[0.14] Reactors & Atomic Locomotives

[renhanxue]

What's the optimal ratio of reactors/reprocessors to get the "A combination of fission and breeding yields over 110 reactor cycles with no surplus, given the right balance" that's mentioned on the mod page?

If I'm counting things right, if you reprocess as far as you can:
One fission cycle nets you +0.25 depleted uranium and -0.5 enriched fuel
One breeder cycle nets you -2 depleted uranium and +1 enriched fuel
One uranium ore enrichment cycle nets you +7 depleted uranium and +1 enriched fuel, but takes 15 seconds rather than 10 like the other two

From this it follows that two fission to one breeder is actually fuel neutral but leaves you with a shortage of 1.5 depleted uranium per cycle that you have to make up for somehow.

If I'm doing my numbers right (very possibly not) I think the perfect ratio with everything running full speed is 3 uranium enrichment plants to 10 breeder reactors to 24 fission reactors to God knows how many reprocessing and MOX enrichment plants, but that's, uh. A bit impractical, maybe? Maybe you should just use circuits to turn on/off breeders/uranium enrichment plants as needed (exactly when to do this is left as an exercise to the reader).

[DofD]

Just wanted to share my power plant with you.
It has a bit messy circutry, but it works


The light light up if reactor at efficiency <21 red <95 yellow >95 green
And the surrounding lights light up if there is an emergency shutdown

[GotLag]

I've just released a new update with a significant change to fuel production - uranium ingots are no longer produced. I have left the item definition and processing recipe that consumes them in, so if you have any stockpiles you can use them up.

There are a few reasons for moving to a liquid step:

• It looks cooler than boring grey ingots
• It's more realistic to separate isotopes while still in a liquid/gaseous state, rather than refining to metal and then having to separate again.
• It allows me finer control over balance for future fine-tuning - I don't have to use/produce only integer amounts

I've also added a short guide to the first post, please let me know if there's anything you'd like me to cover in more detail.

[ghoti]

I agree that the liquid is cooler.

I see you fixed the exploit that let you use less water for cooling. Personally I think you should have included the heat transfer constant. That way there might be some use for having a fluid temperature indicator.

That said, I also see you've made this mod significantly less punishing. You have 300 C for headroom, up from 250C. Throttle is way faster, actually it never seems to settle. And breeders are just as easy to run. I guess it's no big deal, but with this and the throttle changes, you'll never need more than one cooling tower. You should consider doing something mean if the reactor reaches 300 C. Like destroy the fuel maybe?

I was thinking about how to balance the production of a breader and 2 normal reactors, and I came up with forcing the output of an underutilized reactor into the input of an overutilized reactor. If I count the number of depleted to enriched uranium ingots on the belt, I can tell which reactor needs to run more. Here's what that whole setup looks like. It's got some edge cases but overall pretty reliable I think.

2016-10-09--1476033734_730x883_scrot.png (1.36 MiB) Viewed 10867 times

[GotLag]

That said, I also see you've made this mod significantly less punishing. You have 300 C for headroom, up from 250C. Throttle is way faster, actually it never seems to settle. And breeders are just as easy to run. I guess it's no big deal, but with this and the throttle changes, you'll never need more than one cooling tower. You should consider doing something mean if the reactor reaches 300 C. Like destroy the fuel maybe?

It's more accessible this way. True, once a reactor is set up correctly and running it can handle demand rising or falling without browning out or overheating, but it still has a hefty cold-start delay. I feel it's better for the reactor to always work regardless of how power might rise and fall (if correctly built).

You can still use two cooling towers if you want to force a reactor to run at full speed. For example, you might use fission only for power generation, with a breeder being driven by two cooling towers purely for the purpose of providing plutonium to enrich the power reactors' fuel. Less than optimal fuel consumption but easier to balance: build for plutonium overproduction, and cut off fuel to the breeders when your Pu buffer exceeds a threshold.
Requiring only one tower per reactor gives more freedom in layout, while still needing a cooling solution for low-power situations.

You've got a point about doing something mean, now that it's much harder to overheat. I also need to find a fix for fuel consumption going (slightly) backwards when the reactor itself is not being given sufficient power and is at low throttle (change recipe duration to duration at minimum throttle, and increase crafting progress at higher throttle, rather than the current method of recipe duration being maximum, and subtracting?).

[Philip017]

well, yah, if you have the setup first then the reactor will heat up and can produce more power than it can sustain.

This setup seems to reach equilibrium at 29.3 though: http://imgur.com/a/jUBlw

I think the difference here is I manged to get 426 units of water in the reactor, rather than 421.

i got 29.3 out of 1 of my reactor setups, i setup 2 more with blueprints, and achieved 421 units of water with 2 of them, and 427 with 1 of them, the ones with 421 water output 28.9MW and the one with 427 has 29.3MW output, i am not sure how this happens.

not sure if this is a bug or fixed in new release, but the circuit connection to the reactor and pumps (that controls the cooling towers) did not blueprint and i had to attach it manually.

will check out the new version i see has been released.

[GotLag]

not sure if this is a bug or fixed in new release, but the circuit connection to the reactor and pumps (that controls the cooling towers) did not blueprint and i had to attach it manually.

will check out the new version i see has been released.

The circuit connection doesn't blueprint as it's a separate entity spawned after placing the reactor.

I may look into making it a separately-built entity, but that depends on my free time, as it adds a lot of complexity and error-handling.

[DarkPaapi]

Such a great mod, thanks for it. Tried out a dozen of setups, and probably now on my factoris will run on the shine of the atom... A hardcore version could be FUN to where instead of "oh no worries its stop at 300.", just let it rise till the core melts down and turning the area into a nuclear wasteland Thanks again for it

[GotLag]

Updated to 1.4.1, Reactor blueprints now save wire connections \o/

[komrade_toast]

I finally got around to tearing down my whole setup, updating the mod, and re-building. This fixed the error I was receiving upon trying to load my world.

Anyways, here it is, my new Reactors build!

Oil

Reactors

Closeup

It is pretty much the same as the last build I posted, just a lot more compact. Since 1.4.0, the reactors do not run at 100% output all the time anymore. But that isn't a big deal. At first I was only producing fuel as I needed it, but with this new setup I just said "Screw it, just produce everything I can right now." This gave me spare depleted uranium and plutonium so I can actually start using the new Uranium Rounds and RTGs (Uranium Rounds are amazing by the way, maybe a little OP).

The fuel processing in the center of all 6 reactor also displays counts on enriched & depleted uranium, plutonium, and spent fuel (top right of processing plant), and it displays the average statistics across all of my reactors (bottom).

I'm looking forward to being able to plop these guys down with my blueprints and not have to worry about the circuit connections now!

[GotLag]

That's a pretty intense setup. How's the performance? Reactors is probably not as optimised as it could be.

I'm all ears for feedback on DU ammo. I play peaceful so I'm not sure about combat balance.

[komrade_toast]

Performance on it is wonderful, it powers my whole base and all my outposts. I haven't maxed it out yet, I built all 6 reactors as soon as I researched the tech. I like future-proofing my power production as early as possible. It should output 156MW at full production. So far though the steam engines in each reactor setup have not activated once, as I have only pushed it to 100 something megawatts. The average power output % of the whole setup over 5 seconds is about 78%. Before the 1.4.0 update the combinator logic I am using would push the reactor to always stay at 100% output. But now, IDK what changed, it doesn't stay at 100% anymore.

As for the ammo, I stand corrected. I haven't used piercing rounds in a while, and forgot I upgraded my bullet damage and shooting speed all the way since I used the piercing rounds. It's actually quite balanced, Destroys biters and spawners noticeably faster than piercing rounds, which should be expected of a third-tier ammo.

EDIT: Something else I noticed after building these reactors is that I built right on top of a chunk boundary. The output pumps for every reactor are in a seperate chunk, all one chunk above the reactors. All my water temps are still 100 degrees though, this could be from my combinator circuits, or, it could be that the output pumps, steam turbines, tanks, and steam engines are all in the same chunk. Also every reactor was built using bots so I can't be sure of pump placement order either.

[kenlon]

I didn't want to make Reactors explicitly dependent on Flow Control, as other mods can also add pumps, but I see your point. I'll add dependency in the next release.

I really would prefer if Flow Control wasn't required. Bob's Mods includes pumps, and having to edit the mod every time you update to remove the dependency is annoying.

EDIT: Wait, never mind. Reactors now appears to require Flow Control items to actually work at all, so I guess it's time to ditch the mod.

[GotLag]

1.4.2 - Flow Control is optional again, reactor, turbine and cooling tower can now be hand-crafted.

[Philip017]

1.4.2 - Flow Control is optional again, reactor, turbine and cooling tower can now be hand-crafted.

suggest posting change logs in main post, possible also in portal main post,

btw keep up the great work,

-- i previously make the reactors hand craft able too

[GotLag]

Updated to 1.4.3 - added Russian localisation, reactor shutdown signal, changed crafting progress adjustment to use addition (no more stuttering backwards at low power) - a side-effect of this is that recipe tooltips show the duration at minimum power instead of maximum

[Philip017]

anyone else getting this bug?

having trouble placing a pipe at the top of the reactor, it shows red and the graphics are messed up on the top, idk what is going on.

[GotLag]

Have you made any changes to the reactor entity collision box?

Edit: I assume you're using Squeak Through, in which case you'll have to add an exception for nuclear-reactor and probably also reactor-interface.

[OdinYggd]

Finally perfected the combinator logic I had been working with most of the weekend with an arrangement that makes use of the external shutdown signal added in 1.4.3

This arrangement expands on the setpoint control that I use with my coal fired steam in order to make it so that the reactor will cycle on and off as needed if there isn't enough load to keep the throttle above 25%, while at the same time allowing it to remain on continually if the throttle does stay above 25% so that it can follow the load without cycling.

In addition, a properly configured reactor can now be operated in a way that the cooling tower is only required to make it restart from an overheat shutdown. No steam is wasted to it unless the controls malfunction.

No-Waste Nuclear

2 of the 3 units, but they are all blueprints of one another with only the accumulator level setpoints being different.

I am still working with the ratios for fuel reprocessing in order to make byproducts available for other processes while avoiding having too much nuclear waste building up in my logistics bins. So far turning the depleted uranium into bullets has proven to be a very acceptable solution.

[Philip017]

Have you made any changes to the reactor entity collision box?

Edit: I assume you're using Squeak Through, in which case you'll have to add an exception for nuclear-reactor and probably also reactor-interface.

yes using squeak through, how do i add this exception?

EDIT:

it appears that there is a new version of squeak through that contains the exception

thanks!