Friday Facts #173 - Nuclear stuff is almost done

[Sigma1]

I also think the nuclear power is too simple without worrying about cooling and meltdowns etc.

[yura881]

stuff like cooling towers and closed water cycle were dropped

At this moment, there is no danger of the reactor meltdown

So, nuclear power not ready.

[MaexxDesign]

Do I have to start a new game to use nuclear power because of the new resource ?
And what's that yellow science ?

[Ohz]

And what's that yellow science ?

FFF 159

[testpilot24]

About nuclear reactors. How about this:

We will be using two reactor types:

1) "low-tech" reactor: cheaper, but more dangerous. able to refilled, while active. medium efficiency. (prototype: RBMK reactor type)
2) "hight-tech" reactor: need more resources to build, but safer. Can't be refilled, while active. hight efficiency. (prototype: VVER reactor type)

[Ohz]

Some parts of the planned stuff like cooling towers and closed water cycle were dropped.

I'm kinda disappointed to see the closed water loop being dropped, was very much looking forward to using that with the old boiler/steam engine setup.
Those I still find a pain in the ass to setup since the water pumps have to either be placed manually (haven't seen any coast straight enough for more than a couple lines) or require filling half a see to create a long, straight coast. Would have been nice to blueprint a closed system I could put anywhere, fill with water, done.

I hadn't even considered how much a closed or nearly-closed loop system would simplify the construction of steam power layouts. That's a huge reason to include cooling towers.

With water reuse, steam power in the desert fed by water in rail tankers would go from a joke to something far more reasonable.

This would be especially desirable if it unlocked before nuclear power, as a way to make coal power more efficient and begin learning about proper thermal management.

All it would take is adding two simple entities: The turbine, and the cooling tower. Would mods be able to add those efficiently?

Something to consider from a marketing perspective: Think about how much better it would look to have an iconic cooling tower in the trailer while showing off the nuclear power!

This sounds awesome. Water would become a rare ressource if you set a map as tiny and super rare puddle in the gigantic new red desert biome... Only few pumps here and there, and another train set up that care with liquids added into your train netword, and make the tank wagon even more usefull. I love it !

[Sogrog]

At risk of Flame - I think the complexity of Nuclear Power is perfect for Vanilla[/b

I agree, closed water cycle would be nice, but for vanilla it's OK.

One possible improvement: second tier of reactor "experimental reactor" with some unusual properties
1) alternative fuel - something like U235 + alien artifact/science pack
2) randomized heat output - from heat of normal reactor to ten times of normal reactor
3) no automatic shutdown when heat output is full - it eats fuel all the time
4) all unused heat is converted to pollution - a permanent dirty bomb

It's possible to use it as better version of regular reactor. You have to deal with randomness, but you are rewarded by much higher power generation (over time). Or you can just place it, add some fuel and you have a perfect bitter bait.

[Avezo]

no no no no no NO! Don't you really see how this entire 'heat transfer' idea is bad in this? I don't really know how to put it, so it will be kinda random reasoning but I hope you gonna scrap entire 'heat transfer' idea as it is and just make a searate nuclear boiler that explodes without cooling instead. Actually I really don't know how to explain this - pipies transering some kind of 'heat' introduced at the same time when you introduce separation of water and actual steam for normal boilers? That steam is literally 'heat' in that case, why not just use it...?

I'm all for making more complex power generation, cooling towers, exploions of too high steam pressure and whatnot, but what you are proposing for nuclear power atm is something a mod without knowledge of how nuclear plants (or any conventoinal power plant) work would do...

If you want the idea of 'heat transfer' to remain, make it relevat from the very begining, no more simple boilers making water > steam, you might notice how overly complicated it becomes. Such things belong for mods, not vanilla.

[IronCartographer]

no no no no no NO! Don't you really see how this entire 'heat transfer' idea is bad in this? I don't really know how to put it, so it will be kinda random reasoning but I hope you gonna scrap entire 'heat transfer' idea as it is and just make a searate nuclear boiler that explodes without cooling instead. Actually I really don't know how to explain this - pipies transering some kind of 'heat' introduced at the same time when you introduce separation of water and actual steam for normal boilers? That steam is literally 'heat' in that case, why not just use it...?

I'm all for making more complex power generation, cooling towers, exploions of too high steam pressure and whatnot, but what you are proposing for nuclear power atm is something a mod without knowledge of how nuclear plants (or any conventoinal power plant) work would do...

If you want the idea of 'heat transfer' to remain, make it relevat from the very begining, no more simple boilers making water > steam, you might notice how overly complicated it becomes. Such things belong for mods, not vanilla.

Heat pipes won't be that complicated. Though heat pipes will no doubt take on magical levels of performance and be extremely simplified in Factorio--for gameplay reasons--this is not a problem.

Think of it like this: A heat pipe equalizes the temperatures at all points it touches, conducting heat from any source to any sink with extreme efficiency. It's basically an electric wire, but for heat.

[Ranakastrasz]

I can't think of an real life equivalent of Heat Pipes, but I will accept them given that I can't think of another way to allow for increased water to boil from the higher yield reactors.


Still would prefer the cooling towers and water cycle option, even if people don't HAVE to use them.

[JoneKone]

what do the steam engines do in this setup? Turn secondary "cold" water in to motion?

What is needed in my oppinion,

- High pressure pipe system, for high pressure steam
- thing to dissipate heat, read make steam water again. for the closed loop water, as obviously we can't make irradiated steam clouds that will make everything super poisonous.
- Turbine spinners. not just piston.
-

[Linosaurus]

Heat pipes are a real thing. Admittedly that's for cooling a CPU, it's ludicrous to hook it up to a power plant. But it works for me to think of it like a magic upscaled Sci fi version.

what do the steam engines do in this setup? Turn secondary "cold" water in to motion?

The reactor does not make electricity, it only heats the heat pipes. The boilers do not make electricity, it only turns cold water into hot steam. The steam engine makes electricity. Well in this case it is a 'steam turbine' that doesn't have graphics yet.

[steven4601]

Thank you for making such a great game!

I have not played games like at least 10 years. (getting old...) Factorio instantly got me hooked.

Regarding game expansion: My idea regarding adding fission is: THORIUM
Make Uranium scarce and thorium more expensive to research/excessive long build time, but let it provide 100x factor energy dependence/availability of Uranium.


Love to see the Fission upgrades soon!

[Exasperation]

Heat pipes are a real thing. Admittedly that's for cooling a CPU, it's ludicrous to hook it up to a power plant. But it works for me to think of it like a magic upscaled Sci fi version.

This is untrue; heat pipes are a real thing in utility scale power generation. For an example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Ene ... ng_Systems. Specifically (from the linked article),

Heat transfer
The sunlight bounces off the mirrors and is directed to a central tube filled with synthetic oil, which heats to over 400 °C (750 °F). The reflected light focused at the central tube is 71 to 80 times more intense than the ordinary sunlight. The synthetic oil transfers its heat to water, which boils and drives the Rankine cycle steam turbine, thereby generating electricity. Synthetic oil is used to carry the heat (instead of water) to keep the pressure within manageable parameters.

If the reactor is something like one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor, then it makes perfect sense that there would be heat transfer pipes carrying heat between the reactor and the water to be converted to steam for power generation. Also (from the linked article):

Advantages

MSR offers many potential advantages over current light water reactors:

Inherently safe design (safety by passive components and the strong negative temperature coefficient of reactivity of some designs). In some designs, the fuel and the coolant are the same fluid, so a loss of coolant removes the reactor's fuel. Unlike steam, fluoride salts dissolve poorly in water, and do not form burnable hydrogen. Unlike steel and solid uranium oxide, molten salts are not damaged by the core's neutron bombardment.
A low-pressure MSR lacks a LWR's high-pressure radioactive steam and therefore do not experience leaks of radioactive steam and cooling water, and the expensive containment, steel core vessel, piping and safety equipment needed to contain radioactive steam.

So this sort of reactor wouldn't be prone to meltdowns, hydrogen explosions, or steam explosions. (Not that they're perfect, just hard to get to explode. )

[Deadly-Bagel]

Has nobody else noticed that you need almost 3 million ore to get a return on this mining productivity research? Per level? You won't see a return on level 10 mining productivity until you mine 30 million ore after completing the research. And that's not even considering the 5,100 Petroleum per level either, and assuming the research applies multiplicatively with itself rather than additively to the base, which I'm not convinced is what the FFF was saying.

The bonus is applied additively, after 10 researches you will have +20% productivity on all mining machines, including pumpjacks, after 50, thats +100%

Then that's even worse.

At level 51 the effect of the research is halved, you are only getting the bonus on the original value which is only half of what you are mining. On the other hand, the cost has gone up by 50x. The cost of the research is therefore 56,650 x 50 = 2,832,500 ore, so to start making a return on a 1% bonus you would need to mine 100 times that, almost 300 million ore. In no realistic sense is that worth it.

Unless I'm missing something and you've made the research cheaper than stated in the Research Revolution FFF? Otherwise only the first 1-2 levels of this research are going to see an actual increase of ore in 99% of games.

We're getting double whammied here, the cost goes up while the bonus goes down, and it's not a great return to start with.

[IronCartographer]

This discussion inspired some thoughts, to put it mildly.

For starters, let's take a look at a 100 steam engine setup in 0.14:


It's big, uses up to 600 water per second, and connecting the water input is extremely tedious. Any steam power setup is tied to a coastline, requiring either fiddly pump placement or mangling the coastline with landfill--shown in this FFF, no less! Nuclear power on its own won't solve this problem, and it's a major reason why people switch to solar. Opportunity for creativity is nice, but so is the ability to blueprint and reuse your creativity painlessly.

Here's a first attempt at designing a suitable steam cooling tower / condenser / preheated water setup using entities from GotLag's Reactors, but with different intended behavior:


Each boiler column is supplied with water from a tank filled mostly by recirculated water from the cooling towers. The steam turbines equal 10 steam engines, but return 100% of the steam, somewhat cooled. The cooling towers return 90+% of the input water after processing the steam, meaning that the entire equivalent setup can be supplied by 1 offshore pump. As an added bonus, we might assume in this example that the returned water retains 30% of its initial energy, giving a 27% reduction in the boiler output requirement. Nice.

Unfortunately, giving this recirculated water priority over the input from the offshore pump requires circuit logic--a significant hurdle for such early tech and beginning players, to be avoided if possible.

So, to simplify steam power's water recirculation problem...change the condensers so they take the replacement water as an input:


In this model, the cooling towers accept primarily steam to be cooled, but also support input of cold water to supplement their output of pre-heated water for the boilers. It's compact, liberates steam power from the annoying coastal surface area problem, and generally makes everything more efficient and fun.

Give it a single red+green tech research like Steam Recirculation/Recycling/Turbines/___, make its prerequisites Engines, Concrete, and Fluid Handling (engines for the turbines, concrete and storage tanks for the towers), and call it a day! This was originally going to be the conclusion, of both these ideas and my efforts to support their inclusion and revolution of steam power as a whole.

[henke37]

I don't understand where everyone is pulling these research numbers from. The research revamp will happen at the same time and prevent using the current research recipes.

[stretch611]

Personally, I agree with the decision to not have meltdowns. As mentioned earlier, modern reactors are not prone to the problems of older ones; they have been redesigned so that in a catastrophic event such as an internal power failure that the passive cooling systems take over and force a cooldown before a meltdown can happen.

From an in game perspective, meltdowns will not matter anyway. If meltdowns did have a chance of happening, a nuclear plant would just be placed out of the way in an outpost on the map. Assuming it is late game only, more than likely, the first outpost you have that runs dry on its resources would be a good spot.

With a nuke plant out of the way in an outpost, if it fails and has a meltdown, the only thing that will be destroyed is the nuke plant itself... Which will be promptly be rebuilt by a player, because late game, most things are already automated, and resources are rolling in. Chances are, mid to late game a player will already be using a blueprint to stamp out nuke plants, so rebuilding will be trivial.

Also, I do like the idea about upgrading ammunition with spent uranium. It happens in he real world to create ammo that can pierce even a tank's armor. I would like to see it here too. OFC, if ammo gets upgraded with that, I would expect a little more evolution on the bug side of things as well.

[IronCartographer]

Something was still bothering me about the potential confusion that steam turbines would cause. Suddenly, unlike with steam engines, the input was changed when it became output. It was both inflexible and counter-intuitive. How can we make this even simpler and more elegant?

Combine steam turbines and cooling towers into one entity with two inputs and two outputs--water and steam as both input and output:


Just like the steam engine, the hybrid turbine/tower entity would use steam to generate electricity. Just like the steam engine, it would continue to allow chaining as many of them together as you wanted, within the limitations of the overall design and fluid mechanics. Unlike the steam engine, it would manage two flows, and convert from one to the other as energy passed through and steam was released and/or returned to being water.

So: One entity, four pipe connections, infinite possibilities. What do you think? --> Discussion thread

[Malachite]

I was disappointed to hear about the loss of closed steam cycles, as i see this as the end of my dream of regenerative feed heating. Hopefully the devs can come up with some way of making the steam cycle just that much more complex. Seeing the difference between the steam engines and the steam turbines as a positive step, I can only hope of even more to come. Something like IC's combined turbines and cooling towers would be neat, something that spits out various results would be awesome.