar to this to disable furnace internal buffers.

Did that already, was my first idea... but it doesn't work... it's hard to explain why it doesn"t work, but I'll try:

So imagine the empty fuel cell leaves... it creates a pulse and that pulse activates the other inserter and it inputs one cell.

BUT now the problem... When the empty fuel cell leaves it might be that the reactor isn't supposed to be active currently because the Storage Tanks are full already. So you ignore that pulse and then you are stuck without being able to turn it on again because there won't be another pulse since you skipped it when it happened.

So how to turn it on from there?

When the storage tanks becomes empty then you may allow the insertion again, but you'd have to turn that static signal into a pulse for that very moment when the storage tank hits the threshold just barely enough to insert 1 fuel cell again... and that's where I give up because that's too complex for something that should be as easy as just hooking up a damn wire.

[impetus maximus]

don't want to derail the topic. you got a PM.

[bralex]

Speaking as an utter novice to circuits - I've attempted to set up this (should be simple) refueling mechanism, and have failed.

with one fuel cell in the reactor hook a wire to both the fuel cell inserters.
the one loading the fuel cells with the condition 'if empty fuel cell > 0, stack size 1.
set the inserter removing the empty one 'mode of operation none', read pulse.
empty one leaves, new one enters.

Chests and wire as described.
Loading inserter: Mode of operation "enable/disable", "Set stack size" is checked. Enabled condition is "empty fuel cells>0". Control signal is "empty fuel cell"

Emptying inserter: Mode of operation is "none"

I've tried just about everything I can think of to get the loading inserter to work to load one fuel. I never do see an option to actually set the stack size, what exactly does this setting do?