0.15 Reactor Ratio

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MeduSalem
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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by MeduSalem »

Aeternus wrote:[Edit2] Realized too late that having the heatpipe where it is isn't convenient. Made a slight modification by adding 2 more tanks to the end of the turbines, crossconnecting them with underground pipes. That frees up room between the turbines all the way to the heat exchanger - I run the heat pipes that way, which brings the input for the heat pipes behind the turbines (where you usually want your reactors). That allows you to basically put a row of reactors at the far side of the turbines. Since reactors themselves also act as heat pipes internally, it's not needed to run heatpipes to the reactors furthest away from the turbines - they'll handle that internally.
I thought about doing that too with my build... I just can't do it currently because there's no room behind the turbines... There's a rail track in the way and I can't move it. xD

That said the reactors will only transfer as much as 10GW internally, afterwards you'd need a heatpipe for each additional GW.


I'm still thinking about what is the best locations to place the reactors at. Perpendicular behind the Turbines? Parallel to the exchangers/Steam Turbines? Something else?

The problem is definitely that the underground pipes are just 1 tile to short to cover the distance of 2 reactors. :P

I also thought about changing the ratio to 1 Offshore Pumps : 20 Boilers : 8 Heat Exchangers : 20 Steam Turbines... per row. It would be an extremely long build but it would make the most out of a shore line. The problem is that each 2 additional Reactors add another 320MW... and that's where the 0.5 : 4 : 10 build becomes extremeley wide at the shoreline extremely fast. And if you don't use the shore it becomes a tedious underground pipe mess of routing that many offshore pumps somewhere else inland.

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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by shrimposh »

At first I was amazed at the whole nuclear power mechanics introduced ingame.
Then I was even more amazed when reading this whole thread and realizing there were so many more possibilities that didn't come to my mind :D
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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

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Here's my first complete, working design. Stuff is all automated (except depositing the initial 40 U-235 for enriching, I recommend you do this before using nuclear power at all), no energy is wasted, sustained output is 480 MW (I have measured 478, but it will be less when only tanks are active, my next update will help correct the latter), peak output can be higher with more turbines. Or you can use dramatically less turbines, however many you need, and you'll still get full fuel efficiency. It uses a timing circuit to track reactor activity, which can get messed up if power demand stays dramatically higher than output (combinators slow down when power is in the red), but it will be okay once power is restored. The ore processing & reactor control cluster should theoretically be able to supply cells for up to 9 reactors, in case anyone wants to repurpose it. The water pipes should be able to travel 230 pipe segments to the 6 offshore pumps, and still get full throughput. I kept the heat pipes to minimal length because they cost 70 metal for each tile. That's why the water and the steam are on the same side of the exchangers.

Note: I'm working on an update, going to reduce to a minimal number of tanks and add pumps (down to 4 rows, vs. 5 in BP, vs. many more for smooth turbine operation up until reactors cycle on), switching from water-tower style feeding of tanks into turbines, to pumping, because it's much smaller and cheaper to build, but uses power and requires pipe access on both sides). Also, you can reduce the U-235 condition on that inserter on an isolated circuit network connected to that chest, from 2 or 3 (whatever it is) down to 0. The 2-3 was based on centrifuge speed, but considering reactor speed allows reducing it to 0 which means a couple less U-235 in limbo on average. The only ones in limbo then, are the 2 in the input box of the cell-making assembler, and I'm pretty sure nothing can easily be done about that, stack size is already overridden to 1 to keep it minimal.
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Last edited by Aru on Mon May 08, 2017 12:55 pm, edited 16 times in total.

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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by OdinYggd »

After a couple of days experimenting, I've come up with this:

Image

The whole thing doesn't fit in a single screenshot, its too tall.

But it operates on a 4:48:84 ratio and is theoretically capable of 480MW. In practice my factory is too small for such power, so I have it rigged to run as a pulse reactor. The largest pulse so far peaked at 410MW.

My control strategy is to watch for the accus to run down a bit. When the accus reach 60%, insert 1 fuel rod into each of the 4 reactor cores. They'll start up and get hot, with the turbines coming online as the temperature rises. It will peak right as the accus fill up, then cut back to base load with the remaining fuel rod energy going into core heat- ultimately the rods burn out with the core around 800C so no energy wasted. Then it cools off as the power is used, and when the turbines stop the accus start to discharge- triggering the next cycle. To make sure it only puts 1 fuel rod in each core per cycle, the mechanism controlling that is rigged to where it won't re-set until it sees the accu levle rise above 60%. Later on I'll switch it to trigger based on steam pressure, but for now my factory is small enough for this to be reliable.

The biggest advantage of this is that I put some effort into minimizing the width of the apparatus, that way you can make the most of available shoreline space. A moment of brilliance was realized when it dawned on me that in the middle of the heat exchanger set, the flow for each column is divided in half between steam and water. Putting the reactor in the middle means that the diversion around the reactor cores is implemented in the part of the system with the lowest flow at full power, reducing the flow penalties for doing so. Plus it makes it more responsive, because the heat pipes are shorter.

And yes, sharing the concrete with it is my fuel processing facility. I centrifuge the ore initially right at the mining outpost, and only transport the refined material. So the pair closest to the tracks is the Kovarex process, while the other pair is fuel reprocessing.
Last edited by OdinYggd on Sat May 06, 2017 3:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by In-Com »

Image

Image

Circuit controlled reactor ignition. Based on steam level in tanks, timer of 200 seconds turns on fuel rod inserter on for 5 ticks.
Whole system is pressurized by pumps.

Not the most compact setup (albeit could be made more compact), but fully and easily extensible.

1120MW maximum output in this setup. No need for solar, accus or steam engines.

... and of course JETE stands for Jaderná Elektrárna Temelín :-).

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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by MeduSalem »

In-Com wrote:Not the most compact setup (albeit could be made more compact), but fully and easily extensible.

1120MW maximum output in this setup. No need for solar, accus or steam engines.
You will need more than 1 Heatpipe if you really want to support the 1120MW or more. The Heatpipes are capped at transfering exactly 1GW.

Unfortunately the game doesn't mention it anywhere but people have looked into the prototype files already and found out that Heatpipes support 1GW, reactors support up to 10GW transfer internally.

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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by Distelzombie »

I mostly see setups using four reactors that also have four heatpipes going off of them. You dont need that. One heatpipe is enough. Reactors relay heat.
And since heatpipes work like pipes, you should also try to avoid loops.
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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by Aeternus »

MeduSalem wrote:
In-Com wrote:Not the most compact setup (albeit could be made more compact), but fully and easily extensible.

1120MW maximum output in this setup. No need for solar, accus or steam engines.
You will need more than 1 Heatpipe if you really want to support the 1120MW or more. The Heatpipes are capped at transfering exactly 1GW.

Unfortunately the game doesn't mention it anywhere but people have looked into the prototype files already and found out that Heatpipes support 1GW, reactors support up to 10GW transfer internally.
... can you find me a factory that manages to draw 10GW? I've got trouble reaching one... Still, useful info. Since each row of mine takes 40MW, I'd be able to service 25 rows with that. From a reactor cluster, going in both directions, a single heatpipe branching off towards the individual exchangers would be able to do 2 GW total. After that I could still run a second heatpipe, and continue extending, or even mirror the whole thing ('though piping water would become a problem quickly). 10GW internal transfer rates for reactors makes them, for any practical purposes, transparant to eachother and the reactor cluster a single heatsource. Even if you're drawing 10GW, you'll likely branching that heat off of multiple reactors. You'd have to - there's only 9 heatpipe connection points to a reactor with a neighbour, and those only draw 1GW each. So yea, reactor internal heat transfer rate is unlikely to ever be a bottleneck, unless you've got multiple reactors that are unfueled which connect to the heatpipes each, with active reactors further in the chain. But that'd be a design error imho.

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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

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Distelzombie wrote:I mostly see setups using four reactors that also have four heatpipes going off of them. You dont need that. One heatpipe is enough. Reactors relay heat.
And since heatpipes work like pipes, you should also try to avoid loops.
For four reactor yes, one branch is enough. But it does not look symmetrical..and face it, many of us are OCD.

Also, treat reactor like a storage tank. Each connection has independent access to the heat reserves. So for larger setup like 2x4, more than one heat branch is a good idea.
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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by Distelzombie »

Fatmice wrote:
Distelzombie wrote:I mostly see setups using four reactors that also have four heatpipes going off of them. You dont need that. One heatpipe is enough. Reactors relay heat.
And since heatpipes work like pipes, you should also try to avoid loops.
For four reactor yes, one branch is enough. But it does not look symmetrical..and face it, many of us are OCD.

Also, treat reactor like a storage tank. Each connection has independent access to the heat reserves. So for larger setup like 2x4, more than one heat branch is a good idea.
My OCD does also include not wasting material. Finding the smallest or most efficient setup. Thats why i was fumbling around with science setups for two days. (Theres a thread)
Anyway, its personal preference in this case. :)
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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by Aru »

Distelzombie wrote:I mostly see setups using four reactors that also have four heatpipes going off of them. You dont need that. One heatpipe is enough. Reactors relay heat.
And since heatpipes work like pipes, you should also try to avoid loops.
But one normal pipe isn't enough, that's the main reason to have multple runs of exchangers, and that means multiple runs of heat pipes, or spacing between runs. I think runs of 8 exchangers is a good length, it allows 230+ additional pipe segments to the offshore pumps and turbines, which should be enough headroom for smooth operation for anyone. 6 runs of length-8 for 4 reactors (3 runs of heat pipe), 14 runs for 8 reactors (7 runs of heat pipe). But to save resources (heat pipe segments are 70 metal, very expensive), they should be as close to the reactors as possible.

Going roughly from the graph here (each exchanger needs 10/5.8 ~= 1.724 fluid per tick), 8 exchangers allows 250 total segments (underground pipe is 2 segments), 10 exchangers is 90 segments, 12 exchangers is 12 segments (keep in mind the exchangers themselves count, so 12 is impractical). 4 reactors is 12*40/10=48 exchangers, 8 reactors in a row is (12+16)*40/10=112 exchangers. 25/14 turbines per exchanger.

Loops should be okay, but because the fluid physics is implemented strangely, you get best flow by placing the segments (and exchangers and turbines) manually in the same order that you expect the medium to flow. From what I can tell, heat itself is the medium in heat pipes, behaving like an actual fluid in a normal pipe.

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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by Distelzombie »

Oh thanks for the info. :)
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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

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I am using a 4 reactor setup and have trouble keeping the water flowing to all exchangers at times of full power use. I can get 441 MW out of my reactors but the math indicates I should get 480 MW. I used 5 pumps, 4 reactors, 48 heat exchangers, and 84 turbines (for symmetry).

At times of peak power many turbines don't have 100% potential. Investigating yields that water is the limiting factor. I am using mostly underground pipes for water transport. I tried adding more pumps, more water pipes, pumps between pipes and nothing seems to be working to deliver enough water.

Can someone please explain the fluid physics in this game and how to overcome this limitation. Is there some magic ratio of one row of pipes for x heat exchangers or something?

How can I get to the full energy capacity of my 4 reactors?

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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

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factoriouzr wrote:I am using a 4 reactor setup and have trouble keeping the water flowing to all exchangers at times of full power use. I can get 441 MW out of my reactors but the math indicates I should get 480 MW. I used 5 pumps, 4 reactors, 48 heat exchangers, and 84 turbines (for symmetry).

At times of peak power many turbines don't have 100% potential. Investigating yields that water is the limiting factor. I am using mostly underground pipes for water transport. I tried adding more pumps, more water pipes, pumps between pipes and nothing seems to be working to deliver enough water.

Can someone please explain the fluid physics in this game and how to overcome this limitation. Is there some magic ratio of one row of pipes for x heat exchangers or something?

How can I get to the full energy capacity of my 4 reactors?
While 5 offshore pumps may seem enough, you need small pumps to keep up the flow. Best thing to do is barrel water and un-barrel it at the source and point of use if you don't want to use small pumps.
The fluid physics is nothing special...you build pipes in the direction of intended flow. If you make a mistake while laying a stretch of pipe, start over. Don't use robots to lay pipes. Other than that you don't need to know the nuts and bolts of the fluid physics.
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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

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Fatmice wrote:
factoriouzr wrote:I am using a 4 reactor setup and have trouble keeping the water flowing to all exchangers at times of full power use. I can get 441 MW out of my reactors but the math indicates I should get 480 MW. I used 5 pumps, 4 reactors, 48 heat exchangers, and 84 turbines (for symmetry).

At times of peak power many turbines don't have 100% potential. Investigating yields that water is the limiting factor. I am using mostly underground pipes for water transport. I tried adding more pumps, more water pipes, pumps between pipes and nothing seems to be working to deliver enough water.

Can someone please explain the fluid physics in this game and how to overcome this limitation. Is there some magic ratio of one row of pipes for x heat exchangers or something?

How can I get to the full energy capacity of my 4 reactors?
While 5 offshore pumps may seem enough, you need small pumps to keep up the flow. Best thing to do is barrel water and un-barrel it at the source and point of use if you don't want to use small pumps.
The fluid physics is nothing special...you build pipes in the direction of intended flow. If you make a mistake while laying a stretch of pipe, start over. Don't use robots to lay pipes. Other than that you don't need to know the nuts and bolts of the fluid physics.
I would prefer to use small pumps but they don't work to increase the flow of water even in the pipe right after it. How often do I need to put them? Does underground vs above ground matter as I used mostly underground. What about merging pipes. Is there a max throughput from one pipe? Ie. do I need one dedicated pipe for each offshore mump or can I merge 3 pumps into one pipe?

Doe the direction of laying water pipes really matter? I really hope not as that makes blueprints with bots useless. I used bots and the water seems to be flowing as needed, but maybe there is a slowdown if laid in the wrong order?

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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by factoriouzr »

factoriouzr wrote:
Fatmice wrote:
factoriouzr wrote:I am using a 4 reactor setup and have trouble keeping the water flowing to all exchangers at times of full power use. I can get 441 MW out of my reactors but the math indicates I should get 480 MW. I used 5 pumps, 4 reactors, 48 heat exchangers, and 84 turbines (for symmetry).

At times of peak power many turbines don't have 100% potential. Investigating yields that water is the limiting factor. I am using mostly underground pipes for water transport. I tried adding more pumps, more water pipes, pumps between pipes and nothing seems to be working to deliver enough water.

Can someone please explain the fluid physics in this game and how to overcome this limitation. Is there some magic ratio of one row of pipes for x heat exchangers or something?

How can I get to the full energy capacity of my 4 reactors?
While 5 offshore pumps may seem enough, you need small pumps to keep up the flow. Best thing to do is barrel water and un-barrel it at the source and point of use if you don't want to use small pumps.
The fluid physics is nothing special...you build pipes in the direction of intended flow. If you make a mistake while laying a stretch of pipe, start over. Don't use robots to lay pipes. Other than that you don't need to know the nuts and bolts of the fluid physics.
I would prefer to use small pumps but they don't work to increase the flow of water even in the pipe right after it. How often do I need to put them? Does underground vs above ground matter as I used mostly underground. What about merging pipes. Is there a max throughput from one pipe? Ie. do I need one dedicated pipe for each offshore mump or can I merge 3 pumps into one pipe?

Doe the direction of laying water pipes really matter? I really hope not as that makes blueprints with bots useless. I used bots and the water seems to be flowing as needed, but maybe there is a slowdown if laid in the wrong order?
I got my 4 reactor system to output 478 MW, with more pumps. The numbers still don't make sense, as the pumps don't saturate the pipes in front of them and it would be nice to reach the 480 (or 479.9) expected value, but this is probably good enough.

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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

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factoriouzr wrote:
I would prefer to use small pumps but they don't work to increase the flow of water even in the pipe right after it. How often do I need to put them? Does underground vs above ground matter as I used mostly underground. What about merging pipes. Is there a max throughput from one pipe? Ie. do I need one dedicated pipe for each offshore mump or can I merge 3 pumps into one pipe?

Doe the direction of laying water pipes really matter? I really hope not as that makes blueprints with bots useless. I used bots and the water seems to be flowing as needed, but maybe there is a slowdown if laid in the wrong order?
Yes it does. For most situation, laying pipe with blueprint is fine as the throughput in most usage isn't an issue. In this case, throughput leads to very conspicuous effects. The flowing animation has nothing to do with actual throughput. It's there to give visual indication of direction of flow.

Small pumps can not increase the flow of water. They only maintain a certain flow rate. Think of them as repeater for signals traveling along a wire. When a signal gets too weak, a repeater will not be able to restore the signal to its full strength, i.e. with the same amount of information. Thus the distance between small pumps, and between small pump and source, matters to maintain a certain flow rate, which depends on your setup.

This is why I said if you don't want the hassles with small pumps, then you should barrel/unbarrel the water to source/sinks.
factoriouzr wrote: I got my 4 reactor system to output 478 MW, with more pumps. The numbers still don't make sense, as the pumps don't saturate the pipes in front of them and it would be nice to reach the 480 (or 479.9) expected value, but this is probably good enough.
Are all of your heat-exchangers nice and toasty above 500 degree? If not you also have a heat flow issue in addition to water flow issues at maximum load.
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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by factoriouzr »

Fatmice wrote:
factoriouzr wrote:
I would prefer to use small pumps but they don't work to increase the flow of water even in the pipe right after it. How often do I need to put them? Does underground vs above ground matter as I used mostly underground. What about merging pipes. Is there a max throughput from one pipe? Ie. do I need one dedicated pipe for each offshore mump or can I merge 3 pumps into one pipe?

Doe the direction of laying water pipes really matter? I really hope not as that makes blueprints with bots useless. I used bots and the water seems to be flowing as needed, but maybe there is a slowdown if laid in the wrong order?
Yes it does. For most situation, laying pipe with blueprint is fine as the throughput in most usage isn't an issue. In this case, throughput leads to very conspicuous effects. The flowing animation has nothing to do with actual throughput. It's there to give visual indication of direction of flow.

Small pumps can not increase the flow of water. They only maintain a certain flow rate. Think of them as repeater for signals traveling along a wire. When a signal gets too weak, a repeater will not be able to restore the signal to its full strength, i.e. with the same amount of information. Thus the distance between small pumps, and between small pump and source, matters to maintain a certain flow rate, which depends on your setup.

This is why I said if you don't want the hassles with small pumps, then you should barrel/unbarrel the water to source/sinks.
factoriouzr wrote: I got my 4 reactor system to output 478 MW, with more pumps. The numbers still don't make sense, as the pumps don't saturate the pipes in front of them and it would be nice to reach the 480 (or 479.9) expected value, but this is probably good enough.
Are all of your heat-exchangers nice and toasty above 500 degree? If not you also have a heat flow issue in addition to water flow issues at maximum load.

Most of my heat-exchangers are above 600 degrees, and a few of them are at exactly 500 degrees but the 2 turbines attached to the 500 degree ones are at 100% efficiency.

As for the pumps, I would rather use pumps as they are easier (no need to make and shuffle empty barrels around). I understand they can't increase flow if it's not there, but what I don't understand is I have situations where an underground pipe (for the water for my exchangers) is going into a pump at 95.6 water and coming out into another underground pipe attached at the other end at 82.3. That's a decrease in flow rate.

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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

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factoriouzr wrote:Most of my heat-exchangers are above 600 degrees, and a few of them are at exactly 500 degrees but the 2 turbines attached to the 500 degree ones are at 100% efficiency.

As for the pumps, I would rather use pumps as they are easier (no need to make and shuffle empty barrels around). I understand they can't increase flow if it's not there, but what I don't understand is I have situations where an underground pipe (for the water for my exchangers) is going into a pump at 95.6 water and coming out into another underground pipe attached at the other end at 82.3. That's a decrease in flow rate.
Heat exchanger only outputs steam when >=500 degree. Since they have room for 200 units of fluid, and water has 0.2 KJ for heat capacity, to flash boil 200 water at 15 degree -> 200 steam at 500 degree needs 19400 KJ. This is equivalent to 19.4 degrees in a heat exchanger. Thus you should have a minimum of 20 degrees or a temperature of 520 across all heat exchangers so that they always have the energy to boil all of their water into steam on demand.

As for the amount of fluid in underground pipe, it is not indicative of flow rate. To know what that is you have to consult a chart or measure it.
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Re: 0.15 Reactor Ratio

Post by factoriouzr »

Fatmice wrote:
factoriouzr wrote:Most of my heat-exchangers are above 600 degrees, and a few of them are at exactly 500 degrees but the 2 turbines attached to the 500 degree ones are at 100% efficiency.

As for the pumps, I would rather use pumps as they are easier (no need to make and shuffle empty barrels around). I understand they can't increase flow if it's not there, but what I don't understand is I have situations where an underground pipe (for the water for my exchangers) is going into a pump at 95.6 water and coming out into another underground pipe attached at the other end at 82.3. That's a decrease in flow rate.
Heat exchanger only outputs steam when >=500 degree. Since they have room for 200 units of fluid, and water has 0.2 KJ for heat capacity, to flash boil 200 water at 15 degree -> 200 steam at 500 degree needs 19400 KJ. This is equivalent to 19.4 degrees in a heat exchanger. Thus you should have a minimum of 20 degrees or a temperature of 520 across all heat exchangers so that they always have the energy to boil all of their water into steam on demand.

As for the amount of fluid in underground pipe, it is not indicative of flow rate. To know what that is you have to consult a chart or measure it.

I think they were likely much higher, but I think I checked on a reactor I tried to buffer steam on using storage tanks. My original reactor setup I got to 478 MW output with continuous fueling and no storage tanks for steam. What I noticed is that the maximum reactor output with stored steam in storage tanks is much less then the 478 MW I got without the tanks.

I didn't get the full 480 but I got close without any buffers and then I tried playing with circuit logic to fuel it only when steam drops in the storage tanks and added the tanks. It seems storing steam reduces overall reactor output. There must be more to it. Are there any good reactor designs with stored steam and fueling only when needed? I got all the refueling logic correct but it seems storing steam just drops max output.

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