Uranium Power

[Light]

The wait for 0.15 is only more painful since I know the improved turbines and reactor control are put on hold until it arrives, but I do hope when 0.15 comes out you'll have most of the code and graphics prepped so the wait won't be too much longer.

Is there any chance we can get some of the content you do have finished? Such as the fluorite recycling, the rebalanced Angel's recipes for ores, and the replacement of uranium's fluorite ore into Angel's fluorite ore? As it would be nice to update our current setups while we wait for the big patch to roll in.

[Fatmice]

The wait for 0.15 is only more painful since I know the improved turbines and reactor control are put on hold until it arrives, but I do hope when 0.15 comes out you'll have most of the code and graphics prepped so the wait won't be too much longer.

Is there any chance we can get some of the content you do have finished? Such as the fluorite recycling, the rebalanced Angel's recipes for ores, and the replacement of uranium's fluorite ore into Angel's fluorite ore? As it would be nice to update our current setups while we wait for the big patch to roll in.

It is painful for me as well. I have so much work and my defense is close. Then there is this conference that I have to go and speak at the end of the month. I got progress reports due. I have to find time. Gah...so little time. I watched some of Nilaus' play of my mod. It boggles the mind how people think so differently and in doing so exposed the inadequacies of the mod. So much to improve and alas so little time.

I almost fear the 0.15 update...so much will break. Can't promise anything but I'll try to work on releasing the content I promised. The issue is time...

[sumdawgy]

Could you make barreling of all your fluids possible? Its kinda impossible to refine 1 wasted MOX per minute with piping, if we could barrel the fluids then it would be possible
Thanks in advance.

OH...he's got enough to do with life and this AWSOME mod!
one word... "Ommnibarrells" (sp?)

That mod auto-magically barrells ALL fluids...including the energy from the satellite energy beam mod...never realized it was using fluids before that.

have fun!

[Light]

Just to inform you, Angel has recently added the fluorite ore migration and balancing tweaks you've listed previously.

At this point fluorite ore is very easy to obtain from fluoric waste waters, but uranite ore has become a major resource sink in order to obtain in large amounts. This does indeed feel like a good balance and thus recycling of rods will certainly be a very attractive option for Angel's players moving forward.

[sumdawgy]

due to piping limitations. I tried Ceramic pipes since their size is 20 but the flow rate is the same and the pumps can only work with a size of 10 so the flow rate is still capped at 150u/s, meaning they won't solve it, so I'm using tungsten pipes since they reach 30ud..

What mod provides these pipes? They really would be usefull for some of my setups.

(I'm hoping it's not a bob's or angels thing as, I'm preferring to stay closer to vanilla than thiers.)

[Fatmice]

due to piping limitations. I tried Ceramic pipes since their size is 20 but the flow rate is the same and the pumps can only work with a size of 10 so the flow rate is still capped at 150u/s, meaning they won't solve it, so I'm using tungsten pipes since they reach 30ud..

What mod provides these pipes? They really would be usefull for some of my setups.

(I'm hoping it's not a bob's or angels thing as, I'm preferring to stay closer to vanilla than thiers.)

Likely bob's...which is wholly unnecessary. Larger pipe volume does not translate to more throughput in Factorio...which is counterintuitive.

Just to inform you, Angel has recently added the fluorite ore migration and balancing tweaks you've listed previously.

At this point fluorite ore is very easy to obtain from fluoric waste waters, but uranite ore has become a major resource sink in order to obtain in large amounts. This does indeed feel like a good balance and thus recycling of rods will certainly be a very attractive option for Angel's players moving forward.

That is good to know. I think 0.15 will drop soon...

[Mobius1]

Sorry, I have been too busy to check the forum this week.

You say you have 20x250 MW reactor? You run those reactors at their max output? I find it hard to see how you end up needing that much liquid throughput. Am I missing something?

1/ A single 250 MW reactor with 15 fuel assemblies will last about 11 hours +/- some minutes before the first fuel assembly is spent. Soon after this, they will convert to spent fuel within 5-10 minutes. So we'll take the ballpark 11 hours. Thus 15/11 = 1.36364 assemblies per hour. You have 20 reactors so 27.2728 assemblies per hour.
2/ 1 spent MOX => 5700 units of liquid spent fuel in 600s or 10 minutes at processing speed of 1. However, the chemical plants without speed modules are at 1.25 so the time is only 8 minutes. With parallel processings, you can dissolve all 27.2728 assemblies using 4 chemical plants in under one hour. On average, each will produce 27.2728*5700/4 = 39963.7 units of liquid spent fuel per hour or 10.7955 units per second. This is well under the pipe throughput.
3/ The rate limiting is actually not the spent fuel dissolution step but the FPS extractions. To extract 5700 units of liquid spent fuel, you need (5700/100) * (45/1.25) = 2052 seconds. This is much more than the time it takes to dissolve one MOX spent fuel. Thus to keep it at 8 minutes, you will need 2052/400 = 6 dedicated chemical plants for each MOX dissolution plant. You should pipe 6 to 1 and keep 4 sub pipe networks.
4/ Each 45s recipes will be similarly constructed so you have 42 chemical plants per MOX dissolution plant. The subtotal will be 172 plants. This is without the recovery steps. The energy expenditure will be 7206.8 KW (using green modules of course). Again without accounting the recovery steps.
5/ All of the recovery steps are on average 7.5x faster than the intermediate extraction steps. Thus you will need 7.5x less chemical plants to do the reagent recovery. I estimate this to be about 23 chemical plants.
6/ So far, the throughput in pipes will be no more than 90 units/s.

I am not against adding barrels. However, I do not see a reason in this case. Feel free to try and convince me otherwise. It has to be a good reason and other than pipe throughput as clearly that is not the case.

I might not expressed properly what I wanted to say, the thing is: I want to be able to process 1 wasted MOX per minute as this will be the production that my factory will be making with all the mods I'm using I'll try to reach enough power consumption to ding that value with all the reactors setup working at at least 95% of their capacity. My current setup (that is not current anymore, I lost my save) had 24x250MW setups a total of 48 cooling towers working 96~97% of their capacity with 4 rocket silos consuming around 800MW each with 16 beacons with 6 speed modules MK8 each (50% increased energy consumption per module) and 4 productivity modules MK8 launching a lot of ion cannons into orbit. But that alone wasn't enough to generate 1 wasted MOX per minute, I know. My planned setup is so that's why I asked if you could barrel everything up, was just a suggestion, no big deal.

Could you make barreling of all your fluids possible? Its kinda impossible to refine 1 wasted MOX per minute with piping, if we could barrel the fluids then it would be possible
Thanks in advance.

OH...he's got enough to do with life and this AWSOME mod!
one word... "Ommnibarrells" (sp?)

That mod auto-magically barrells ALL fluids...including the energy from the satellite energy beam mod...never realized it was using fluids before that.

have fun!

Yeah that mod actually does great, it can barrel everything, altho only craftable in assembly machines so I edited the code for myself to be able to craft the barrels on bob's pumps which is a 2x2 entity with base crafting speed of 5 (MK4 pump) and it can sustain my big crazy project of producing and recycling 1 wasted MOX per minute.

due to piping limitations. I tried Ceramic pipes since their size is 20 but the flow rate is the same and the pumps can only work with a size of 10 so the flow rate is still capped at 150u/s, meaning they won't solve it, so I'm using tungsten pipes since they reach 30ud..

What mod provides these pipes? They really would be usefull for some of my setups.

(I'm hoping it's not a bob's or angels thing as, I'm preferring to stay closer to vanilla than thiers.)

The ceramic and tungsten pipes comes from Bob's Logistics, I think you can use that with bob's plates and bob's library but that would change your vanilla experience by adding new ores in the map and a more complicated production chain.

[Fatmice]

I might not expressed properly what I wanted to say, the thing is: I want to be able to process 1 wasted MOX per minute as this will be the production that my factory will be making with all the mods I'm using I'll try to reach enough power consumption to ding that value with all the reactors setup working at at least 95% of their capacity. My current setup (that is not current anymore, I lost my save) had 24x250MW setups a total of 48 cooling towers working 96~97% of their capacity with 4 rocket silos consuming around 800MW each with 16 beacons with 6 speed modules MK8 each (50% increased energy consumption per module) and 4 productivity modules MK8 launching a lot of ion cannons into orbit. But that alone wasn't enough to generate 1 wasted MOX per minute, I know. My planned setup is so that's why I asked if you could barrel everything up, was just a suggestion, no big deal.

You would need roughly 60x250 MW reactors to generate on average 1 spent MOX assembly per minute. Even then you would only need a little more than 8 parallel lines of reprocessing going to keep up with the liquid wastes. The logistic of this in terms of pipes isn't too bad that you would saturate the pipe throughput. Certainly, if you are looking to go beyond this, barreling would be needed. Though...going beyond 1-2 GW of power is a tad excessive. Hm, I shall think about this.

[Light]

Though...going beyond 1-2 GW of power is a tad excessive.

Isn't that what the MSFR and larger turbines are meant to remedy?

The main issue just seems to be that hundreds of rods are needed due to the many 250MW reactors being used. With the larger turbines planned to generate 1575MW of electricity, plus the larger capacity reactor generating the 3500MW of heat which is spreading decay among more rods, wouldn't that ultimately cut down on the heavy demand for rod recycling?

Barreling seems to be something useful for the way the system currently works for very heavy power users. However, it seems like that ultimately wouldn't be worth the effort as the issue should be remedied when the new entities are added and higher power demands are easily satisfied by just 1-2 of the 3500MW reactors instead of 20+ smaller 250MW ones.

That is unless the roadmap has changed since last October.

[Fatmice]

Though...going beyond 1-2 GW of power is a tad excessive.

Isn't that what the MSFR and larger turbines are meant to remedy?

The main issue just seems to be that hundreds of rods are needed due to the many 250MW reactors being used. With the larger turbines planned to generate 1575MW of electricity, plus the larger capacity reactor generating the 3500MW of heat which is spreading decay among more rods, wouldn't that ultimately cut down on the heavy demand for rod recycling?

Barreling seems to be something useful for the way the system currently works for very heavy power users. However, it seems like that ultimately wouldn't be worth the effort as the issue should be remedied when the new entities are added and higher power demands are easily satisfied by just 1-2 of the 3500MW reactors instead of 20+ smaller 250MW ones.

That is unless the roadmap has changed since last October.

I wasn't clear. Excessive in terms of turbine usage, that's over 120 of them. Clearly, I have no problem with GW power production. However, it should be handled by higher capacity turbines. This is the goal and I want to deliver. The roadmap hasn't changed but there might be some amendments to fit with whatever opportunities will be afforded by 0.15. I do not want this mod to be a drag on UPS as people who uses GW of power will already have enough UPS problems elsewhere in their factory. Thus GW generation needs to be as light on the UPS as possible and this must include the reactor optimization and all of the downstream buildings. Furthermore, it is an issue of scale. While you can "copy and paste" a working reactor design and simply make more of them to scale up, this will always cost more UPS than a dedicated design intended for larger scale use. This is the reason for 250 MW -> 500 MW -> MSFR(5GW) <-> HPWR (10GW) -> ICF (>50GW). Each stage will have their own facilities to produce power accordingly such that UPS will be conserved.

[Light]

Though...going beyond 1-2 GW of power is a tad excessive.

Isn't that what the MSFR and larger turbines are meant to remedy?

The main issue just seems to be that hundreds of rods are needed due to the many 250MW reactors being used. With the larger turbines planned to generate 1575MW of electricity, plus the larger capacity reactor generating the 3500MW of heat which is spreading decay among more rods, wouldn't that ultimately cut down on the heavy demand for rod recycling?

Barreling seems to be something useful for the way the system currently works for very heavy power users. However, it seems like that ultimately wouldn't be worth the effort as the issue should be remedied when the new entities are added and higher power demands are easily satisfied by just 1-2 of the 3500MW reactors instead of 20+ smaller 250MW ones.

That is unless the roadmap has changed since last October.

I wasn't clear. Excessive in terms of turbine usage, that's over 120 of them. Clearly, I have no problem with GW power production. However, it should be handled by higher capacity turbines. This is the goal and I want to deliver. The roadmap hasn't changed but there might be some amendments to fit with whatever opportunities will be afforded by 0.15. I do not want this mod to be a drag on UPS as people who uses GW of power will already have enough UPS problems elsewhere in their factory. Thus GW generation needs to be as light on the UPS as possible and this must include the reactor optimization and all of the downstream buildings. Furthermore, it is an issue of scale. While you can "copy and paste" a working reactor design and simply make more of them to scale up, this will always cost more UPS than a dedicated design intended for larger scale use. This is the reason for 250 MW -> 500 MW -> MSFR(5GW) <-> HPWR (10GW) -> ICF (>50GW). Each stage will have their own facilities to produce power accordingly such that UPS will be conserved.

I suppose I wasn't clear enough either. What I meant to ask was that since these much higher capacity turbines will exist, the burning up of rods should be slower given the higher turbines will not be maxed out as heavily and efficiency should be far superior, right?

I'd imagine these stronger reactors hold up better overall with rod decay being slightly less of an issue, with the eventual ICF using the least amount. But this is all speculation of course, which is why I'm wondering how fuel rod recycling and decay will be handled in the future for each new process planned. If rod recycling plants will need to constantly grow (as it does now) or if we just need the one setup until better options open up.

[Fatmice]

I suppose I wasn't clear enough either. What I meant to ask was that since these much higher capacity turbines will exist, the burning up of rods should be slower given the higher turbines will not be maxed out as heavily and efficiency should be far superior, right?

Not necessarily. The higher capacity turbines are meant to run at capacity, meaning maxed out, to confer that higher efficiency. If you have a factory that is continuously requesting lots of power, you will benefit. If you have a factory that operates cyclically where power requirements wax and wane, you will have issues. I'm looking to make these high capacity turbines have spin up period where they eat more steam than needed for the same power output. So if you expose them to this cyclical power demand, your reactor will be required to produce more heat than is needed in the same time frame compare to a relatively stable power requirement. This makes sense since it takes a lot of energy to change the spin rate of these larger turbines. I want to make these turbines configurable via the circuit so you can throttle them to a certain "rpm," disable them, or over-rate them (i.e. run them at higher than rated "rpm" with higher maintenance requirement and a chance to break/stop working all together) if need.
Some characteristics of turbines

• Auto or manual mode. Auto mode will automatically throttle [5-100]% at 5% increments to meet demand.
• Manual mode can set throttle [5-120]% at 5% increments.
• Maintenance % [0-100] with unit% decrements. Normally this is at 100% and tied to the hp of the entity. The only way this can decrease is lack of lubricant and/or damage due to throttle setting.
• Lubricant satisfaction of either satisfied or unsatisfied. Turbine under manual mode will still operate without lubricant but will harm maintenance.
• Turbine operational state can be one of on, idle, off.
• Turbine feedback state can be green, red, or yellow. Green is good. Red is bad. Yellow is neither.

I'd imagine these stronger reactors hold up better overall with rod decay being slightly less of an issue, with the eventual ICF using the least amount. But this is all speculation of course, which is why I'm wondering how fuel rod recycling and decay will be handled in the future for each new process planned. If rod recycling plants will need to constantly grow (as it does now) or if we just need the one setup until better options open up.

If anything these stronger reactors will be more voracious, but they will be more configurable. Here's some characteristics that I have in mind

• They will need a minimum amount of fuel assemblies to run.
• They are controlled by circuits (manual mode) or left on auto mode.
• Under auto mode, they operate from 5% to 80% of rated heat production. The "control rods" will raise or lower automatically to maintain hot-leg temperature. Refueling happens automatically if there are fuel for replacement. Reactor "incidents" can not happen. This will be a hassle free mode for those who do not want to fiddle with circuits.
• Through circuits (manual mode): manual adjustment of "control rods" to maintain hot-leg temperature, reactor operational state can be changed to one of on, off, idle, or refuel. Reactor "incidents" can happen under manual mode so exercise care when manipulating control rods setting.
• Reactor feedback state is one of green, red, or yellow. Green is good. Red is bad. Yellow is neither.
• Operational reactor requires maintenance that is scaled with heat output. Maintenance is tied to the hp of the entity. The maintenance requirements will not be onerous but reactor with low maintenance will shutdown under auto mode or if under manual mode can suffer an incident.

The 250 MW and 500 MW and their retinues may change gfx but their behavior will remain the same if possible under 0.15. I want to make sure they will always have a use next to their bigger cousins. As you all are aware, 0.15 is slated for Tuesday of next week. Everything I say here is subject to changes and adjustments to be compatible with 0.15. I am very excited for the patch. There appears to be many opportunities.

[Fatmice]

I'd imagine these stronger reactors hold up better overall with rod decay being slightly less of an issue, with the eventual ICF using the least amount. But this is all speculation of course, which is why I'm wondering how fuel rod recycling and decay will be handled in the future for each new process planned. If rod recycling plants will need to constantly grow (as it does now) or if we just need the one setup until better options open up.

I forgot all about your inquiry into fuel rod recycling. The MSFR will be the center of fuel recycling. The vitrified wastes, that you are currently storing, from the PWR is funneled through this reactor with fresh Th/U/Pu to burn up. This reduces the final waste stream from PWR/HPWR. The MSFR also generate wastes of its own, but it is much much less than PWR/HPWR. This waste is vitrified and stored. The waste treatment for MSFR is also on-line such that some liquid from the reactor is siphoned off to be treated/extracted then returned to the reactor. The recipes for these will be more abbreviated and will not require oil products but will require an initial investment of rare metals/energy with low future upkeep. The main use for MSFR is to produce energy, burn wastes, and breed fuel while producing very low amounts of wastes. The PWR/HPWR fuel rod recycling will always be complicated and difficult to scale. The purpose of the PWR is to get you to the MSFR. You should always have more MSFR than PWR/HPWR. MSFR is also special in that I will make a chemical cycle that can utilize the heat from the reactor to produce intermediate energy carriers/batteries that you can logistically distribute. Thus you don't have to hook the MSFR up to turbines to produce energy. Indeed, you may not want to if you can't immediately utilize all of the heat that the MSFR can put out since it is meant to operate at the maximum thermal output of 5 GW. It will operate much less efficiently below this rating (i.e. burn less wastes, breed less fuel, produce less heat).

So the overall arching design is to go from PWR -> MSFR -> HPWR -> ICF. MSFR is the stable base to power HPWR for short periods of time*. The HPWR is meant to fire up the ICF. From there, the ICF can fire up additional ICFs. The wastes from ICFs are stored and not treated as there is nothing to be done with low mass isotopes. I suppose one could sort the ICFs wastes for He-3 or some other useful isotopes but that is something to work on after these other things. The main use for the ICF outside of powering your GW monster base is to power the ADS where you transmute wastes into some rare metals needed for some OP end-game things. The ADS may also have other uses that I've not fleshed out.

*Short is a relative term. Short could be days of real time.

[alexgor]

Though...going beyond 1-2 GW of power is a tad excessive.

and




2 dissolving plants for 4.7 and MOX rods
a bit of overload of used TVELs, about 150 mox and 100 4.7 waiting for recycle

[Fatmice]

I do not think you understand that your post demonstrates exactly what is meant by "excessive."
You replicated the reactor 46x to get the power that you want in exchange for much UPS. The same power output could be satisfied by higher capacity turbines and MSFRs, which I intend to make, for much lower UPS. The point is to do more with less UPS.

At 17 UPS, it's clear that "copying and pasting" reactors down to expand power production is a very bad idea.

[alexgor]

what is UPS?

[Fatmice]

what is UPS?

Update per Second. Your game is at 17 UPS. Normally it is 60 or try to maintain 60 UPS.

[Amyclas]

Though...going beyond 1-2 GW of power is a tad excessive.

Pics of the power network info

2 dissolving plants for 4.7 and MOX rods
a bit of overload of used TVELs, about 150 mox and 100 4.7 waiting for recycle

Why are you using 1.7 GW in electric furnaces and why aren't you using angels smelting which is a billion times more !fun!

[Fatmice]

I just got back home. It goes without saying that 0.15 broke everything?

[Light]

I just got back home. It goes without saying that 0.15 broke everything?

Indeed it did.

The vanilla reactor system is quite interesting to say the least. After a lot of testing, the vanilla method can produce a lot of power with minimal upkeep. The only downside was that fuel creation is entirely based on randomness, so it typically takes many hours to get the enrichment recipe going. However, once enrichment begins, you never run out of fuel and the need to mine uranium ore is reduced considerably just to obtain a tiny bit of U-238 you'll need every now and then.

Despite the time consuming enrichment process, there's no issue generating 10GW+ with just a tiny enrichment setup. The reactors are quite powerful due to the neighbor bonus, granting the heat of a dozen or more reactors in just a tiny cluster, while also not using as much fuel to do so.

Some data from my tests:
- At 2 hours, the 40 U-235 for enrichment is obtained.
- At 3 hours, enough U-235 is obtained from enrichment to sustain 11.2GW worth of reactor turbines at 100% burn. (My enrichment setup was small, so it could support 50GW+ if scaled up more.)
- 73,841 Uranium ore was used to get 40 U-235 (It is random, but still a considerable amount)
- No impact on my UPS

Despite it being very powerful, it's still too simple for my tastes. Not to mention productivity modules can be used in the miners, the centrifuge sorting process, and even creating fuel cells if you wanted to, which I didn't for my tests as that would be too overpowered.

I look forward to hearing your observations about it and if it impacts any plans you had with your mod going forward.