Uranium Power

[Speadge]

quote

Hey fatmice,

I like the complexity of your ideas, but lets face the truth: if an atomic power solution might be stock in 0.15, all your work might be obsolete for the most ppl.

Wouldnt it have kinda more sense to polish the current version of this mod, add fuel decay and fix bugs and other things and consider a bigger release once 0.15 is out?

If anything, what he has right now may be exactly what the vanilla version would entail. A simple system that creates 20-30MW and nothing more. The devs already stated that they find the game complex enough, so it's unlikely to be anything interesting. However, what Fatmice has planned will not only satisfy those who enjoy complexity and realism, but also provide massive quantities of power well beyond what is currently available as the benefit for learning a more complex system.

It was my fear that this mod was going to fade out as well, but upon hearing that creation of a moderately sized nuclear power plant could generate up to 1575 MW so long as maintenance and resource upkeep was maintained, sounded like it would be a major keeper for anyone who intends to build large scale factories without having to keep returning to the power grid to constantly upgrade it. Especially with Bob's mods where high tier buildings can easily jump beyond 30MW when a section is completed, forcing several new reactors to be required instead of relying on just the mega-reactor to easily keep up with demand at the cost of additional self-damage and fuel rod consumption.

well, you have a point here - but without leaving my point, just one thought:
Does Self-Damage really add up to the complexity? Just an idea: let it rely on "maintenance packs" while working and if it doesnt have any more to consume, it THEN self-damages itself rapidly. So u REALLY have to care for maintenance or it just _boooms_ -instead of just having a roboport with enough repair-packs available and dont have to care about this "feature" anymore...

just my thought

[Light]

Honestly, I thought the idea was a bit iffy myself.

I'm no expert when it comes to this, but I figured that reactors only suffered damage when there was insufficient cooling. (This is the case in the nuclear reactor simulator)

While standard maintenance is required for almost anything in life, operating outside its designed capability would naturally damage the item in question. Thus I expected the reactor to self-damage itself if the player neglects keeping it within safe operational temperatures yet remained low enough to prevent shutdown, as this would provide at least some reason to keep an eye on the state of things rather than just burning repair packs for simply existing.

Sort of a "Safe" -> "Warning (Damaging)" -> "Critical (Shutdown)" system similar to the simulator. Where too much time spent in the warning state would damage an item that must be replaced if it's left that way too long.

That's how I'd personally do it.

[steinio]

Would it not be easy to enable fuel rod usage with converting the rods to real fuel with an huge amount of GJs?

Greetings steinio

[Speadge]

Quote

Honestly, I thought the idea was a bit iffy myself.

I'm no expert when it comes to this, but I figured that reactors only suffered damage when there was insufficient cooling. (This is the case in the nuclear reactor simulator)

While standard maintenance is required for almost anything in life, operating outside its designed capability would naturally damage the item in question. Thus I expected the reactor to self-damage itself if the player neglects keeping it within safe operational temperatures yet remained low enough to prevent shutdown, as this would provide at least some reason to keep an eye on the state of things rather than just burning repair packs for simply existing.

Sort of a "Safe" -> "Warning (Damaging)" -> "Critical (Shutdown)" system similar to the simulator. Where too much time spent in the warning state would damage an item that must be replaced if it's left that way too long.

That's how I'd personally do it.

the "Critical (shutdown)" shouldnt be made by default but has to be automated by the player - if he doesnt, it just blows up.
kinda "takes 20 seconds to shutdown" and "blows up when critical for 40 seconds".

so u HAVE to have an eye on it and cant just run it manually somehow. once critical for >20 seconds and no shutdown initiated, u can just RUN!

[Fatmice]

well, you have a point here - but without leaving my point, just one thought:
Does Self-Damage really add up to the complexity? Just an idea: let it rely on "maintenance packs" while working and if it doesnt have any more to consume, it THEN self-damages itself rapidly. So u REALLY have to care for maintenance or it just _boooms_ -instead of just having a roboport with enough repair-packs available and dont have to care about this "feature" anymore...

just my thought

Reactor self-damage is an upkeep. This upkeep is representative of "maintenance" work that you normally do to keep a reactor up and running in the real world. Reactor damage due to temperature incursion is a separate thing on top of this upkeep. The temperature incursion will shutdown the reactor before any breach of containment. This is a reactor safety built into all 2nd and 3rd generation reactor in the real world. All fourth generation proposals have even more safeties built in. Reactors do not go "boom"...This is a Hollywood myth that have so infected the minds of many and it needs to stop.

Honestly, I thought the idea was a bit iffy myself.

I'm no expert when it comes to this, but I figured that reactors only suffered damage when there was insufficient cooling. (This is the case in the nuclear reactor simulator)

While standard maintenance is required for almost anything in life, operating outside its designed capability would naturally damage the item in question. Thus I expected the reactor to self-damage itself if the player neglects keeping it within safe operational temperatures yet remained low enough to prevent shutdown, as this would provide at least some reason to keep an eye on the state of things rather than just burning repair packs for simply existing.

Sort of a "Safe" -> "Warning (Damaging)" -> "Critical (Shutdown)" system similar to the simulator. Where too much time spent in the warning state would damage an item that must be replaced if it's left that way too long.

That's how I'd personally do it.

An operating reactor suffers neutron damage to the containment, reactor vessel, and all reactor components within the containment. These damages extend to the other ancillary components but to a lesser degree. This is unavoidable. Cooling problems will simply shorten the lifetime of these things. The upkeep is a compromise on play-ability and realism. While it is certainly possible to give an entity a "lifetime," it doesn't fit within the factorio gameplay. Entities in factorio are effectively immortal. Signalling is something I will be playing with and can be handled through virtual signals. I do want to provide the player the ability to control the reactor through wiring mechanisms.

Would it not be easy to enable fuel rod usage with converting the rods to real fuel with an huge amount of GJs?

Greetings steinio

Sadly no. Anything item that has energy associated with it is considered a fuel in factorio and thus "burnable" in a boiler, furnace, or any entity that has a burner as the energy provider. It would be pretty jarring to see someone put a fuel-assembly into a furnace to "burn" it. This is the reason why I couldn't do this a long time ago.

the "Critical (shutdown)" shouldnt be made by default but has to be automated by the player - if he doesnt, it just blows up.
kinda "takes 20 seconds to shutdown" and "blows up when critical for 40 seconds".

so u HAVE to have an eye on it and cant just run it manually somehow. once critical for >20 seconds and no shutdown initiated, u can just RUN!

Aside from the fact that reactors do not blow up, this alone is quite disruptive in a multiplayer environment. Critical shut down must be a default behavior else it opens the door to griefing on servers. I find this possibility alone distasteful so I will not allow it.

[Speadge]

Well. Tschenobyl did go 'boom' without any hollywood script involved

[Fatmice]

Well. Tschenobyl did go 'boom' without any hollywood script involved

The boom you are referring to is a steam explosion, not the mushroom clouds that everyone is talking about when they say "boom." That reactor is also a badly designed one. You want a badly designed reactor?

A well designed reactor should never go boom, steam or mushroom. I would hope a space faring "survivor" would have with him/her the technology of a society that knows how to make a well behave reactor.

[Ratzap]

Well. Tschenobyl did go 'boom' without any hollywood script involved

The boom you are referring to is a steam explosion, not the mushroom clouds that everyone is talking about when they say "boom." That reactor is also a badly designed one. You want a badly designed reactor?

A well designed reactor should never go boom, steam or mushroom. I would hope a space faring "survivor" would have with him/her the technology of a society that knows how to make a well behave reactor.

Exactly. Speadge might want to educate himself - Youtube has a large variety of good material about PWRs. Then look up advanced reactors and you'll find things like molten salt designs which pretty much cannot explode at all. Worst case they drain off into a sump and the whole lot solidifies - not fun to clean up but a hell of a lot safer than boiling high pressure water.

[Light]

Honestly, I thought the idea was a bit iffy myself.

I'm no expert when it comes to this, but I figured that reactors only suffered damage when there was insufficient cooling. (This is the case in the nuclear reactor simulator)

While standard maintenance is required for almost anything in life, operating outside its designed capability would naturally damage the item in question. Thus I expected the reactor to self-damage itself if the player neglects keeping it within safe operational temperatures yet remained low enough to prevent shutdown, as this would provide at least some reason to keep an eye on the state of things rather than just burning repair packs for simply existing.

Sort of a "Safe" -> "Warning (Damaging)" -> "Critical (Shutdown)" system similar to the simulator. Where too much time spent in the warning state would damage an item that must be replaced if it's left that way too long.

That's how I'd personally do it.

An operating reactor suffers neutron damage to the containment, reactor vessel, and all reactor components within the containment. These damages extend to the other ancillary components but to a lesser degree. This is unavoidable. Cooling problems will simply shorten the lifetime of these things. The upkeep is a compromise on play-ability and realism. While it is certainly possible to give an entity a "lifetime," it doesn't fit within the factorio gameplay. Entities in factorio are effectively immortal. Signalling is something I will be playing with and can be handled through virtual signals. I do want to provide the player the ability to control the reactor through wiring mechanisms.

To clarify, my thought was that when the building is operating within safety limits, it did not suffer damage. Only when temperatures were getting higher did it actually self damage. As a way to further incentivize making a good safe design and keeping it within that safe limit so the building stays in good condition.

However, if the upkeep isn't too draining by itself but further increases when temperatures aren't ideal, that would be within the same thought process. It just seemed odd that reactors self damaged just for existing as no other buildings require upkeep despite what they go through. But with the self damaging reactor, I imagine it can be quite the nuisance before robots start coming out to do the repairs for you, keeping you running back and forth too often. I know you'll balance or scale it accordingly, it was just my initial concern considering I typically use the reactor by itself from the moment the reactor research is finished to keep pollution low as possible early game. I'm likely just overthinking it.

Would it not be easy to enable fuel rod usage with converting the rods to real fuel with an huge amount of GJs?

Greetings steinio

You want to fuel the flux capacitor in your car don't you?

the "Critical (shutdown)" shouldnt be made by default but has to be automated by the player - if he doesnt, it just blows up.
kinda "takes 20 seconds to shutdown" and "blows up when critical for 40 seconds".

so u HAVE to have an eye on it and cant just run it manually somehow. once critical for >20 seconds and no shutdown initiated, u can just RUN!

Sounds like you just enjoy things blowing up and causing all kinds of chaos.
In a game where you build dense sections of a factory and you watch it all blow to hell due to a fictional nuclear explosion from a reactor just because you made a minor mistake and didn't see it coming because you weren't nearby is very concerning for any player.

Fortunately real reactors don't come remotely close to what you're expecting to go wrong, as there are a lot of reactors in the world and when they suffer problems you'd never even know because safety is critical. There's safeties upon safeties in every aspect imaginable, if the primary fails, the secondary picks up, then the tertiary safety measure if that goes wrong too. Thank god for smart engineering.

But if you really want to experience the "boom", I suggest you build the uranium tank shells and take some shots at your own factory with it. You'll get your "boom" and enjoy sabotaging yourself alone.

[Speadge]

Sorry for my 'uneducated' comments. I was just thinking that some single person on a planet might be happy with a low-tech reactor that is working at all and that a full-safe reactor is nothing he could build at all. - since all he has is just 'water to boil'.

So why dont we go straight to a fusion-reactor then?

[Fatmice]

To clarify, my thought was that when the building is operating within safety limits, it did not suffer damage. Only when temperatures were getting higher did it actually self damage. As a way to further incentivize making a good safe design and keeping it within that safe limit so the building stays in good condition.

However, if the upkeep isn't too draining by itself but further increases when temperatures aren't ideal, that would be within the same thought process. It just seemed odd that reactors self damaged just for existing as no other buildings require upkeep despite what they go through. But with the self damaging reactor, I imagine it can be quite the nuisance before robots start coming out to do the repairs for you, keeping you running back and forth too often. I know you'll balance or scale it accordingly, it was just my initial concern considering I typically use the reactor by itself from the moment the reactor research is finished to keep pollution low as possible early game. I'm likely just overthinking it.

If you worry that you must babysit the hp of the reactor entities, don't. It based on the amount of heat the reactor is generating. Thus initially, it is small and negligible so you can ignore the reactor for quite a while, as you should since you have other things to worry about. The reactor will shutdown when its health is at 10%. Currently, I'm looking at it loosing health at rate such that half of its health is gone within an hour when running at maximum heat potential.

Something like this
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/zsxqvaikqd

The number on the x-axis is in ticks. So for something running at a constant 10% of maximum heat, you're looking at 50% health after 2.46 hours and will shutdown after 8.17 hours with no repairs.

Sorry for my 'uneducated' comments. I was just thinking that some single person on a planet might be happy with a low-tech reactor that is working at all and that a full-safe reactor is nothing he could build at all. - since all he has is just 'water to boil'.

So why dont we go straight to a fusion-reactor then?

Well don't feel bad. I do understand where you are coming from. I just can't make it that way because in doing so it will open the door to unforeseen multiplayer griefing issues.

As for why not go straight to fusion reactor? There are two reasons, one historical and the other practical. The historical reason is this mod was started by Liquius. I have kept it alive and wanted to flesh it out completely before moving to fusion. The practical reason is that fusion will need a lot of energy to start up, which is provided by this mod. Thus you can't go directly there. Yes, there is a fusion reactor in the player's armor...We shall conveniently ignore how it is working.

[Light]

To clarify, my thought was that when the building is operating within safety limits, it did not suffer damage. Only when temperatures were getting higher did it actually self damage. As a way to further incentivize making a good safe design and keeping it within that safe limit so the building stays in good condition.

However, if the upkeep isn't too draining by itself but further increases when temperatures aren't ideal, that would be within the same thought process. It just seemed odd that reactors self damaged just for existing as no other buildings require upkeep despite what they go through. But with the self damaging reactor, I imagine it can be quite the nuisance before robots start coming out to do the repairs for you, keeping you running back and forth too often. I know you'll balance or scale it accordingly, it was just my initial concern considering I typically use the reactor by itself from the moment the reactor research is finished to keep pollution low as possible early game. I'm likely just overthinking it.

If you worry that you must babysit the hp of the reactor entities, don't. It based on the amount of heat the reactor is generating. Thus initially, it is small and negligible so you can ignore the reactor for quite a while, as you should since you have other things to worry about. The reactor will shutdown when its health is at 10%. Currently, I'm looking at it loosing health at rate such that half of its health is gone within an hour when running at maximum heat potential.

Something like this
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/zsxqvaikqd

The number on the x-axis is in ticks. So for something running at a constant 10% of maximum heat, you're looking at 50% health after 2.46 hours and will shutdown after 8.17 hours with no repairs.

Then it's exactly how I hoped it would function, but I sure didn't expect the decay rate to be so snail pace, even at maximum capacity.

Not that that's a complaint by any means. Robots are one of the techs I end up researching several days after creating major sections first, using around 60+ MW on average before a single robot comes out, at which point I expected to be running to the reactor every 30-40 minutes to keep it going. Seeing it take many hours is a comforting thought.

Hopefully the decay rate of fuel rods will be long lasting as well.

[Iorek]

loads of water pressure pumps then direct into steam engines...

no heat exchange means steam engines produce power from the 350 degrees Pwater

Using Solar to power my pumps, because weirdly Pumps seem to be the first thing effected by low power, so a surge can bring the entire thing down





its just a rough idea, not really optimized but you can see a 144MW reactor produces 206MW power

[shikashi18]

So I guess the question now would be how long till 0.14 or 0.15 release?

[Fatmice]

Then it's exactly how I hoped it would function, but I sure didn't expect the decay rate to be so snail pace, even at maximum capacity.

Not that that's a complaint by any means. Robots are one of the techs I end up researching several days after creating major sections first, using around 60+ MW on average before a single robot comes out, at which point I expected to be running to the reactor every 30-40 minutes to keep it going. Seeing it take many hours is a comforting thought.

Hopefully the decay rate of fuel rods will be long lasting as well.

I've been doing a lot of simulations (at least 1000x) of my decay code. After much tweaking and playing around with it, I can say that how long the fuel rods last depends on the power output setting. It appears though that the minimum time is around 45-50 real minutes. The longest has been about 48 real hours (could be longer...effectively infinite really if power = 0). There are sweet spots in power output vs fuel rods that you can find through trail and error to attenuate the decay while still producing lots of power.

I wrote code so that once the fuel starts dying, they die rather fast. It appears that the period between them dropping dead is about 1-2 minutes. Dead assemblies remain in the reactor until you trigger a fuel replacement where they will end up in the spent-pool for 5 minutes before being released to the spent-chest where you can recycle them. Dead assemblies really do you no good so try not to have too many in the reactor...In fact it probably is best to replace them before they actually die if you are operating at maximum power.

This is a graph of an example of a neutron history for 32 fuel assemblies (120 vs 320 life stages). The x-axis is in seconds. This is the result of 1000x simulations (average values) where the fuel decay code is called once a second.

Neutron History

Generally, the decay code inspects randomly 10% of the fuel rods. The code is called once per second but the loop can be executed up to 8 times, depending on the control rod factor, which is the decay_rate. The decay code can also be attenuated if the 0 <decay_rate < 1.

Each neutron value is equivalent to a power rating. You can get it from this graph. The neutron distribution X control rod factor (which is based on control rod setting) gives the neutron value.
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/aayo30pj7i

Control rod setting -> Control rod factor
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/sy6nouv3aq

Decay attenuation
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/kbwlnjmwfp

Each fuel assembly types have a neutron factor associated with each stage of its life. They have 320 stages of life. The sum of these gives the neutron distribution.
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/uvz0momtkw

I've not quite settled on what I want exposed to the players yet through virtual signals. I think though the players will have two options. The reactor is either in automatic or manual mode. Under the former, the players can only set the power rating, turn on/off the reactor, and trigger fuel replacement through circuit signal processings. Under the latter, the players can do all of the previous in addition to controlling the control rod settings. I will also expose the average age of the fuel rods through a virtual signal. This is so the players can trigger fuel replacement when they deem fit.

I'm sharing with you now an awk script (rather dirty but hopefully does the job) that I used for simulating. I used awk since it doesn't need compiling and its what I use daily in my work (I munge a lot of data). Besides, writing C code would be overkill for what was needed done. The code should work with GNU awk 3.1.8. Just chmod +x the file and run ./reactor <a> <b> <c>, where parameters a,b,c : power, # of fuel assemblies (assumed to be 4.7%), dead assemblies.

So ./reactor 2000 256 25 will simulate 2000 MWheat for 256 assemblies until 25 of them died and give you the time (in seconds) for that to happen. The variable "trials" is simply how many times to run, so 1000 means 1000 runs and it will return the average time for 1000 runs (warning: can take quite some time to run depending on parameters...it's not threaded any how. You could try mawk or awka (revive awka) if you want some speed-up...though I doubt it with mawk since you're not reading anything from a block device )

There are two more files generated by ./reactor and that is lifetime and neutron_profile. They should be self-explanatory.

reactor.txt

Remove the txt extension when on linux

(3.86 KiB) Downloaded 141 times

loads of water pressure pumps then direct into steam engines...
no heat exchange means steam engines produce power from the 350 degrees Pwater

Using Solar to power my pumps, because weirdly Pumps seem to be the first thing effected by low power, so a surge can bring the entire thing down

its just a rough idea, not really optimized but you can see a 144MW reactor produces 206MW power

Yep, it is a very large boiler. You can do such thing and there is no reason for me to stop you.

So I guess the question now would be how long till 0.14 or 0.15 release?

Well 14.18 has just been declared stable. Thus you can expect a release of 0.6.x this weekend. I will patch the outstanding reactor-chest error, add an interim decay, and give you fuel recycling. This should make people happy while I continue to work on 0.7.x

[Light]

Might get my nuclear engineering degree after reading your posts. They're quite detailed.

The charts are a nice touch since I'm a visuals kind of guy, I can visually understand what's going on and it continues to excite me. There will be a lot of trial and error to fully grasp the detail, but it should be fun to learn.
The script is also appreciated. Although, since I've been busy I haven't worked out power demand from two designs I had drawn in my spare time to use it accurately. I'll be sure to play with it later to get an idea for each 100MW milestone that goes by.

There are still some parts that are over my head, but I'll let the learning experience in game do all the teaching, as I'll play with the settings and design to see the changes in action to best understand what's going on and why.

In the meantime, since I'm playing with Angel's mods I've spent some time thinking about an effective ore creation design to keep rod production satisfied just in case I get some details wrong. I guess I'll find out this weekend.

[Iorek]

Is there any way you can make the pumps less... "Aggressive" on power consumption.
make them the last thing to fail during a mini brownout?

Currently when a power surge hits, the pumps are the first thing to drop, pumping less hot water which drops the power...so the pumps pump less.. and the system just grinds down to nothing.


Even water tanks don't really handle fluctuations because of the way water "flows" in this game, If I start building fields of accumulators... I may as well do solar!

Or would it be possible to make a pump that is powered by hot water, similar to the large heat exchangers?

Would it also be possible to extend the range on the Nuke shells from 25 to past 45 The Blast radius is so large that shooting a nuke at 25 is far too risky!

[Speadge]

Well 14.18 has just been declared stable. Thus you can expect a release of 0.6.x this weekend. I will patch the outstanding reactor-chest error, add an interim decay, and give you fuel recycling. This should make people happy while I continue to work on 0.7.x

yaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy

[Fatmice]

Is there any way you can make the pumps less... "Aggressive" on power consumption.
make them the last thing to fail during a mini brownout?

Currently when a power surge hits, the pumps are the first thing to drop, pumping less hot water which drops the power...so the pumps pump less.. and the system just grinds down to nothing.


Even water tanks don't really handle fluctuations because of the way water "flows" in this game, If I start building fields of accumulators... I may as well do solar!

Or would it be possible to make a pump that is powered by hot water, similar to the large heat exchangers?

Would it also be possible to extend the range on the Nuke shells from 25 to past 45 The Blast radius is so large that shooting a nuke at 25 is far too risky!

Well, you are supposed to guarantee that the supporting entities should have a dependable power source. The pressurizer pumps are power hungry and were not meant to be used in the manner that you've shown. But as I've said before, I wouldn't stop you since the reactor is really a glorified boiler and there is really nothing wrong with your design.

Regarding the power usage, the reason they are sensitive to power satisfaction probably has to do with their priority in the network. I can change them to primary priority instead of their default secondary. This ought to give them first dibs on power.

As for the nuke shell...with great power comes great responsibility...I see you only want power but no responsibility. Blowing yourself up with your own weapon is part of the risk for using it don't you think?

[Fatmice]

Fuel reprocessing completed. This is my test map. The central setup can reprocess about 3 mox assembly per hour (real-time). All it needs now are some nice icons, interim decay code and some bug fixes to release 0.6.6

overview

screenshot.png (10.89 MiB) Viewed 9093 times

central setup

screenshot-02.png (4.01 MiB) Viewed 9093 times