Expandable, tilable, buffered and unbuffered nuclear power.

Power Plants, Energy Storage and Reliable Energy Supply. All about efficient energy production. Turning parts of your factory off. Reliable and self-repairing energy.
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Kingdud
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Expandable, tilable, buffered and unbuffered nuclear power.

Post by Kingdud »

All prints are tileable and designed to expand until you hit a practical limit (pipe segment length, belt capacity, etc).

'Peak' power designs are steam buffered. Meaning the reactors only run with the steam reserve is low enough that no energy would be wasted.

If you expand peak reactors, you need to link all red/green circuits together, as all inserters and reactors much be part of the same circuit for it to work correctly. This linking happens automatically if you expand using the included blueprints up to 1.3GW, past that, you should be building base load or fusion power, rather than relying on nuclear. With steam buffering, you either have to ensure the heat networks (reactors, heat pipes) are physically separated, or the reactors and inserters need to all be part of one circuit.

'Base load' reactor designs operate constantly and do not have any form of steam buffering. The core concept is that they will feed the power needs of things like beacons and other loads that never stop. In a factory that ramps up and down constantly, it may be necessary to have multiple 'peak' power plants to handle transient load rather than relying on base power. If demand ever drops below base output, those reactors will heat up and waste fuel.

The 'right' and 'left' edge blueprints can be overwritten by the 'core' blueprint as you expand your base load. The only reason for the 'right and left' sides is because the reactors on the end generate less heat, and thus need fewer exchangers/turbines.

Quality upgrades are supported; upgrade all components together.

Contains prints for:
  • 40 MW, steam buffered reactor
    40mw
    40mw
    Screenshot_20250311_192158.png (168.85 KiB) Viewed 258 times
  • 160 MW, steam buffered reactor
    2c
    2c
    Screenshot_20250311_192302.png (198.29 KiB) Viewed 258 times
  • 480 MW, steam buffered reactor
    4c
    4c
    Screenshot_20250311_192355.png (60.55 KiB) Viewed 258 times
  • 1.1 GW, steam buffered reactor
  • 1.3 GW base load, center section
    8c base
    8c base
    Screenshot_20250311_192451.png (121.37 KiB) Viewed 258 times
  • 1.1 GW base load, 'left' edge
  • 1.1 GW base load, 'right' edge
  • Kovarex cell.
1-2 kovarex cells should be all you need for many GW of power. Toss a single beacon between two cells and you'll (probably) never run out of u235.

Assumptions:
All belts flow in the same direction, so fresh fuel comes in on one side of the reactor 'line' and spent fuel exits on the other.

Last edited by Kingdud on Wed Mar 12, 2025 12:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Kingdud
Long Handed Inserter
Long Handed Inserter
Posts: 84
Joined: Sat Dec 16, 2017 3:23 am
Contact:
Contact Kingdud

Re: Expandable, tilable, buffered and unbuffered nuclear power.

Post by Kingdud »

I hit the 60k character limit with my previous post, so to expand on the concept of expanding peak power:
bad_expansion.png
bad_expansion.png (793.55 KiB) Viewed 253 times
That's what a bad expansion looks like. The heat networks are connected (via the cores touching each other) but the circuit networks are not, and there's a secondary combinator (in yellow) that needs to not be there.

This is what it looks like when it is fixed:
good_expansion.png
good_expansion.png (1.18 MiB) Viewed 253 times
This keeps all the reactors in sync, and ensures that all the steam tanks stay about the same level (assuming you expand when they are empty). The expansion pictured above would supply around 2.4GW.

Alternatively, if you're forgetful, another option is to expand them like this:
good_expand_2.png
good_expand_2.png (759.94 KiB) Viewed 253 times
That only gives 2.2 GW of power, but you don't have to remember to connect anything. This also doesn't require you to make sure that the steam tanks are near empty when you online it.
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