UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

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nuhll
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UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by nuhll »

Hey, so i googled ofc for it, but couldnt find something that:
- is build for the latest version
- is robot based
- doesnt waste
- UPS friedly

What are you guys using? Would be cool if its suited for bobs, but i also would take vanilla...

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by Tekillaa »

There is no ups friendly nuclear reactor.. You have to go full solar if you lookin for ups efficiency.
It should be add in the game: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=67650 :)

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by zOldBulldog »

Or better yet, full solar with an Advanced Solar mod so that you don't need to cover half the map with panels (most save space - not resources - so the difference ends up being just one more production line and placing one high end panel/accumulator instead of 1000).

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by Tekillaa »

hey

When we begin the game, lot of things suggest nuclear reactor is a good solution for late game (technology and research to use it), but the fluid mechanic around the reactor (heat, water then steam) make things hard for the computer in the very late game. If we want to keep a 60 fps game, we got to recover 10 time the size of our Factory with solar panel ,for the computer, solar panel and accumulator are very easy to process ( x time the same entity compare to nuclear where each part got to have is own processing for the next "tick-state")

Nuclear Is good to reach the first Gw, I use nuclear to mostly power furnaces and assemblies to massively produce solar panel and accumulator (module etc..), to resume, nuclear is just good as a transition, so i cant consider it as the last tier...

I tried to fuel one of my mega base with 250 reactor producing 42 GW, but compare to the same factory with solar panel, there is no match, nuclear is out.

If you want the saves with 200+ reactor :
https://www.mediafire.com/file/vdend1g3 ... ect+8k.zip

If you want to make the test what happen if you put solar panel instead of nuclear, you can take the creative mod, delete all nuclear to replace by a fictive electric provider. It provide electricity with low updates like solar panel do (because x time the same 2 entities is easier to process compare to refresh the state of each part of the nuclear reactor..)

I build another base completely solar powered, and it requires more logistic, more space on the map so a bigger save..

I wish the classic vanilla game add a true solution to make an ups efficient electric central in late game without recover the map with 2 million solar panel and 1,6 accumulator:
Idea 1 : research for solar panel and accumulator efficiency
idea 2 : next tier of solar panel
idea 3 : new electric provider like fusion or something i dont care as long its UPS efficient :)
It should be add in the game: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=67650 :)

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by nuhll »

UPS friendly i mean like no or limited storage, i think i read somewhere that this helps.

It dont need to be that big.

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by eradicator »

Step 1: Forget about "waste". Even a tiny 10M uranium deposit lasts several hundred hours for a 1~2GW reactor. And if you're not running at full capacity you should build a smaller reactor if you're worried about UPS.
Step 2: Use a compact reactor
Step 3: Optimize something more interesting.

Fuel processing is also cheap. You need only 6 machines for a constant 2.4GW.
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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by Tekillaa »

nuhll wrote:
Sat Jun 15, 2019 10:50 am
UPS friendly i mean like no or limited storage, i think i read somewhere that this helps.

It dont need to be that big.
If you dont think using more than few Gw, so i can share you what i use as transition to give you ideas ( but i keep saying after few Gw, better to look into solar for the "ups friendly"):
Nuclear setup.jpg
Nuclear setup.jpg (889.65 KiB) Viewed 8848 times
the 8 reactor design is not totally from me, i just remove most of circuitry to a more "straight forward" design, i set activation on feeding reactor if the steam go under a level, that way i use nuclear as back up and no fuel is used when i dont use nuclear power (you can see the accumulator i use to put online or not reactors depending on how my solar/accumulator fields is).

If you want to put back circuitry, you got to know that a reactor consume a uranium cell fuel in 200 sec (200x60 tick), so to be more precise, you just got to check every 200 sec the steam level to allow or not just the feeding of 1 fuel cell. But like the previous post say, even with no control on reactor input, the only risk is to have the reactor at 999°c so it just got to be safe from destruction avoid the nuclear explosion and generally uranium is easy to find and slow to consume.



If you planning to use it, feed the good side of the belt like the picture for the reactors or make adaptation for your need/setup

Kovarex where you can adjust the number of chest you want (i use uranium to make ammo thats why i got 4 kovarex and i put chests but you can remove for U235, and let 1 or 2 for U-238 (enough stock to start a kovarex), it use just belt, no circuitry too.

viewtopic.php?f=202&t=68156

There is also a 4 reactor design with the same steam tank system in the save very near from the kovarex.

Good luck for your factory and have fun.
It should be add in the game: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=67650 :)

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by eradicator »

Thats the most inefficient steam tank design i've ever seen. The pumps aren't even connected to the tanks, and it has circular connections everywhere...

...oh, and the heat exchangers don't even use both sides of the heatpipes...
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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by Tekillaa »

eradicator wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 7:16 am
Thats the most inefficient steam tank design i've ever seen. The pumps aren't even connected to the tanks, and it has circular connections everywhere...

...oh, and the heat exchangers don't even use both sides of the heatpipes...
For the circular connection i can agree it's not good at all, but for what you say after, to be honnest, i got my 1,1 gw (even all time)from 8 reactor as intended when i need to, and it doesn't consume fuel when i dont use power so i dont care for pump connection etc, its perfectionnism where you dont need to because i got 100% of the power from the 8 reactor.

If you want to make the upgrade to show me how you do it with the same feature(no need for power = dont consume fuel, no bot, no calculator/comparator, steam tank and not large for easy positionning near from water), i will be happy to learn :)
It should be add in the game: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=67650 :)

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by eradicator »

Tekillaa wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 11:01 am
ts perfectionnism where you dont need to because i got 100% of the power from the 8 reactor.
You obviously don't understand what "UPS friendly" means.
Tekillaa wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 11:01 am
If you want to make the upgrade
I don't. "How i do it" is already linked in my post above.
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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by Tekillaa »

eradicator wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 2:12 pm

You obviously don't understand what "UPS friendly" means.

I don't. "How i do it" is already linked in my post above.
What i see is a post with just few fuel burner ,with no mention about updates, with no feature i was askin for, if you don't know how to do or you're to lazy to do it, just admit it.

And yeah about ups friendly, i maybe dont know what it means with fluid and heat mechanic but i think a guy like you have obviously nothing to teach considering this kind of answer.
It should be add in the game: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=67650 :)

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by PunPun »

Tekillaa wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 3:16 pm
And yeah about ups friendly, i maybe dont know what it means with fluid and heat mechanic but i think a guy like you have obviously nothing to teach considering this kind of answer.
From what I can see he almost nailed it. This thread is specifically about ups friendly reactors and by admitting that you don't know what it means you are admitting that your "solution" has no value.

Basically the most ups friendly reactor is the one that has the lowest amount of heatpipes and fluidpipes with the least amount of intersections possible in them. So your massive array of steamtanks is prettymuch the worst way to go.


The best thing to do is to build over water with landfill so all of your water source pumps are directly connected to a row of heatexchangers and the rows of turbines are directly connected to heatexchangers so you can have zero pipes. Also avoid double width heatpipes lika a plague.

Also there is no point in optimizing fuel consumption as nuclear fuel is trivial to make. But if you really do want to optimize fuel consumption you can add a single steamtank at the end of each row of turbines that is only connected to the turbine at the end. Then wire from those to the inserters supplying fuel and set it to insert only if there is less than 1% steam in the tanks.

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by Tekillaa »

PunPun wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 6:10 pm
Tekillaa wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 3:16 pm
And yeah about ups friendly, i maybe dont know what it means with fluid and heat mechanic but i think a guy like you have obviously nothing to teach considering this kind of answer.
From what I can see he almost nailed it. This thread is specifically about ups friendly reactors and by admitting that you don't know what it means you are admitting that your "solution" has no value.

Basically the most ups friendly reactor is the one that has the lowest amount of heatpipes and fluidpipes with the least amount of intersections possible in them. So your massive array of steamtanks is prettymuch the worst way to go.


The best thing to do is to build over water with landfill so all of your water source pumps are directly connected to a row of heatexchangers and the rows of turbines are directly connected to heatexchangers so you can have zero pipes. Also avoid double width heatpipes lika a plague.

Also there is no point in optimizing fuel consumption as nuclear fuel is trivial to make. But if you really do want to optimize fuel consumption you can add a single steamtank at the end of each row of turbines that is only connected to the turbine at the end. Then wire from those to the inserters supplying fuel and set it to insert only if there is less than 1% steam in the tanks.
thanks for a real answer that teaches me something :) I know that my BP is far to be good (if you read my post " i can share you what i use as transition to give you ideas"), but this is the point of the thread trying to find what is good and why?? I have never said that my suggestion is the best, i wasn't even encouraging him to use it, it was about giving ideas and having contructive discussion about it, with advice like you just did.

I mean Captain Obvious with "hey you know nothing": why am i here? I try to share the little i know about updates to a guy askin for in a thread were i was expecting people to be precise, with a lot of informations, it's an open discussion with argumentation, exemple, proof, hypothesis,limitations about a very interesting optimisation in the game, and the guy who seems to know the more prefer to say to people that they know nothing instead of sharing his knowledge the best he can : it's pointless, especially when the last sentence is "i will be happy to learn".

"He almost nailed it.." Easy to not have ups issue with design less than 4/5gw : Where is the answer about the 42 GW ups efficient (exemple of some tillable 2n reactor with ups efficiency?)? If it's not possible, what is the limit? If there a limit how to make the transition (thats why i use some steam tank, put my reactors online is very rare, i just keep it as safety if accu goes very low.)? So many questions i dont know the answer, but because i play, choices were made, and not the best, so i'm lookin for other solutions from 500Mw to 50Gw.
It should be add in the game: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=67650 :)

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by PunPun »

Tekillaa wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 7:36 pm
"He almost nailed it.." Easy to not have ups issue with design less than 4/5gw : Where is the answer about the 42 GW ups efficient (exemple of some tillable 2n reactor with ups efficiency?)? If it's not possible, what is the limit? If there a limit how to make the transition (thats why i use some steam tank, put my reactors online is very rare, i just keep it as safety if accu goes very low.)? So many questions i dont know the answer, but because i play, choices were made, and not the best, so i'm lookin for other solutions from 500Mw to 50Gw.
Ok so first of all we are optimizing for watts per ups with nuclear power only. No transitions no solar panels as those are not what was asked. The question was for a nuclear reactor desing with the best watts*ups. So suggesting a reactor to use until you transition to solar is completely useless.
Second you can use multiple reactors. If the reactor has the best watt*ups it does not matter what the output of the reactor is as you can just use multiple of them.

But since you asked for a tileable setup I sketched one for you.
Blueprint(1).png
Blueprint(1).png (1016.94 KiB) Viewed 8739 times
If you look closely it is single line. This does make it less fuel efficient but that is the price to pay for ups efficiency. The main design goals here were the least amount of fluid/heatpipes per watt.

A double width setup would be hard as you would need significantly longer heatpipes and they have a limit on how long they can be until the heat no longer gets to the end. Or you would need to put heatexchangers inplace of the turbines and pipe the steam away. Both of those would make the performance worse.

For the op. This is easy to convert to be bot based and is indeed for the latest version. To make it not waste fuel is a bit harder but optimizing for that makes it less ups friendly and it is extremely easy to produce so much nuclear fuel that it will outlast your save anyway.

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by eradicator »

@Tekilla:
You came into a thread about UPS efficient NPP designs without even understanding what that means. Posted something that isn't even close to efficient. When told that the design is inefficient you go all "i don't care" and "it works for me". Then you start insulting me because i didn't bother to design a reactor according to your personal off-topic demands. Wtf?

Ye know, i've met some crazy people, but that level of self-rightous egocentrism is pretty rare. I recommend you go and ask your parents to teach you some manners before it's too late. Then make your own thread and ask polietely what you want to know, or maybe even use the search function to find all the answers that have already been given (unless you're "too lazy" to do that).

@PunPun:
Looks nice. But doesn't work for me. The outer exchangers don't get any heat. Also "can only be placed on large lakes" is a pretty harsh restriction. I think "tilability" is somewhat overrated. The fuel-efficency gain is marginal even for double rows, and it severely restricts possible water supply locations, heat distribution, etc.

And as you already said, fuel production isn't free either. So loosing the neighbourhood bonus means roughly twice as many fuel processing assemblers. Considering that i couldn't come up with anything better than my 2x8 design i linked in my first post.

I get 565MW instead of the expected 640MW (modified for one-sided water supply):
new.png
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If fuel efficiency is thrown out of the window we can also use tiny distributed-grid style modules:
new2.png
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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by Ultros »

eradicator wrote:
Sun Jun 09, 2019 1:54 pm
Perfect ratios aren't that bad if you stop caring about hitting them all at the same time. Here's my 1.1GW plant that supposedly wastes 31 turbines (had to look up the numbers ;p), but has "perfect" heat exchangers. The real limit here is pipe throughput. If you use one-sided input you need maximum input pressure. I use a specially design "cooling water pond" because it looks cool :D.
I just checked my ~2.2GW waterfill reactor design and it's basically the same central design structure as yours (15/13 columns of exchangers with two turbines each, with a 2x4 core in the middle). The main difference between our designs is that I've combined two subunits which are sharing the same "cooling pond". The pond can be made either with waterfill (modded) or landfilled on top of a lake (full vanilla).

I have this design running in a mostly unoptimized 2k SPM base generating 30GW (14x tiles) with the entire base running at 50 or so UPS with biters enabled.

Image


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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

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eradicator wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:29 pm
Looks nice. But doesn't work for me. The outer exchangers don't get any heat. Also "can only be placed on large lakes" is a pretty harsh restriction.
The outer exchangers don't get any heat because it is a tileable setup. If you put an infinitely long line of it then all the exchangers will be used. The longer the line is the lower percent of heatexhangers will be wasted. You can remove 4 heatexchangers and their turbines from each end of the line and it should make the heatexchanger count perfect.

Also yeah if you want a 1xn or 2xn tileable ups friendly reactor you are in for a bad time as you would need a long stretch of water.

You propably actually want to just have multiple smaller reactors. Something like this.
Blueprint(2).png
Blueprint(2).png (4.09 MiB) Viewed 8692 times
One of these should give you 1.12GW a piece. So you can run ~2k beacons with each.
It's not pretty but it should be pretty good for ups. It does have more turbines than are needed but the piping required to get rid of them will make it less ups efficient. If you really need to supply water with pipes then keep it as short as possible and use underground pipes where possible. And avoid loops as much as possible.

If you build your reactors with the minimum amount of heatpipes/fluidpipes then you can easily keep the ups cost of them as a small fraction of your base.

The community here seems to have a bad habit of spending copious amount of time optimizing small things that yield insignificant benefits. Sometimes the suggested solutions are actually worse than what is in place now. This is espacielly true to most of the "xyz needs multithreading" threads.

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by disentius »

@Eradicator: very nice designs.
I took some elements of your layout and applied 14/24 heat exchanger/turbine fetish
Just a wee bit of pipe, and I am a happy camper reactorwise :mrgreen:
Less UPS friendly than yours, i suppose: not sure how to measure that. Anyone?
[EDIT}
Pipesegment missing left top. .. Ill repair that tomorrow.
big picture

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by nuhll »

chill guys, were all here to have fun. :?

Thanks for your designs, more then i had hoped for. Im not quite sure which one to use, but i will use one of them in my lets play series, thanks!

Ofc youre right with fuel consumption, and since im on modded, its even more easy... :) :roll:

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Re: UPS friendly, nuclear reactor design?

Post by eradicator »

@Ultros: Hah. Great mind think alike :p
I don't play with waterfill, so lake-compatibility is a prime factor for my designs. And there was only a small one available when i built that particular NPP. I do actually run two blocks of it too. Here's a (severely compressed...) picture of it. (Notes: Is "off the grid" and produces it's own fuel. Produces twice as much fuel as needed because i didn't trust my own math :p)
npp_pripyat50%.png
npp_pripyat50%.png (2.07 MiB) Viewed 8660 times
@PunPun:
I tried running a single strain off a totally overpowered 3x5 reactor block for an hour or so, and heat only ever goes 15 blocks, not 18 like in your design. As this matches my previous measurements i'm still sceptical. If i split the heatpipe i get almost 21 blocks. Do you have mods? Do you actually use that particular design on a real map?
15blocks_.png
15blocks_.png (686.32 KiB) Viewed 8660 times
20.5blocks_.png
20.5blocks_.png (850.57 KiB) Viewed 8660 times
The "Star" is indeed "not pretty". And requires a - for my map settings - ridiculously large lake. Otherwise it's exactly the same as all the other reactors in this thread though. (Plus minus a handful of heatpipes).

Well, factorio is an optimization game. I think some people just enjoy "doing the math" and some enjoy having "perfect ratios" and don't care that much about UPS.

@disentius:
Hm...but now you have pipes again. I did some experiements like that but nothing i particularly liked came off it. Hope you enjoy yours! Actuall comparable UPS measurements are difficult. First you need to decided on a PC to test on, then you need to make sure that PC always runs at the same speed (no dynamic CPU clock, background tasks etc). Then you need to decide on a measurement standard (i.e. "produces X GW"). Then you build a map with only that blueprint, and measure how long it takes to runs X ticks (i.e. 500000 ticks). And then you still don't have a measurement of how much impact that is on a real factory. I remeber there was once a "best UPS furnace array contest" thing, but i can't find it (might've been on reddit). And when "the big fluid optimization" finally is released then all these speculations about pipe cost etc will have to be reevaluated.

@Nuhll:
In principal all of the reactors here are the same. They ignore "perfect ratio" to get rid of almost all fluid pipes, which is paid for with slightly too many turbines.

Here's another "tiny NPP" (300MW) that can run off a pond (but has low fuel efficency):
300MW_.png
300MW_.png (687.63 KiB) Viewed 8660 times

And finally for comparison i tried a "perfect ratio" NPP, which wastes tons of ...everything!
perfectratio_.png
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