Are "old school" mark IV (water/ice cooled) reactors still possible?

Deef · Jan 28th 2014

Hi all,

I used to play IC2 a lot during the glory days of the technic modpack. After coming back to minecraft after some time I was glad to see my favourite mod was still active.
However I am very confused by the new nuclear system. I am pretty much in the endgame on my current world and I'm looking to build a reactor with as much electricity generation as possible.
I remember making a reactor that pretty much solely consisted of uranium rods and a few slots that could be filled with water buckets or snowballs. I had a lot of fun designing an automated system using all sorts of machines from different mods.

So my question is if it is still possible to make a reactor similar to that using the new nuclear reactor system and if so, how to build it. (unless it is extremely specific, I do not need instructions on how to build the coolant automation system)
Building cost is not really an issue, but I would like to make my reactor as "renewable" as possible (i.e. minimise/eliminate running costs).

Thanks in advance for your help

Nonotan · Jan 28th 2014

You cannot cool reactors using water anymore. Instead, use heat vents, or coolant cells (for CRCS-style reactors, which will function similarly to your old water/ice cooled reactors).

If you use quad cells, the running cost is 2 copper per quad cell per cycle. Otherwise there is no running cost except uranium/MOX fuel.

Someone Else 37 · Jan 29th 2014

Water, ice, and other inexpensive single-use coolants no longer work in reactors. You could, technically, make coolant cells, wait for them to burn up, and replace them, but I determined a while back that such a system can, at best, produce about 24 (Or was it 42? I don't remember) EU/t while also constantly consuming lava and enderpearls, with GregTech installed without a couple of the nerfs. You'd probably be better off with geothermal generators.

However, as Nonotan mentioned, the next best thing is CRCS- the Constantly Reapplied Coolant System (as opposed to the CASUC- Constantly Applied Single Use Coolant- systems you're used to)- where the idea is to pop the coolant cells out just before they burn up, cool them back down in another reactor (that contains no uranium, of course- just heat vents and exchangers), and pop them back in for another cycle. Automation is difficult, of course, but can be done. And Applied Energistics helps a lot.

Useful resources:

The DDoS thread, for ideas about coolant-cell based CRCS (there are lots of them)
The CRCS Tower of Power- for those who want to get a really insane amount of EU/t out of their power plants
An Insane MOX CRCS build, for use after you've already burned quite a lot of uranium (and are running IC2 Experimental)

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