The new 5x5 IC² Reactor

  • mementh, I finally finished watching your video, and I can't imagine myself building such a complicated setup for around 802 EU/t - now that you've corrected the formula in the google spreadsheet, building that reactor takes about 4.76 times as much lead as an EU-style reactor, but produces less than double the output of a good EU-style reactor. The 420 EU/t design might take more uranium, but by the time you have enough lead to make 343 ingots of it, there's a good chance you'd also have enough uranium for 2 or even 3 such reactors.


    Edit: I also have some suggestions that might help you shorten your video a bit, though probably not down to the suggested 15 minutes:
    1. Use a superflat world. That way you don't have to spend time clearing away plants or putting in extra dirt to allow yourself to walk around the reactor. If you're concerned about being able to get under the reactor to direct some of the fluid exchangers up, you could lay down a few extra layers of dirt ahead of time with plenty of room around the reactor, or you could see if your design would work with the side assemblies rotated 90 degrees so that the fluid exchangers wouldn't need to point up.
    2. Cut the sequences where you're just building an identical structure on a different side of the reactor - you can just say you've done so.

  • As it is right now the most efficient way of producing power with nuclear is probably making a lot of low effiency 1 chamber reactors with regular eu and then start making mox as soon as you can using the old mox designs. It is cheaper, produces a lot more power and isn't very complex. as you get more plutonium you make the mox reactor larger and larger starting with the small mox design untill you can build the really big ones. Resource wise that should be the most efficient as long as you have enough lead. If you are short on lead i would probably go with large innefficient reactors.


    Next server im skipping 5x5 and i'le build several small nuclear reactors and go towards eu mox reactors as soon as possible. This design comes to mind
    http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…mhokuftdzickl5rndv6338irk
    Very cheap to make and with a respectable amount of power produced for its complexity and size.


    I usually have plenty of uranium so it's rarely a problem playing singleplayer. I can imagine it being different on a server thought.

    A question that sometimes drives me hazy; am i or are the other crazy

  • mementh, I finally finished watching your video, and I can't imagine myself building such a complicated setup for around 802 EU/t - now that you've corrected the formula in the google spreadsheet, building that reactor takes about 4.76 times as much lead as an EU-style reactor, but produces less than double the output of a good EU-style reactor. The 420 EU/t design might take more uranium, but by the time you have enough lead to make 343 ingots of it, there's a good chance you'd also have enough uranium for 2 or even 3 such reactors.


    Edit: I also have some suggestions that might help you shorten your video a bit, though probably not down to the suggested 15 minutes:
    1. Use a superflat world. That way you don't have to spend time clearing away plants or putting in extra dirt to allow yourself to walk around the reactor. If you're concerned about being able to get under the reactor to direct some of the fluid exchangers up, you could lay down a few extra layers of dirt ahead of time with plenty of room around the reactor, or you could see if your design would work with the side assemblies rotated 90 degrees so that the fluid exchangers wouldn't need to point up.
    2. Cut the sequences where you're just building an identical structure on a different side of the reactor - you can just say you've done so.

    for 1.. that could work..


    sadly for 2 i don't have a editing program and honestly don't want to get that much into it editing at the moment.. I am just using OBS to make/upload :/

  • mementh - i used your video tutorial and built one node of steam turbines. Problem is that my steam generator somehow sets itself to output...water...? distiled water is circulating around like crazy. i tried using fluid distributors and regulators along with buildcraft fluid pipes, nothing seens to work properly. btw. why you stack two turbines one after another? Is superheated steam generated that way or it requires boiler after boiler?


    Apart from that i used 4 stirling generators before, but now it started to generate a bug that generates inifinite power - energy dances around simple gold wire and constantly fills up stirling eu buffer and charging my MFSU.


    i can post here some pictures but setup is pretty compact due to explosion shielding ( i'm playing on survival and once by brother made 5 quad mox reactor to blow ;)

    Inteligence is not everything - wisdom is more than that.
    "Survival is survival dammit.. don't give me this stinky cheated diamonds.. .. or else.." - by unknown hero

  • OK i got it working with strange results - i'm putting there 100 hu, but it can't keep up with 1 milibucket/s of water... even on low pressure valve.. so if this is valve should it output only steam if pressure is not high enough ? or this is experimental and video is made with some other version ??

    Inteligence is not everything - wisdom is more than that.
    "Survival is survival dammit.. don't give me this stinky cheated diamonds.. .. or else.." - by unknown hero

  • As it is right now the most efficient way of producing power with nuclear is probably making a lot of low effiency 1 chamber reactors with regular eu and then start making mox as soon as you can using the old mox designs. It is cheaper, produces a lot more power and isn't very complex. as you get more plutonium you make the mox reactor larger and larger starting with the small mox design untill you can build the really big ones. Resource wise that should be the most efficient as long as you have enough lead. If you are short on lead i would probably go with large innefficient reactors.


    Next server im skipping 5x5 and i'le build several small nuclear reactors and go towards eu mox reactors as soon as possible. This design comes to mind
    http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…mhokuftdzickl5rndv6338irk
    Very cheap to make and with a respectable amount of power produced for its complexity and size.


    I usually have plenty of uranium so it's rarely a problem playing singleplayer. I can imagine it being different on a server thought.


    That is more or less what I have done in my survival world. I built 3 6 chamber eu reactors and burned 8 single enriched uranium rods in each of them. It took quite a while to build up enough plutonium to make 7 mox rods, but then I started running a quad mox with 3 singles next to it producing 500 eu/t. Before too long though, you run out of U-238 since each mox rid uses 6 of them and you get 0 back when you recycle them. You can, of course, use all that eu to matter synthesize more uranium ore.


    After doing this for the last few weeks, I must say it feels like mox uses up too much u-238 and returns too little plutonium... 6 u-238 -> 1 tiny pile of plutonium just feels off. Either it should give back 3 or 4 of the u-238 or a full pile of plutonium instead of a tiny one.

  • OK i got it working with strange results - i'm putting there 100 hu, but it can't keep up with 1 milibucket/s of water... even on low pressure valve.. so if this is valve should it output only steam if pressure is not high enough ? or this is experimental and video is made with some other version ??

    you need 200 hu/t 221 mb and 1 mb/t of water to make superheated
    100 will only get you regular steam :/ which is 1 mb and 1 mb setting

  • Well then when reactor is starting or shutting down then i'll get those werid things.. i had output as water - i did not noticed on your video those ghost explosions when steam generator was not yet fully heated. Here it generates water on output.. even on 221 bar valve.


    I play multiplayer survival server - and it has no noticealble lag.. mc 1.7.10 , Ic2 v.2.2.648 , buildcraft 6.0.18 , IC2nc2.0.5a, railcraft 9.3.3 + some other non conflicting mods.

    Inteligence is not everything - wisdom is more than that.
    "Survival is survival dammit.. don't give me this stinky cheated diamonds.. .. or else.." - by unknown hero

  • Well then when reactor is starting or shutting down then i'll get those werid things.. i had output as water - i did not noticed on your video those ghost explosions when steam generator was not yet fully heated. Here it generates water on output.. even on 221 bar valve.


    I play multiplayer survival server - and it has no noticealble lag.. mc 1.7.10 , Ic2 v.2.2.648 , buildcraft 6.0.18 , IC2nc2.0.5a, railcraft 9.3.3 + some other non conflicting mods.


    Yes, it sucks, but that is how the steam generator currently works; any time it does not have enough heat to make steam, it just spits out water instead.

  • Based on the captions, it looks like the first one is for heating up 60k coolant cells to put in the second reactor (which has no uranium cells) to get heat output, which is then put into coolant and passed to steam turbines. I'm not sure how the first reactor got to 79% heat though, the 60k coolant cells should be absorbing the heat from the quad uranium cells, not leaving any heat to get to the reactor.


    Edit: looked closer at the pictures, and I think that's mox fuel in the first reactor (rather than uranium), so presumably it was preheated to get more output from it, but iirc mox fuel has higher EU/t output in an EU-style reactor based on the reactor heat, but the heat output by mox fuel is unaffected by the reactor heat, regardless of which reactor type you make. I was going to suggest EU-style for the first reactor, but then I remembered that components heated in one type of reactor can't be cooled in the other type.

  • Based on the captions, it looks like the first one is for heating up 60k coolant cells to put in the second reactor (which has no uranium cells) to get heat output, which is then put into coolant and passed to steam turbines. I'm not sure how the first reactor got to 79% heat though, the 60k coolant cells should be absorbing the heat from the quad uranium cells, not leaving any heat to get to the reactor.


    Edit: looked closer at the pictures, and I think that's mox fuel in the first reactor (rather than uranium), so presumably it was preheated to get more output from it, but iirc mox fuel has higher EU/t output in an EU-style reactor based on the reactor heat, but the heat output by mox fuel is unaffected by the reactor heat, regardless of which reactor type you make. I was going to suggest EU-style for the first reactor, but then I remembered that components heated in one type of reactor can't be cooled in the other type.


    Nope, in a fluid reactor mox fuel generates more HEAT at high temperature since it can't generate more eu. This typically leads to thermal runaway / meltdown.

  • Okay, I stand corrected on that point. However, I believe the increased output of mox fuel is based on the amount of heat in the reactor relative to its maximum, rather than absolute heat, which means the plating in the first reactor isn't allowing the mox fuel to generate more heat than it could in a non-plated reactor. As far as runaway/meltdown, as long as those 60k coolant cells get swapped out before they break (and with the reactor switched off while swapping), the heat level of the first reactor won't change.

    • Official Post

    If that is only half the heat you're getting out from the reactor, but still getting 1200 EU/t, guess MOX heat reactors could make EV emitting reactors (by proxy) a reality again.

    145 Mods isn't too many. 9 types of copper and 8 types of tin aren't too many. 3 types of coffee though?

    I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you read was not what I meant.


    ---- Minecraft Crash Report ----
    // I just don't know what went wrong :(


    I see this too much.

  • If that is only half the heat you're getting out from the reactor, but still getting 1200 EU/t, guess MOX heat reactors could make EV emitting reactors (by proxy) a reality again.

    its at least a option to use the excess plutonium and such for some use?

  • Oh, i forgot to check this thread again after posting. :D


    Yes, the primary reactor is only heating up 60k Coolant cells. The heatplating is there to fill up the not used slots, making automation easier. The 79% come from preheating i wanted to go up to 84% but left a bit safety for now. The effective Heatoutput is ~4kHU but since it is going into the Coolant cells it is not visible. I even could put in much more Mox to rise the output, but no way to use the heated coolant cells that fast.


    The main problem is to get enough distilled water to run the turbines all the time... 40 Solar distilleries can't keep up. Not even close to keeping up.


    Also good is, should automation fail, only the primary reactor is in danger of blowing up and that reactor is relativly cheap resourcewise.

  • The main problem is to get enough distilled water to run the turbines all the time... 40 Solar distilleries can't keep up. Not even close to keeping up.


    I think in mementh's design, he used condensers and fluid regulators to convert the steam back to distilled water after it went through the turbines and send it back to the first turbine of each steam assembly, so it shouldn't be necessary to send distilled water in constantly from solar distilleries.

  • I have no idea how exactly these condensers work. i pump some distilled water directly out of the second stage turbine but that only gives back ~10% of the Input.


    And i finally finished a complete cycle without changing something and storing all the produced Energy.


    480mio EU from 4 Quad Mox Rods. So 480mio EU /(10.000sec*20ticks) = 2400EU/t if nothing changed there.