Factorio Forums

Alright so I am finally tipping my toes into nuclear generators and I am encountering the following situation.
I have a heat pipe burning at 959 degrees connected to a heat exchanger.
Said heat exchanger has 199 of 200 water (so full, and is also directly pump fed from a full water tank).
I have to steam turbine attached to the heat exchanger who both seem to work.

I conclude that the this setup should be working at maximum power, I do also have 17MW of steam generated power up to replace so there shouldn't be any issue from overproduction.
However the output of the turbine is sitting almost idle, because the heat exchange is doing only a water consumption that about 14.5-15.5 out of it's stated 120 max/s.
That situation applies to every heat exchanger/turbine of my power plant.
Back before I expanded it I remember the heat exchangers doing 60/s out of the 120/s each.

Why are my heat exchangers thwiddeling their thumbs and how can I get them to stop doing so?

If you don't need the power output energy producers scale down.
So turbine consumes less steam and heat exchanger needs to produce less steam.

Enlightenment! That is indeed the issue. I would have expected turbine to have a higher priority for getting drained for power than steam engines, but that might be mod issue.

This sort of thing is why many people include Storage Tasks for the steam their nuclear power plant generates. The Turbines only use as much steam as they need to meet electrical demand. But the reactors produce their heat regardless. Because the reactors produce the heat, the Heat Exchangers can use it all, provided there is space to put the steam they make.

IF that is a concern, then you might want to do the same. I personally find that there is generally enough Uranium on the map that I don’t need to be stingy with nuclear fuel.

Nah, I got more nuclear fuel than I know what do with. Let it all burn. I'll put a on/off on the old fuel powerplant though (realistically I should do something more about it if I'd want it to actually be useful in case it activates; bigger stockpile for the fuel, do fuel powered inserters, etc. etc., but I apparently have plenty of excess capacity now and it's Bob's mods.. the moment I will spare time to fiddle with is probably the moment when I rip out the solid fuel production for whatever reason and the measurement I take will most likely consist in just ordering the whole thing demolished.)