Support - Uranium Power

[Fatmice]

My chemical plant daisy chain quite often has blockages, although I followed the video tutorial.

For example, my 2.2% hexaflouride plant produces 1.7% & 2.7%.

The 2.7% output goes into my 2.7% plant.

The 2.7% plant produces 2.2% & 3.2%.

The 2.2% output goes back up into the 2.2% plant input.

So sometimes plant 3.2% produces 2.2% that cant go anywhere because the 2.2%plant has already received 2.2% from the previous plant (1.7%).

How can we get around these sort of blockages? ><

It's suppose to be a puzzle that you work out. If I tell you, it wouldn't be any fun now would it? There are multiple solutions. The one on the tutorial is just an example. It was not meant to be blockage-proof.

[reaperrar]

It's suppose to be a puzzle that you work out. If I tell you, it wouldn't be any fun now would it? There are multiple solutions. The one on the tutorial is just an example. It was not meant to be blockage-proof.

Well, knowing that the solution is not blockage-proof helps as I thought I had done something wrong. Before receiving your response I had already torn it all down and started differently

Can't see it working without

conditional pumps.

[Fatmice]

Well, I can tell you that the one on the tutorial can be made blockage-proof with a few small changes. Conditional pump is one way to do it...or conditional inserters. Erm...I might have said too much already.

[Iorek]

or one of bobs mods gas venting valves

you can also vent every one and ignore the puzzle completely if you like

[Fatmice]

Venting is definitely not required. In fact you might regret doing so since the uraninite ore isn't that abundant.

[Speadge]

Hey fatmice,
I know u where promising fuel consumption to release 0.7. But that was already back in 2015.
Is there any quick patch we could add to have it in before? Feels like cheating now once u have enough pellets...

Would be REALLY great!

[Demosthenex]

My apologies, but I agree decay should be fixed. Our server had two problems with UP which resulted in our removing it. The first was repeated crashes because our team trying to use reactors were putting the wrong item into the reactor and it didn't check that it was valid fuel before trying to burn it. That's already a documented issue on Github. The second was that fuel never decayed and allowed unlimited power. We play hard mode and that just didn't work. Given we removed solar panels, we needed a balanced nuclear power option.

[Marc90]

I don't know what the problem is with the reactor chest. It is a known issue and the solution is as simple as just don't put anything else in there; what other than the fuel rods do you want in there anyway?

I totally understand that fuel not decaying is a major problem in a hard mode scenario and I'm also waiting for that feature. But don't forget that this mod is free and there is only so much free time where the author can work on it while also factorio develops further and so the mod needs to be adapted to the changes additionally as people are asking for updates just one day after a new factorio update comes out.

[Speadge]

noone is pushing - i tried to ask kindly if there may be a way to add it already without waiting for other 0.7 improvements, since i now ended with a solution to read out my Pressured-water cycle and removing rods every now and then depending on the P-water i used..

[Demosthenex]

I totally understand that fuel not decaying is a major problem in a hard mode scenario and I'm also waiting for that feature. But don't forget that this mod is free and there is only so much free time where the author can work on it while also factorio develops further and so the mod needs to be adapted to the changes additionally as people are asking for updates just one day after a new factorio update comes out.

I'm used to mods and open source software. I would not impose directly on the author's time. I was voicing my opinion and sharing my experience. I'm very impressed with the mod and it worked fine, it was just prone to allowing large impact from user error, and unbalanced due to a missing feature.

I sincerely hope they find the time to finish this mod as it's clearly quite good otherwise.

[Fatmice]

Don't worry guys, I know of the issues and will fix them. It is rather difficult of an issue with time since I'm at the end of my PhD studies. I check these forums once a day and reply to things as best I can. The reactor-chest issue has already been dealt with on my developer version. The fuel decay is also already done on that version. I haven't release this version because it has no graphics. Maybe you guys want to play with white boxes?

[Nexela]

As long as they are awesome power producing white boxes

[Speadge]

Don't worry guys, I know of the issues and will fix them. It is rather difficult of an issue with time since I'm at the end of my PhD studies. I check these forums once a day and reply to things as best I can. The reactor-chest issue has already been dealt with on my developer version. The fuel decay is also already done on that version. I haven't release this version because it has no graphics. Maybe you guys want to play with white boxes?

We r playing factorio.. eyecandy is nothing we are expecting at all

[Light]

After finishing the design of a major region in the factory and flipping the switch, it completely blew out the fuse, the reactors got overwhelmed and a major blackout occurred.
Sounds like the white box cure might be useful

[Keridos]

Hi there, using v 0.6.5 of your mod on Factorio 0.13.20. Having a small bug here: When using the big heat exchangers and the primary loop liquid is pumped out first, from the moment when only the secondary liquid is left, the remaining secondary liquid will be output at 15 °C, no matter what the temperature should be like. It should rather not be output at that termperature, is that wanted behaviour? This makes it quite impossible to use the heat exchangers for my turbing setup, when I pump the primary liquid out too slow, it fails every few seconds, when I do pump it out to fast, it also drops out every few seconds.

[Fatmice]

Hello,

The issue you're having is there isn't enough fluid remaining in the output for the temperature to be modified by my code. Fluid must linger in the output for at least 10 or more ticks. You can solve this by having a pump placed after the hot output and toggle the pump every 10 ticks. I do not know of a better solution to this problem...maybe there is one but I do not see an elegant solution yet.

[Keridos]

Does this affect both input and output liquid? So do I just have to toggle the output secondary hot liquid or shall i not pump out the primary cold output (from the reactor) out beforehand?

And a suggestion: Can't you make the heat exchanger output a logic signal when the cycle is finished? That would be a neat way to solve the issue completely.

[ledzilla]

Not certain if I'm doing something wrong here or not, so thought I'd ask. I attached a screen shot of my layout, but I have encountered a couple problems:

1) For both steam generators, the hot legs remain around 300 degrees, constantly fluctuating between 296 and 301, even though the 72MW reactor and the steam generators remain at a steady 350 degrees. Not sure it's really a problem, but still curious.
2) Under full load, the steam generator can't keep up with demand and ultimately results in intermittent power production. Under periods of high demand, how would one ensure that there's sufficient steam created to feed the turbines without interruption?

Also, when using a layout consisting of a 144MW reactor, heat exchangers, and various forms of steam generator or turbine, is there a way to maintain sufficient water flow to satisfy generator demand? I've played around with it, but I can't seem to keep up. This is all in game version 0.13.20.

Layout Screen Shot

factorio_screen_0003.png (1.37 MiB) Viewed 6021 times

[Light]

Not certain if I'm doing something wrong here or not, so thought I'd ask. I attached a screen shot of my layout, but I have encountered a couple problems:

1) For both steam generators, the hot legs remain around 300 degrees, constantly fluctuating between 296 and 301, even though the 72MW reactor and the steam generators remain at a steady 350 degrees. Not sure it's really a problem, but still curious.
2) Under full load, the steam generator can't keep up with demand and ultimately results in intermittent power production. Under periods of high demand, how would one ensure that there's sufficient steam created to feed the turbines without interruption?

Also, when using a layout consisting of a 144MW reactor, heat exchangers, and various forms of steam generator or turbine, is there a way to maintain sufficient water flow to satisfy generator demand? I've played around with it, but I can't seem to keep up. This is all in game version 0.13.20.

Your issue here is the lack of rods.
When the chest is full of rods, then the reactor will continue to generate enough heat to maintain 3k of steam, even when the electrical network is under a heavy burden.
This was always a mystery to me as well, until figuring out that the number of rods determines the efficiency of the reactor. You should always have at least 9 rods before setting up a new reactor to ensure no intermittent power loss. You'll also not need any outside source of water into the hot leg if the 9 rods are provided and the tank in front of the cooling tower receives a steady flow of water. Although, I can understand why you have it there, given you're likely running dry a lot due to insufficient rods.

As for the 144MW reactor, you should only really use that for steam engines. Exchanging heat between the heated pressure water with regular water, with the regular water fueling the steam engines and the pressure water returning to the reactor to be reheated. It takes more space using steam engines, but is far cheaper and gets more out of a single reactor.

[ledzilla]

Your issue here is the lack of rods.
When the chest is full of rods, then the reactor will continue to generate enough heat to maintain 3k of steam, even when the electrical network is under a heavy burden.
This was always a mystery to me as well, until figuring out that the number of rods determines the efficiency of the reactor. You should always have at least 9 rods before setting up a new reactor to ensure no intermittent power loss. You'll also not need any outside source of water into the hot leg if the 9 rods are provided and the tank in front of the cooling tower receives a steady flow of water. Although, I can understand why you have it there, given you're likely running dry a lot due to insufficient rods.

As for the 144MW reactor, you should only really use that for steam engines. Exchanging heat between the heated pressure water with regular water, with the regular water fueling the steam engines and the pressure water returning to the reactor to be reheated. It takes more space using steam engines, but is far cheaper and gets more out of a single reactor.

Actually, the chest is full of rods, and has been, but it still won't maintain sufficient steam.

Access Port and Steam Generator

factorio_screen_0004.png (860.76 KiB) Viewed 6012 times

I don't have any extra water feeding into the hot leg. It is a closed circuit running only compressed water between the steam generators and the reactor.The extra water is being fed into the cold water side because when running at full speed the turbines seem to lose a lot of water until the system runs dry and shuts down.

Hot Leg

factorio_screen_0005.png (332.2 KiB) Viewed 6012 times

I wasn't using the 144MW reactor for the 30MW turbine/cooling towers. There are other mods I have that have steam engines/turbines that I was referencing. Whether I use vanilla steam engines or mod equivalents, I can't maintain enough hot water/steam to meet demand. I didn't experience this issue in 0.12.x, and was able to power something like 100 steam engines from a single reactor. But maybe I never pushed it as hard as it would go and that's why it seems funky to me now. At any rate, the hot water gets consumed faster than water can be pumped through the heat exchangers, and that's with 10-20 sources of water pumping into the system (mix of offshore pumps and mod water source built using offshore pumps). Have to use a mix because larger bodies of water are not located close enough to base.

So, primary concern comes down to even though I have a full access port with top fuel rods, and the liquid pathways are properly filled, the system runs out of water and steam when the turbines are pushed to output at full performance. The large components are squeezed together with no pipes in between to prevent heat loss, and the temperature of the steam received by the turbines will steadily drop. It seems like if I remove the turbine, the temperature in the hot leg will increase back to 350, but as soon as it is reconnected it drops again. I've rebuilt the one side of the facility with the pump, generator, and turbine, each time producing the same results. The temp in the hot leg drops, and the steam bleeds water/steam under full load.