Need help designing an efficient reactor

1st Official Post

    So hi, first post on here.


    I'm new to ic2 reactors but for the last 2 weeks it's gotten my attention, i've been searching for a reactor that can output around 400eu/t with no external cooling and as efficient as possible, the 420eu/t reactor in the reactor thread isn't very efficient with it's 7 quad rods scatered around.


    Have been trying to make a 4 quad rod version with 4 of them in a Square but the cooling eludes me and my math skills are minimal at best.


    Right now i'm building up a multipart reactor system, started out with 4 180eu/t 1 chamber reactors i found in that thread, sure i could use that and make multiple layers but the more reactors the more uranium it eats up so right now i've converted 1 reactor to the 420eu/t one just to get more out of it.


    Oh side note, it's on a IC2 eperimental server.


    Please someone help i'm more or less at my wits end with this but i'd still like to continue trying, so if someone would be kind enough to help or atleast nudge me in the right direction i'd be gratefull.

    Quote from Elvi

    (...) i've been searching for a reactor that can output around 400eu/t with no external cooling and as efficient as possible, the 420eu/t reactor in the reactor thread isn't very efficient with it's 7 quad rods scatered around.


    Welcome to the forums! And thank you so much for actually reading the sticky thread, you have no idea how rare that is ;)


    Simplified, nuclear reactor design boils down to the following: "Efficiency, Output, Low Heat - pick two". This is because heat output of fuel rods does not just scale lineraly with output... it also scales exponentially with efficiency. The more efficient your reactor becomes, the less fuel rods you will be able to insert, because at high efficiency each fuel rod will run searing hot. For the same reason, the higher output your reactor has, the further you need to step back on efficiency in order to still keep up with cooling. That is the reason why the 420 EU/t reactor has only efficiency 3 and places all of its fuel rods so that they do not touch each other - anything else would be utterly uncoolable.


    You're not getting efficiency 5 with 400 EU/t output on internal cooling. It's physically impossible, there's just not enough slots for cooling components to move 960 heat. Unless, of course, you use MOX fuel. But that requires that you first run a large amount of uranium through a normal reactor in order to produce plutonium from depleted rods, so that's likely not an option for you right now ;)


    Quote from Elvi

    Right now i'm building up a multipart reactor system, started out with 4 180eu/t 1 chamber reactors i found in that thread, sure i could use that and make multiple layers but the more reactors the more uranium it eats up (...)


    That would be a misconception. The only thing that governs how much uranium is eaten up is efficiency. Nothing else matters. Four reactors producing 100 EU/t at efficiency 3 will consume exactly as much uranium as one single reactor producing 400 EU/t at efficiency 3.


    Therefore, the solution to your request for 400 EU/t at high efficiency is indeed multiple reactors. Build two of these, for instance, and you will have 560 EU/t with efficiency 4.67.

    Quote from Omicron

    Welcome to the forums! And thank you so much for actually reading the sticky thread, you have no idea how rare that is ;)


    Simplified, nuclear reactor design boils down to the following: "Efficiency, Output, Low Heat - pick two". This is because heat output of fuel rods does not just scale lineraly with output... it also scales exponentially with efficiency. The more efficient your reactor becomes, the less fuel rods you will be able to insert, because at high efficiency each fuel rod will run searing hot. For the same reason, the higher output your reactor has, the further you need to step back on efficiency in order to still keep up with cooling. That is the reason why the 420 EU/t reactor has only efficiency 3 and places all of its fuel rods so that they do not touch each other - anything else would be utterly uncoolable.


    You're not getting efficiency 5 with 400 EU/t output on internal cooling. It's physically impossible, there's just not enough slots for cooling components to move 960 heat. Unless, of course, you use MOX fuel. But that requires that you first run a large amount of uranium through a normal reactor in order to produce plutonium from depleted rods, so that's likely not an option for you right now ;)


    Actually i'm working on the MOX bit, not gotten very far but it's getting there :P


    Quote from Omicron

    That would be a misconception. The only thing that governs how much uranium is eaten up is efficiency. Nothing else matters. Four reactors producing 100 EU/t at efficiency 3 will consume exactly as much uranium as one single reactor producing 400 EU/t at efficiency 3.


    Therefore, the solution to your request for 400 EU/t at high efficiency is indeed multiple reactors. Build two of these, for instance, and you will have 560 EU/t with efficiency 4.67.


    Talking more about how much they take in general, the 180's take 6 dual rods each, the 420 7 quads.

    i was poking around trying to get a 400 eu/tic efficency 5, got close too but i settled for this efficency 3, better than polping 900 reactors right?http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/v3/reactorplanner.html?21p7hh6c79ylau61mwnhiv7puarzlmiwbgxt6tryqvy0jsshpz1fz3nsg3bjbyh465zppcdlpxyf7y8

    The highest efficiency reactor I've ever been able to make that has semi-decent output is basically the same as the one in the main reactors thread - credit to Zombie who made it first:
    LINK


    280 EU/t @ 4.67 efficiency. Not the easiest of reactors to automate, but it has pretty much the highest efficiency possible without the use of neutron reflectors. Also pretty decent output.

    I gave up trying to find or make a reactor that's efficient enough and Went for the 180eu/t single chamber reactor that i'm now stacking into a reactor Tower, at the moment i'm typing that Tower is outputting 2160EU/t with 4 layers of 4 reactors.


    Now the question is, how to have an alarm on them all if it's at all possible , it's a just in case senario.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Elvi

    I gave up trying to find or make a reactor that's efficient enough and Went for the 180eu/t single chamber reactor that i'm now stacking into a reactor Tower, at the moment i'm typing that Tower is outputting 2160EU/t with 4 layers of 4 reactors.


    Now the question is, how to have an alarm on them all if it's at all possible , it's a just in case senario.

    What kind of alarm? You could install Nuclear Control addon, so you can keep your reactors safe (and have noisy sound alarms in case they overheat).

    I see that you're looking for 400EU/t and effeciency. Considering that Reactors are no longer 96 copper for just the basic block (12 lead instead!), I suggest going with several reactors, producing 50 to 100 EU per tick.


    In this case, you're picking Efficiency only, allowing you to have enough component space to deal with the high heat that neutron reflectors produce. You make up for output by simply building more of them.

    If you had read all the posts you would have seen that i went with a 180EU/t reactor, right now i have 16 of them producing 2880EU/t, sure i wouldn't mind a litle more output but that's hard in a 1 chamber reactor, at best i could possibly use 2 Chambers.

    Is there any way to get 200EU/t+ out of a 1 chamber or 2 chamber design?


    only requierment i have is that the rods must be of the same type else the automation won't work.

    Quote from Elvi

    Is there any way to get 200EU/t+ out of a 1 chamber or 2 chamber design?


    only requierment i have is that the rods must be of the same type else the automation won't work.


    With MOX, sure. However, such reactors bring their own set of difficulties- see the MOX thread for details.

    If you stare at my avatar hard enough, you'll notice that it consists of three triangular rings, interlocked in such a way that if you were to remove any one of them, the other two would be free to float apart.

    Was thinking more the normal reactors, i'm atm running 40 1 chamber reactors that output 180eu/t each, it's fine but a litle tweaking would be nice, the space is limited that's why i don't want any bigger than 2 Chambers.

    • Official Post

    180/t from a one chamber reactor? thats pretty good.
    Your approach is a little odd though, it would be better to have several large cooling towers (to pipe nearly-burnt out coolant packs into) and use them to regulate temperature in one big, efficient and powerful reactor.

    I'm using a setup i found on here like a Power Tower and i havn't made space for anything BUT the reactors, no cooling Towers, the setup i have atm outputs 7200eu/t, it's not bad persay but there's cheaper Power gens on the server i'm on that can output more with a few of them, there's for instance 2048eu/t windmills... someone has 14 of them so... i'd like to beaf them up but space is limited so 2 Chambers are max without a complete redesign of the whole reactor room.