The new 5x5 IC² Reactor

Quote from nou_spiro

Here is my attempt to make turbine block.
Botton row are two liquid heat exchangers. Between them is steam generator which send steam to two kinetic steam turbines. Each turbine have attached one generator. The fluid regulator is pointed downward. When you put ejector update to condenser, turbine and heat exchanger you can easily attach it to side of the reactor. Also it works only with distilled water as water condensed inside the turbines are returned directly to steam generator. If you put water to steam generator it becomes blocked.

Only problem with this setup is at start it blows some steam outside so sometimes you must refill your water.

replace the middle condencer with a fluid transport ( no need to condense) and set the boiler to 221 pressure and 1 mb water and it will always output superheated steam at 200 hu/t

its a long video but the one i did last night should show you how to setup the parts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APWSfeI5QbA

It seems that in the current build the kinetic steam turbines don't actually consume the steam turbine

http://prntscr.com/4r23gb

It's been like this for an hour right now.

Ive rebuilt my whole setup of steam now and im using stirling generators instead. As it is right now it is impossible to make the steam generators completly stable. They sometimes fuck upp when teleporting or logging in and while ive implemented systems to avoid my reactor blowing up i still have to manually check them everytime i get back from some adventure.

The problem i have that i cannot fix is that the steam generator sometimes stop producing superheated steam. Even thought it is perfectly set up it sometimes stops working. Even thought it has all the heat it needs it starts flipping on and of producing steam and distilled water . To fix it i have to manually set the output to 1 mb per tick so it starts producing superheated steam again and then increase it to 2 mm/tick. It never stops working while im at my base but sometimes when i log in or teleport with the nether portal it starts mailfunctioning. Even thought iv'e got my base chunkloaded.

If someone knows what the problem is with the steam generator i would really appriciate the help as im loosing 400 eu/tick right now using stirling instead of superheated steam (i actually have 2 seperate systems for both so i can switch between stirling and superheated steam easily)

Quote from Chocohead

I get similar things starting up single player worlds. Even on 1mb/t, when the world first loads, or I update IC2 especially, it will produce normal steam for a few ticks, and I know it is, since I have an overflow steam tank that only fills up when that breaks. I haven't really found any fixes for that, past making sure that the system would work even if steam was going through it. Not experienced the 2mb/t superheated steam bug though.

same 2mb/t does not work or worked in a flaw for a while

I recomend the setup i have shown in my video ... i do know i make sure i have enough extra coolant in my reactor to handle overflow cooling for those few ticks
if your reactor melts down its a bad thing!

interesting.. solar distiller has changed a bit...

it can handle 10 buckets? ( thought 1 at a time)
can eject water now or eject cans.

also am i the FIRST to realize that 21 pellets of RTG fuel and 4 RTG heat reactors = superheated steam forever?

maybe this is a bad thing? it would not require a HUGE investment over time? or am i not getting something and missing a point?

its safer over time.. it has NO chance of a nuke explosion !

its not too large!

worst case is a boiler meltdown and a quick replacement...

what am i missing?

What you are missing is the crazy amount of plutonium you need for that. for that setup you would need 21*3 plutonium or 567 spent fuel rods. To bring this into perspective, it's about 20 complete cycles of the largest nuclear reactors you can make at 20000s per cycle. Even if you where producing plutonium with your replicator (about 350 mb) it takes FOREVER to produce, im not even kidding. ofc you would also need 1134 iron ingots in adition to the superheated steam setup that will probably also consume steam turbines (not right now but likely in the future) for a measly 150 eu/tick.

Unless you are playing on a server where you have several reactors producing plutonium 24/7 you would never have enought plutonium to make more than a few of those and even then they would still have a large running cost of steel. you would probably be better of making stirling and then its 100 eu/tick.

It boils down to this, if you have enough nuclear power to produce enough plutonium to make that setup you wouldnt really care about the puny amount of power it produces to begin with.

Quote from Blackpalt

What you are missing is the crazy amount of plutonium you need for that. for that setup you would need 21*3 plutonium or 567 spent fuel rods. To bring this into perspective, it's about 20 complete cycles of the largest nuclear reactors you can make at 20000s per cycle. Even if you where producing plutonium with your replicator (about 350 mb) it takes FOREVER to produce, im not even kidding. ofc you would also need 1134 iron ingots in adition to the superheated steam setup that will probably also consume steam turbines (not right now but likely in the future) for a measly 150 eu/tick.

Unless you are playing on a server where you have several reactors producing plutonium 24/7 you would never have enought plutonium to make more than a few of those and even then they would still have a large running cost of steel. you would probably be better of making stirling and then its 100 eu/tick.

It boils down to this, if you have enough nuclear power to produce enough plutonium to make that setup you wouldnt really care about the puny amount of power it produces to begin with.

steel is cheap... in the long run... and yes it would be better to do stierling or just normal RTG energy ones ( same output)
but a infinity pool with pump and going into a solar distiller to keep it topped off RTG making steam turbines a viable option.. and as i said once setup its just replacing the rotors every so often .. for me thats chucking the steel into a blast furnace that can be run by another RTG with little cost and a compressor powered by the same RTG

yes you are right .. its a CRAP TON of plutonium.. but in the long run.. if your playing on just one server not really that much time

Also consider you are doing the same effect of resources if not MORE to make a nuke in the first place.. !!! this is using the byproducts for energy.. not alot in the "short run" but alot as time goes along!

That's a very nice reactor... it just sucks that you need all those other mods of crazy automation to make it work.

I just did some testing and i think i will get an CRCS reactor with 4 quad Mox over 4000EU/t.

I will make some Screens once i'm finished with the full automation and everything is cleaned up.

Basicly: First an old reactor to heat up the coolant cells. This one produces 1750EU/t directly at 84% heat.

The heated up coolant cells go into 4 fluid 5x5 reactors to cool down, while producing ~800Hu/t.
With Superheated Steam thats enough for 4x 600EU/t.

so i just figure out how we can use a reactor that outputs any value thats not a multiple of 100!

Fluid Regulators..

there is a small power requirement.. which might be a loss ( i don't know how much EU/t it takes to move a mb/t of liquid)
but you can limit it..

so
if you have a reactor design that gives say 640 hu/t set it to output
40 ( unless there is some way to know where on a reactor is "overflow
only" places)

Would anyone know the rules for WHERE fluid ports
are put to determine where priority for fluids coming out is? IE going
up a side of the reactor bottom (hit priorty) middle ( lower priority)
top ( less priority)
top of reactor (absolute least priority)
Bottom ( highest priority)

or am i barking up the wrong tree?

Would anyone have a stable reactor design better then others in the thread so far..

there is one that WILDY fluctuates between 770 and 914 from what i can see ( first attachment )

and one that seems stable at 1120 not sure if it really does.. seems to take a long while to get to it

As it stands anything higher then the 400 eu/t reactor from the front page/setup seems to have some flux which makes any steam setup HARDER ....

What
mod can handle this ammount of fluid going through it but sort it so it
has a priority line ? IE first set of exchangers ALWAYS gets the first
200hu/t .. second gets the next and so forth and the extra 10-190 goes
to stirling generators? ( would
( seriously i am curious if this is solvable somehow)

Quote from Blood Asp

I just did some testing and i think i will get an CRCS reactor with 4 quad Mox over 4000EU/t.

I will make some Screens once i'm finished with the full automation and everything is cleaned up.

Basicly: First an old reactor to heat up the coolant cells. This one produces 1750EU/t directly at 84% heat.

The heated up coolant cells go into 4 fluid 5x5 reactors to cool down, while producing ~800Hu/t.
With Superheated Steam thats enough for 4x 600EU/t.

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No... once you heat up a component in an eu reactor you can not place it in a fluid reactor until you cool it down in an eu reactor. You also don't want to run a reactor at 84% heat unless you like nearby blocks randomly turning into lava.

I still had Coolant cells heated in the fluid reactor in my inventory, so i didn't notice the difference... But melting beginns at 85%, so i'm barly safe with that. CRCS with two fluid reactors should still give me ~2500EU/t and it is easier to automate compared with an single reactor. I can't think of an easy way to make a stable fluid hot mox reactor.

Quote from mementh

What
mod can handle this ammount of fluid going through it but sort it so it
has a priority line ? IE first set of exchangers ALWAYS gets the first
200hu/t .. second gets the next and so forth and the extra 10-190 goes
to stirling generators? ( would
( seriously i am curious if this is solvable somehow)

The only mod that i know of that can do all of this at once is steve's factory manager. Ender io can handle the output but lack a dense mode on their cables.

Extra utilities transfer pipes with the right upgrades might work as well however i haven't tried it so im not completly sure.

Ultimately, what's the compelling argument to use the 5x5 over a MOX reactor?

If I have 840 eu/t coming from my MOX should I even bother looking into active cooling?

For regular reactor the 5x5 is a huge uppgrade with an almost trippled output and a lot higher efficiency at the cost of a lot of additional resources and complexity.

when you compare regular mox reactors and 5x5 reactors there really isn't any gain but higher efficiency as it is a lot more expensive, lower output and is infinitly more complex aswell as requiring external mods. Also the efficiency really isnt that much of a concern considering that if you have enough plutonium to make a mox reactor you usually have heaps of uranium 238.

TLDR
5x5 is awesome for regular reactors but not so much for mox, just use the old mox designs

Thx sir.

Bit of a shame really. I got into MOX because I couldn't figure out how to get fuel for a regular reactor at the time. I was hoping the 5x5 would be an upgrade, but having seriously fumbled through menenth's video walkthrough, I can't justify the extra effort.

That said, always keeping an eye on this thread for new discoveries.

I hesitate to build the 5x5x5 in my survival game until there's better documentation of how to set it up, including how to tell if the external components are oriented properly (and which face to sneak-click with a wrench if they're not, which isn't always intuitive, in might in some cases even require doing that to the side facing the reactor, which would be a problem) and how to determine how many external components are needed for an arbitrary reactor design. Also, I think there was a mention earlier in this thread of getting 11mb of water for a steam generator - does that need to be exactly 11mb in a ufc, and if so, how does one get that exact amount?

Quote from MauveCloud

I hesitate to build the 5x5x5 in my survival game until there's better documentation of how to set it up, including how to tell if the external components are oriented properly (and which face to sneak-click with a wrench if they're not, which isn't always intuitive, in might in some cases even require doing that to the side facing the reactor, which would be a problem) and how to determine how many external components are needed for an arbitrary reactor design. Also, I think there was a mention earlier in this thread of getting 11mb of water for a steam generator - does that need to be exactly 11mb in a ufc, and if so, how does one get that exact amount?

I think I could get to translating mementh's video into text form for the wiki. How in depth is it? Since I haven't had the chance to watch the whole thing yet...