Second, I'm not satisfied with the little six-pack nuclear plants--I wanted a nuclear plant that could be expanded limitlessly. After all, a 2x6 plant is already 10% more efficient than two 2x3 plants, and this only increases with size.
This means going horizontal--very horizontal. Ultimately, the challenge became packing everything into a five-block-wide column, including all electrical, fluid and mechanical. Here's what I mean:
- nuke-1x1.png (796.87 KiB) Viewed 8092 times
That's a 40 mw nuclear reactor with just enough exchangers and turbines to handle the max output. Fuel cells are managed by logistic robots. Note that this doesn't show the complete water connections; there is a blueprint to build all the fluid and electrical systems initially, before they are needed to that extent. Bumping a reactor up to 80 mw (say, once you drop a neighboring reactor) is done additively with another blueprint; nothing needs to be torn down. Here's a 2x2 plant (only partially visible):
- nuke-2x2.png (892.55 KiB) Viewed 8092 times
One thing I couldn't solve: going to 21 exchangers requires a couple pipes and a single pipe-to-ground that have to be removed before jacking it up to the max 28 exchangers. It makes me feel dirty, but I just can't think of a purely additive solution. Here's the interference:
- nuke-160mw-interference.png (332.91 KiB) Viewed 8085 times
Here's a 2x6 plant, in all its glory:
- nuke-2x6.png (4.26 MiB) Viewed 8092 times
The logistic network does limit the size to 2x9 when using logistic robots to feed the fuel. Larger than 2x9 is certainly possible, but requires constructing a belt network to feed the fuel.
Caveat: I don't care about nuclear fuel conservation. Honestly, I don't really see the point, at least late game. I got soooooo much uranium--I have nukes, nuclear power and all trains running on nuclear fuel, all from the first uranium ore field I started mining during mid game. I'm obsessive, no question, but in my own special way.
40 mw plant
80 mw
120 mw
160 mw
plant infrastructure (pipes and poles)
