[MOD 0.16] Realistic Reactors

[RocketManChronicles]

I just tested it using only Bobs Plates and Bobs Ores (otherwise Thorium cells are deactivated), and for me it works:

Can you reproduce this with only the two mods? Maybe another Bob mod is changing the fuel categories, but only with these two it should work as the categories are the same.

It appears Bob's Revamp mod changes the categories to thorium and deuterium by turning the Mk2/Mk3 reactors into specific types. Fortunately there's a setting checkbox to disable that and the fuels work just fine, though it's still unusual it's not part of the power mods settings which is what I looked at first.

That issue is now solved.

Light,

I have started a fresh new 0.17.* playthrough with all of Bob's mods and this one (among a slew of others). But what do the 'new' nuclear fuels bring from Bob's in relation to this mod? Because as far as I understand Bob's latest updates, you use thorium/plutonium in mk2 reactors and deuterium in mk3 reactors. But how are those implemented with this mod, as we generally only use (just) the "nuclear reactor"? I would hope to understand before getting into the nuclear power technologies in my new game.

Similarly to the mod authors, what impact does this have as I kind of half-understand the discussion here in the thread so far?

Any information is greatly appreciated. Would hate to be having meltdowns all over the place trying to figure this out. LOL

[Light]

I just tested it using only Bobs Plates and Bobs Ores (otherwise Thorium cells are deactivated), and for me it works:

Can you reproduce this with only the two mods? Maybe another Bob mod is changing the fuel categories, but only with these two it should work as the categories are the same.

It appears Bob's Revamp mod changes the categories to thorium and deuterium by turning the Mk2/Mk3 reactors into specific types. Fortunately there's a setting checkbox to disable that and the fuels work just fine, though it's still unusual it's not part of the power mods settings which is what I looked at first.

That issue is now solved.

Light,

I have started a fresh new 0.17.* playthrough with all of Bob's mods and this one (among a slew of others). But what do the 'new' nuclear fuels bring from Bob's in relation to this mod? Because as far as I understand Bob's latest updates, you use thorium/plutonium in mk2 reactors and deuterium in mk3 reactors. But how are those implemented with this mod, as we generally only use (just) the "nuclear reactor"? I would hope to understand before getting into the nuclear power technologies in my new game.

Similarly to the mod authors, what impact does this have as I kind of half-understand the discussion here in the thread so far?

Any information is greatly appreciated. Would hate to be having meltdowns all over the place trying to figure this out. LOL

As Ownly's formula doesn't take deuterium or thorium-plutonium into account it simply acts like generic nuclear fuel. The thorium on the other hand will generate much more heat than nuclear fuel, but effectiveness drops off steadily the hotter it gets. This is because MadClown's and Bob's thorium are the same item name internally and since Clown's version was supported you can use Bob's just the same.

Ingo's formula disregards fuel types and simply treats them all the same with the only difference being their fuel values. This makes deuterium the superior fuel with 100GJ, then Thorium-Plutonium at 40GJ, Nuclear at 8GJ, and Bob's Thorium with its pitiful 6GJ of fuel.

With that said, you're better off making thorium-plutonium fuel with your thorium ore regardless of what formula you choose since it provides almost 7x the fuel. Alternatively, you can create a couple thorium cells per new reactor to boost startup temperatures and switch to thorium-plutonium for more effective sustainability if you're using Ownly's formula; If not, then thorium cells simply suck with their pitiful 6GJ value and shouldn't be used at all.

Eventually when you obtain deuterium you'll be laughing at how you never need another fuel source again.

[DartBoris]

Is it possible to cool 4 connected reactors with ECCS with core temp>900 and no load (no boilers) ?
Even with auto-SCRAMing at 950C they manage to melt pretty fast, what am I doing wrong?

Setup: https://i.imgur.com/j82a4zb.jpg Pretty much same results with 1 cooling tower.
Pumps water into reactor when ECCS water < 2000 , pumps out with core temp >900.
Ignos formula.

[IngoKnieto]

Is it possible to cool 4 connected reactors with ECCS with core temp>900 and no load (no boilers) ?
Even with auto-SCRAMing at 950C they manage to melt pretty fast, what am I doing wrong?

Setup: https://i.imgur.com/j82a4zb.jpg Pretty much same results with 1 cooling tower.
Pumps water into reactor when ECCS water < 2000 , pumps out with core temp >900.
Ignos formula.

No it's not possible...

Please don't ask me to do the exact math, but above a reactor power output of ~90 the eccs can't cool the reactors without the help of the heat exchangers anymore.
You need to implement a system like this, where you do the cooling with ECCS (red) and the additional cooling with the heat exchangers (yellow):

cooling.png (1.99 MiB) Viewed 7176 times

The pump activates when the combined amount of steam in the tanks is > 45.000, so the heat exchangers always run on 100%. Theoretically this system doesn't even need ECCS.

[vileee]

Hey guys,

can someone explain to me why my reactor stays at about 510°? My Base is starving for power and using more than 2 heat exchangers doesnt seem to work.. am I doing something wrong?

Heres a screenshot of my current setup https://imgur.com/a/8j6yLep

[ownlyme]

Hey guys,

can someone explain to me why my reactor stays at about 510°? My Base is starving for power and using more than 2 heat exchangers doesnt seem to work.. am I doing something wrong?

Heres a screenshot of my current setup https://imgur.com/a/8j6yLep

your heat exchangers can absorb 40 mw of heat and won't let your reactor warm up.

[vileee]

Hey guys,

can someone explain to me why my reactor stays at about 510°? My Base is starving for power and using more than 2 heat exchangers doesnt seem to work.. am I doing something wrong?

Heres a screenshot of my current setup https://imgur.com/a/8j6yLep

your heat exchangers can absorb 40 mw of heat and won't let your reactor warm up.

Thanks for the response, so is the solution to use even less heat exchangers / use more reactors to get to higher temps?

[ownlyme]

the solution is to only fuel water when the reactor is hot enough, or to use a heat switch ( https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Realistic ... -utilities )

[Light]

Hey guys,

can someone explain to me why my reactor stays at about 510°? My Base is starving for power and using more than 2 heat exchangers doesnt seem to work.. am I doing something wrong?

Heres a screenshot of my current setup https://imgur.com/a/8j6yLep

your heat exchangers can absorb 40 mw of heat and won't let your reactor warm up.

Thanks for the response, so is the solution to use even less heat exchangers / use more reactors to get to higher temps?

The output of the reactor is proportional to the heat it's generating. Right now your reactor is providing only 23MW at the current temperature, this is why your exchangers aren't being satisfied. (Yellow line)



You don't need a second reactor though. Once the system is stabilized at 500 degrees you can disconnect the heat pipe from the reactor until it reaches a higher temperature and reconnect it when the MW is much higher. (In this example I waited until 850 degrees to reconnect)



Now the reactor is providing 57MW to the system. However, since that's greater than the exchangers consumption rate the reactor will steadily climb in heat (and more MW) until your cooling pump or scram setting is set off. Ideally you want to have the exchangers and reactor as close to ratio perfect at high temperatures so you benefit the most from your fuel cells. Just note that the reactor stopping will cool it below the exchanger MW again, so be sure you can keep the beast well fed or consider a second reactor to boost the efficiency.

[vileee]

Thanks for the help I'll try that tomorrow just 40 hours in right now first time going nuclear so stuff is still a bit unclear..

Edit: just tried it, disconnecting the heatpipe heating the reactor to 900°+ and reconnecting again seems to work! I thought it would just go down to 500 again but guess I was wrong.

[Sorda]

Hi, I ask you to explain one thing.
In the original, I can connect neighboring reactors tight to each other and receive a neighborhood bonus, thereby increasing capacity. In this case, I can remove the heat pipes separately from each reactor, without mixing the heat pipes from one reactor with the heat pipes of another reactor.

In fact, this means that a set of heat exchangers and turbines from a single reactor will be powered only from the heat of the operating reactor, to which the heat pipes are connected.


In the same fashion, for now I see that in order to receive the bonus it is required to connect the reactors with heat pipes, with each other, and it seems that if I start one reactor, the heat from it will go immediately to all heat exchangers, that is, to all , which are connected to the working and non-working reactors, just because of the need to bind the reactors with heat pipes for a neighborhood bonus.

Please explain if I understand the situation, and what should I do so that one reactor works for one group of heat exchangers (and generators too), and is not sprayed over all heat exchangers.
I propose to use this in order to turn on another reactor (if there is a shortage of power) and to supply even more heat exchangers (and thus generators), then in case of another shortage, another reactor, and so on.

[aka13]

Hi, I ask you to explain one thing.
In the original, I can connect neighboring reactors tight to each other and receive a neighborhood bonus, thereby increasing capacity. In this case, I can remove the heat pipes separately from each reactor, without mixing the heat pipes from one reactor with the heat pipes of another reactor.

In fact, this means that a set of heat exchangers and turbines from a single reactor will be powered only from the heat of the operating reactor, to which the heat pipes are connected.


In the same fashion, for now I see that in order to receive the bonus it is required to connect the reactors with heat pipes, with each other, and it seems that if I start one reactor, the heat from it will go immediately to all heat exchangers, that is, to all , which are connected to the working and non-working reactors, just because of the need to bind the reactors with heat pipes for a neighborhood bonus.

Please explain if I understand the situation, and what should I do so that one reactor works for one group of heat exchangers (and generators too), and is not sprayed over all heat exchangers.
I propose to use this in order to turn on another reactor (if there is a shortage of power) and to supply even more heat exchangers (and thus generators), then in case of another shortage, another reactor, and so on.

I have wondered about this as well, and came to the conclusion that there is no way to separate "connection" type heatpipes and "producer" kind of heatpipes.

[Sorda]

There is a mod from the same author who adds “switches” of heat pipes, underground pipes and a couple of other things, however my base is not yet able to research these things (what's the point of shoving the gold research packages into the research of the SWITCH ????).

Well, I’m interested in such a moment, what are the losses of heat pipes in this mode and in vanilla.

[aka13]

There is a mod from the same author who adds “switches” of heat pipes, underground pipes and a couple of other things, however my base is not yet able to research these things (what's the point of shoving the gold research packages into the research of the SWITCH ????).

Well, I’m interested in such a moment, what are the losses of heat pipes in this mode and in vanilla.

This is counterintuitive, but there are no heat losses to heat pipes at all. With this mode they remain as in vanilla. The idea is, that heatpipes work the same as fluid pipes - heat is pretty much working the same as fluids do. It "flows" to where it is less of it, and nowhere it gets lost. It just can happen, that if a pipe is too long, that heats get wasted by the reactor itself - it can not flow as fast as the reactor produces it. Now with this mod, what it would mean is that the reactor would heat up itself, instead of passing the head further along the pipes.

[aka13]

@ownly Aren't heat pipe switches somewhat simplifying the concerns for building "overkill" reactors? My current problem I am facing is that my reactor is too big, and I am taking huge losses on heatpipe cooling down to 0 with the reactor itself cooling down to 0.

[ownlyme]

you can achieve everything with just the vanilla techniques.
i made the realistic reactors utilities primarily for the radiation suit and the decon sprayer, but that seemed pretty niche and unsufficient to release an entire mod, so i also added the underground pipes and the heat switch.
the underground pipes make heat distribution easy as cheating and the heat switch eliminates the need to control the water flow in your heat exchangers (to increase temperature)
i'm not sure what your layout is, but if you spread the reactors enough, you actually shouldn't need the underground heat pipes.

[Sorda]

I think heat pipe switches are a must-have item in fashion. In the end, firstly, the original mode, before the introduction of steam into the game, is more realistic (similar to a multi-channel reactor of high power, which was in Chernobyl), since colder (relatively!) Water passes through the active zone, and vapor- water mixture that is already going to the blades of the turbo generator. Thus, we could cut off this steam (or water) using at least a pump (which would work like a valve), but heat pipes are some kind of nonsense, from a person who, it seems, saw only reactors from Fukushima news. The transfer of "heat" through some kind of "copper tubes" is complete nonsense, all industrial reactors use heat transfer with the help of STEAM, which is formed in the ACTIVE ZONE, which is much more efficient than using copper radiators, which de facto really would experience gigantic losses (and a bunch of problems). The only “exception” are experimental reactors on molten salts or on liquid metals (such as sodium or lead), which, however, have a bunch of problems (for example, blocking channels, because of which the melt cannot pass through the tube and the reactor starts to overheat), but that’s not the point. It’s just common sense that what I described is a specific problem because of the lack of underground pipes. Since the requirement of gold packets for the sake of exploring underground pipes is unreasonable, for myself I will simply remove them from the mod and I will not puzzle over this nonsense.

[Sorda]

as cheating

The names “realistic” and “cheating” contradict each other. In reality, a set of pipe bends, even in the sanitary unit of a house, can be so tricky in terms of geometry that it’s impossible to place everything on the same plane “on the forehead” if you wish. In this particular fashion, so that there are no problems that I wrote, due to the lack of the ability to deploy reactors (and at the same time the rotation of the pipes to supply water to the cooling towers, which is absolutely unreasonable for me, the pipes can actually be located anywhere, not just " face "to the player), as a result of which it is necessary to fence the layout of reactors 2 rows of 4 reactors in each - underground pipes and switches - is simply a necessity. Without this, in fact, the reactors begin to waste the amount of uranium that would be enough for a gigawatt of energy, but at the same time one reactor will be sprayed onto all connected heat exchangers because of what I wrote.

In truth, the previous version of the mod, up to 0.16 in this regard, was more playable, there at least the reactors could be deployed in any direction.

[aka13]

you can achieve everything with just the vanilla techniques.
i made the realistic reactors utilities primarily for the radiation suit and the decon sprayer, but that seemed pretty niche and unsufficient to release an entire mod, so i also added the underground pipes and the heat switch.
the underground pipes make heat distribution easy as cheating and the heat switch eliminates the need to control the water flow in your heat exchangers (to increase temperature)
i'm not sure what your layout is, but if you spread the reactors enough, you actually shouldn't need the underground heat pipes.

I am very glad to see that you hold the same opinion as I do.

[Sorda]

i'm not sure what your layout is, but if you spread the reactors enough, you actually shouldn't need the underground heat pipes.

Thus, remaining without bonuses reactors.