Perfect Nuclear Cloverleaf v5 - Space Age, Modular 1-4 cores book: 40-480MW, All the bells and whistles

[Monoxide]

Thanks, I was hoping this would get updated

[mmmPI]

Why not just read the temperature and fuel from the reactors and insert new fuel when the temperature is low and there are no fuel ?

Given the size of the power plant, it seem to me that the heat pipes and heat exchanger can handle the extra energy to store if power consumption would drop just after a refueling, which seem enough to guarantee losslessness.

It seem to me that space age made designing nuclear power plant much easier and that it isn't represented in your design.

[gGeorg]

Why not just read the temperature and fuel from the reactors and insert new fuel when the temperature is low and there are no fuel ?

1. Temperature value behave very analogue. Slow and bit of unpredictable. Proper simulation, not blaming devs.
2. Zero cold interval feed is perfect design. Have you read the proper section ?

Given the size of the power plant, it seem to me that the heat pipes and heat exchanger can handle the extra energy to store if power consumption would drop just after a refueling, which seem enough to guarantee losslessness.

I can read your feeling.But would you make a favour, Look at Excell sheet find a problem, then post it. OR make another sheet which would be better. I am looking forward !

It seem to me that space age made designing nuclear power plant much easier

Yes

and that it isn't represented in your design.

What do you suggest ?

[gGeorg]

Thanks, I was hoping this would get updated

I feel flattered that you created account to make your first post, to tell me.

[mmmPI]

Why not just read the temperature and fuel from the reactors and insert new fuel when the temperature is low and there are no fuel ?

1. Temperature value behave very analogue. Slow and bit of unpredictable. Proper simulation, not blaming devs.
2. Zero cold interval feed is perfect design. Have you read the proper section ?

Given the size of the power plant, it seem to me that the heat pipes and heat exchanger can handle the extra energy to store if power consumption would drop just after a refueling, which seem enough to guarantee losslessness.

I can read your feeling.But would you make a favour, Look at Excell sheet find a problem, then post it. OR make another sheet which would be better. I am looking forward !

It seem to me that space age made designing nuclear power plant much easier

Yes

and that it isn't represented in your design.

What do you suggest ?

To me it feel like the "complicated" zero cold interval is easily achieved by refueling the reactor at says "530°C" AND "no fuel cell", considering here 30°C is the differential between "the coldest entity" / the further from the reactor and the reactor themselves.

Made so that one refuel at 530°C, meaning that the "coldest heat exchanger" is around 501°C to make sure it works all the time during heavy consumption.

The whole logic i've been using is just a wire from the reactor to a decider combinator that check 2 conditions, if fuel present and if temperature is low. I don't even use steam tank anymore considering the energy can be buffered by the entity that can hold it under the form of heat.

[gGeorg]

The whole logic i've been using is just a wire from the reactor to a decider combinator that check 2 conditions, if fuel present and if temperature is low. I don't even use steam tank anymore

I tested this on a ship, but I made some mistake and it eat all my fuell cels, the story ended with catastrophe. So I decided, such feeding doesnt work. I made another try today and you are somewhat correct. For nuclear on ship, one decider with no steam tank is the way. However, for cloveleaf, I would like to keep option for lock 1 to 4 fuell cells ready (or not), also I need to rethink steam reserve role. I use for export to Outpost. (a minimalistic power plant consisting of turbines and a steam tank)


I will make another version with simplified feeding, one time clock is no longer needed for zero cold interval, other condition for feeding need to rethink. I will make updateed version on the weekend ,probably.

[gGeorg]

To me it feel like the "complicated" zero cold interval is easily achieved by refueling the reactor at says "530°C" AND "no fuel cell", considering here 30°C is the differential between "the coldest entity" / the further from the reactor and the reactor themselves.

Made so that one refuel at 530°C, meaning that the "coldest heat exchanger" is around 501°C to make sure it works all the time during heavy consumption.

You cheeky badger, you almost tricked me. I have spend two hours trying for nothing.
After all the years I have forgotten where is the TRUE magic of zero cold interval.
Do you see result of simple controls based on temperature :

charts

02-09-2025, 05-08-08.png (79.79 KiB) Viewed 417 times

and this :

02-09-2025, 04-57-20.png (76.75 KiB) Viewed 418 times

Then compare with TRUE zero cold interval :

02-09-2025, 05-02-45.png (65.77 KiB) Viewed 418 times

One time clock will stay as it is for Perfect Cloverleaf, until you show me some magic where simple feeding based on temp, can achieve perfect straight line output.

Althout I admit that for a space ship where every tile is precious, could one decider feeding be used.

[mmmPI]

I am under the impression that a mistake was made in the setup that lead to the creation of the screenshot, a save game or a blueprint or some more context would help explaining how you made a setup that doesn't work from which you took the screenshot.

The "true magic of the zero cold interval" was problematic before because you needed to insert the new fuel cell after exactly the precise number of ticks it take for it to burn, and if you rely on logic to read when the fuel is burnt you create a delay with inserter swing.

But nowadays it seem to me that since you can read the temperature you can guarantee it stays above a certain limit say 550°C or 600°C or 700°C to make sure it is running 100% of the time. If you insert a fuel cell as soon as the reactor is under 700°C, those reactors will never stop burning fuel and thus with enough heat exchanger and turbines , it will produce 480MW.

[gGeorg]

I am under the impression that a mistake was made in the setup that lead to the creation of the screenshot,

If you insert a fuel cell as soon as the reactor is under 700°C, those reactors will never stop burning fuel and thus with enough heat exchanger and turbines , it will produce 480MW.

I used inserting at 540C.
How do you achieve lossless when you inserting while temp is 700C and all steam tanks are full ?

I would say this - Place Cloverleaf in /editor mode. Change feeding as you believe it work. Then try, if it is still lossless. I am sure it is not. You would need a tons of heatpipes to store energy. Comparing two combinators for one_time_clock - it is bargain.

[mmmPI]

I am under the impression that a mistake was made in the setup that lead to the creation of the screenshot,

If you insert a fuel cell as soon as the reactor is under 700°C, those reactors will never stop burning fuel and thus with enough heat exchanger and turbines , it will produce 480MW.

I used inserting at 540C.
How do you achieve lossless when you inserting while temp is 700C and all steam tanks are full ?

I would say this - Place Cloverleaf in /editor mode. Change feeding as you believe it work. Then try, if it is still lossless. I am sure it is not. You would need a tons of heatpipes to store energy. Comparing two combinators for one_time_clock - it is bargain.

No matter how i try i cannot get 4 reactor to produce 483 MW like on your screenshot, not for a long time. I would have been curious to see how you achieved it. I can get 480 MW though. My guess is that 540°C is not the proper temperature and some heat exchanger were idle for a bit in your setup.

Edit: I gave various number to illustrate you can try less than 700 if you want, i do not use steam tank at all most of the time, the energy is buffered under the form of heat

[gGeorg]

Edit: I gave various number to illustrate you can try less than 700 if you want, i do not use steam tank at all most of the time, the energy is buffered under the form of heat

Thats what I thought. Check the price of one heat pipe and price of a combinator.
Thermal balance for Fourleaf would need about 10 extra heapipes.

[mmmPI]

Edit: I gave various number to illustrate you can try less than 700 if you want, i do not use steam tank at all most of the time, the energy is buffered under the form of heat

Thats what I thought. Check the price of one heat pipe and price of a combinator.
Thermal balance for Fourleaf would need about 10 extra heapipes.

How did you achieve 483 MW with 4 reactor ? This is more than lossless that's why i'm curious x).

[factorio_genx]

Hi! Love your work on this - thank you! I just got to where I needed to upgrade and saw the updates for SA. Thank you again for the work on updating!

I have a possible challenge with using it. I do not have enough accumulators to be able to cycle the reactors on and off so I set the bottom right accumulator to 100/100 but what it does now is just cycles on and off. To fix this I disable the switch's connection to the circuit network and just set it to permanently on. Unfortunately this has the effect of disabling the monitoring at that point.

Is there a way in v5 to set the plant to just always be online?

[gGeorg]

How did you achieve 483 MW with 4 reactor ? This is more than lossless that's why i'm curious x).

483 MW is overspending period, (83 turbines times 5,82 = 483,6MW ) and yes, in time of overspending there is no fuel insertion. I posted misleading chart.
I made the proper ones for you.
get noticed, the time scale tab changes on each chart (1min, 10 min, 1 hour ), so it is clear how straight line looks like. You cant achieve that with without TRUE zero cold interval feeding.

Charts

02-09-2025, 21-34-08.png (56.73 KiB) Viewed 279 times

02-09-2025, 21-36-12.png (55.86 KiB) Viewed 279 times

02-09-2025, 21-39-13.png (55.44 KiB) Viewed 279 times

If you do, just post same charts for your current plant, and I eat my shoes.

[gGeorg]

Hi! Love your work on this - thank you! I just got to where I needed to upgrade and saw the updates for SA. Thank you again for the work on updating!

Thank you

I have a possible challenge with using it. I do not have enough accumulators to be able to cycle the reactors on and off so I set the bottom right accumulator to 100/100 but what it does now is just cycles on and off.
Is there a way in v5 to set the plant to just always be online?

Sure :

fix ALWAYS ON

third line is E < 200
E as for Energy, it changes value from 0 up to 100. Include number 100.
basically you need to change the third line to a condition which is always true, which will cause that two two lines linked by "AND" will be always true, then combinator will always send "Green_Signal"

02-09-2025, 21-49-42.png (623.51 KiB) Viewed 269 times

I will update the main post. The current documentation contains the information but, for a player not familiar with combinators is probably too cryptic.

[factorio_genx]

Hi! Love your work on this - thank you! I just got to where I needed to upgrade and saw the updates for SA. Thank you again for the work on updating!

Thank you

I have a possible challenge with using it. I do not have enough accumulators to be able to cycle the reactors on and off so I set the bottom right accumulator to 100/100 but what it does now is just cycles on and off.
Is there a way in v5 to set the plant to just always be online?

Sure :

fix ALWAYS ON

third line is E < 200
E as for Energy, it changes value from 0 up to 100. Include number 100.
basically you need to change the third line to a condition which is always true, which will cause that two two lines linked by "AND" will be always true, then combinator will always send "Green_Signal"
02-09-2025, 21-49-42.png

I will update the main post. The current documentation contains the information but, for a player not familiar with combinators is probably too cryptic.

Ah ha! Thank you! Works perfectly.

[mmmPI]

I posted misleading chart.
I made the proper ones for you.

I think there is still a misleading chart present in the first post, because it shows more than 480MW of production. I don't think charts without the context to explain them are very useful.

You cant achieve that with without TRUE zero cold interval feeding.

In the first post you have a passage mentionning how the power plant takes time to heat up, and this is the justification for the timer, this is incorrect imo since space you don't need to have a timer you can rely on the temperature to keep the reactor running without "cold interval" by refueling it when the temperature of the coldest entity is about to be too low for it to function.

This means it's not necessary to use the steam tanks either.