The new 5x5 IC² Reactor

Quote from Pyure

Ok lemme just rephrase the question

Is there a reason other than "its new and different!" to build the 5x5 as opposed to MOX?

MOX Pros:
----------------
* Very quick and mindlessly simple to build
* Produces lots of power (~1000 eu/t)
* Consumes little/no fuel (I believe it actually breeds plutonium)

MOX Cons:
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* Overpowered
* Unrealistic (maintains heat levels in perpetuity)

5x5 Pros:
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* ...Its neato?
* Its more realistic?
* It can create decent power?

5x5 Cons:
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* Requires a lot of block rotating with shitty IC2 wrench mechanic (all hail Greg's superior wrench mechanics)
* Considerably more complicated (I don't want to hear how simple it is with practice. Its relatively more complicated, period)
* Little value considering the extra work involved

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Why not combine both? 5x5 Mox reactor. I did post my setup a while back...

Actually, I've noticed an additional benefit to the 5x5x5 reactor (btw, personally I'd prefer for people to remember that third dimension when referring to it), even if I haven't put it into practice yet myself: it can keep generating power from built-up heat even after the redstone signal is switched off, which means it might now be possible to design a Mark V fluid reactor using redstone timing and/or nuclear control that produces more HU/s average (counting cooldown periods) than a Mark I fluid reactor.

Wait a sec - I thought components heated in an EU reactor couldn't be cooled in a fluid reactor.

Edit: the other problem with your idea is that to dissipate heat from coolant cells, the components doing so have to be adjacent to them, whereas reactor heat can be dissipated from any position in the reactor grid.

I did quite extensive testing of the 5x5 reactor when it was quite new and sadly it did not perform very well. They ad an extrem amount of complexity and material cost and a few bugs with the superheated steam (never got it completly stable). the biggest reactor i did produced about 1400 HU or about 950 eu/tick but it was crazy expensive and extremly complex and unsafe. The only real quality it has over the regular reactors is that they have superior efficiency compared to the regular reactors. But compared to MOX they produce quite a small amount of power for the size andcost.You can also do 5x5 mox reactors which i did try. However the problem with 5x5 is further emphasized with mox. Extreme fuel efficiency but low power output (lower than regular 5x5 due to less effective heat vents) and it also requires aditional mods to controll the reactor. (basically you have an unstable reactor that you swith on and off to keep it between 60-80% heat) the design i did had an efficiency of about 80-100 million eu per mox fuel rod but at quite a low power output, something in the order of 500-750 eu/tick at the most (don't remember the exact numbers, did post it on the forum at the time).

The main problem is that they don't really ad anything but higher efficiency while being extremly complex and expensive. Ifyou compare them to regular mox reactors or wind power they really aren't worth the effort as you can just make more mox reactor or wind turbines for the same amount of power a fraction of the cost and risk/complexity of a 5x5.

So TL DR

5X5 pros
Very efficient (easily a factor of 1,5+)
Funny and neat to build (if you like that kind of stuff)

5X5 cons
Expensive, VERY expensive (Several times more than a regular reactor, think thousands of ingots, not hundreds)
Low power output for its size
Quite unstable if you use superheated steam (at least when i used them) (and without the power output is even lower)
Uninteresting design choice on reactors. High efficiency is ALWAYS better than a less efficient design due to heat being the "fuel" which scales with higher effiecency on the reactor. ie, high effiecency reactors has both higher eu/rod while still producing the same amount of power as a low efficiency reactor. Old reactors where more interesting as they had a tradeoff, higher efficiency or higher power and you can't have both at the same time.
Very complex and hard to automate and make safe without other mods like steves factory manager/ender io and nuclear controle.

Unless you like the challange i would stick with mox or windpower

Quote from Chocohead

Naaaah, 5x5 MOX is great fun. It's all down to whether you want an impressive looking build, or you want 5 windmills above your house.

imho i feel 5x5 needs a major shift.. IE lasting longer vs regular .. not more power out at a time but lasting longer so more power over the long haul ( nukes got 2x longer in a prior patch so i say same EU/tick )

the original reactor was more like a RTG type in terms it just made electricity without major normal mechanics..

with this having more complication and parts i say the reactor should give out 4-8x a standard reactors life.. so normal reactor 2 hours and change i say 5x5 should last 8-16 hours with same

is there a setting that I could change in the ini files to work this? not more EU/tick but longer lasting

Quote from Chocohead

No, as that'd involve either slowing down reactor ticks or increasing the max metadata of uranium fuel cells. The 5x5 could do with a greater output I agree, the effort in doesn't really equal the amount out.

agreed but i don't feel it should give more EU/tick then a regular reactor

IMHO a 5x5 vs regular reactor should be setup internally the same to give the same EU/tick.. just the 5x5 gives more EU/lifetime !

Quote from Chocohead

The funny i tooltip button Thunderdark added says that the 5x5 is meant to output 100% of the uranium's power, while normal reactors are throttled to 50%. Whether that's total output or per tick isn't specified however.

i understood eu/tick which meh

So I finally decided to register here and to share some ideas and thoughts with you. Since i read somewhere in this forum that a 24/7 reactor with more then 650heat (1300HU) is impossible, I took a shot at this challenge and made it; about 6 times at all. I actually managed to increase the overall heat production from 1.280 (wich is considered THE high-power 5X5 design at least as far as i know) to a final value of 1.384, cooling 692 units of heat. There might be some more room for tweaking, as i thought for about 3 weeks that my 680-cooling design was the maximum - until i made it to 688. I will try to optimize it even further so you guys can get the best reactor for your uranium. Actually, i made it to 696 cooling right now, but i have problems in producing exactly this amount of heat.

Please note that this design is pretty expensive on the other hand, costing 3 diamonds and some Lapis to build. And a lot of gold.
This requires 12 uranium fuel to run, is not recommended as a MOX-EU reactor since it has an operating temperature of ~2-3%. If you heat it up, it will cool down to 2-3%, if you start at 0% it will heat up to 2-3%; this heating is normal and NOT dangerous. Once reached, it will keep it's temperature making it 100% safe for 24/7 usage with automated refilling, even though it's more complex due to all 3 sorts of cells used in this design.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…xht2ad8sfjddmss0hsk61g5c0

As i mentioned, i am hoping to improve it's output a little further, i am still dreaming of 700 heat coolable for 1.400HU/t.

Edit: 7 0 4 heat cooled. Seven. Zero. Four. You read this correctly.
It's efficiency is a little bit lower, taking 14 Uranium Cells for the heat, but it's efficiency is still great for a 24/7 reactor. 310EU/t in EU mode, 1.408 heat in fluid mode. That's up to 1.056 EU out of ONE uranium-reactor!

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…f94r5n9xen0t2wcz3zilvadxc

Still hoping to tweak it a little further since this design has the ability to cool up to 708 heat.

The largest stable mark 1 i ever did was 1344 Hu, however i would prefer the more efficient 1280 hu design i made after that. i did a few mark 5 and mox aswell. The largest mox i did was at 1000 Hu with an absolutely insane efficiency (but still quite low output) i kept it between 60-75% heat. i also did a regular reactor as a mark 5 at about 1360 hu but im quite certain i could achieve much higher numbers if i spent some more time on it. just got a brilliant idea for a quite funny 5x5 design which should have extremly high efficiency and output. If things work like i think this will be an amazing design compared to what i have done previously.

edit:
There we go, this is just a theoretical build that im gonna try out soon but it should work out due to the 5x5 still cooling even while its off. The basic concent is to use the most efficient cooling available 20 venting per spot in even numbers of 100 for superheated steam. it takes about 1 minutes for the overclocked heat vents to be destroyed so as long as you make sure that their total amount of heat they can hold does not get exceeded your fine. You turn on the reactor, let it accumulate heat for a while. shut it off and let the vents remove all the heat, then once its empty again you turn it on again. As long as the cycle time is under the time it requires to overheat the overclocked heat vents it should never destroy them. So basically you use the overclocked heat vents as storage for heat which continue to produce power while the reactor is off.

I'm sure one could improve a lot on this design but it should give a indication of the basic idea.
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…9b2nt4vypb2yz21h6k7hrcem8

You run it for 10 seconds, then you let it cool for another 19 seconds. this means it will produce 23200 heat (most of which is stored in the overclocked heat vents) which will dissapate over 29 seconds at which point you turn it on for another 10 seconds and so on. The issue might be that heat accumulates in some components over time which might become a problem. gonna do some practical tests tonight to see if it works out.preferably you do this with a decent buffer of hot coolant to smooth out any variation.

Should produce about 1600 hu or 1200 eu/tick at an insane efficiency. as the design puts out 4640*0,75= 3480 eu/tick (if superheated steam) over 20000s this should be an efficiency of about 1392 million eu per cycle or an efficiency of 43,5 (43,5 million eu per fuel rod).

This is the biggest one i could make, not sure if i would actually wanna use it due to the reflectors but it should produce 1350 eu/tick
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…zwew4c8cymoawxayqi6wxqpds
The cycle of this one would be difficult thought so not sure if it works in indefinetly as you would either have left over heat or have short periods of not enough heat to keep the superheated steam going.

Tha major problem of my 1.384HU (and the 1.408HU) design is it's high price. The 1.280 design might be a little bit less efficient, but much cheaper to build.
The reactors we fitted in in between are (i assume that you'rs were'nt cheap either) nearly as expensive as the big one, but just a little bit better then the 1.280. If you are willing to use more ressources there is imho no point in doing anything smaller then the biggest one unless you want maximum efficiency. If the costs of the reactor matter, the 1.280HU design should be the reactor of your choice.
Of course this only works for Mark I reactors.

To me your designs are vastly superior to the ones i posted earlier. the first reactor would produce 992 eu/tick (600*1,5+92) with 12 fuel rods while the second would produce 1058 eu/tick (700*1,5+8)using 14 fuel rods. Both reactors are EXTREMLY good as mark 1 reactors and i consider both of them better than any of the previously posted 5x5 reactors. However the 692 hu design is still superior to the second one as its efficiency is higher. the 704 gives 30,2 million eu/fuel rod while the 692 gives 33,1 million eu/rod. (which is something like 5-8 times better than regular reactors depending on efficiency)

Perhaps i should have mentioned this in my previous post but my point was that reactors above 1300 was not unheard of before your post, not that they where better than yours.

My new mark 5 designs should be about 20-30% more efficient if they actually work. They should be controllable with ic2 only as they are run on fixed cycles. 10 seconds on and 19 off is veery easy to set up. However im still a little bit concerned what will happen in the last second during the cycle which i will have to test in practice.

The biggest difference is the power output thought. 1058 eu/tick vs 1200/1350 eu/tick is substantial difference. if they actually work i might be arsed to calculate the material costs so we can compare. Don't think the reactor planner is any good in this case.

The first Mark V looks quite nice for me. We started Mass-fabricaton and just upgraded the fabricator to HV; A reactor with an effective Output of ~500EU/t will be quite helpful until we have enough MOX cells (wich will take long).
Speaking of MOX, i am still trying to find the "ideal" Setup for them as my cooling solution with normal&advanced Heat Exchangers wo'nt be able to keep the temperature. I am currently using a design with 4 Quads, 320EU/t basic output, 656 Heat and an efficiency of 4. I am sure that there is a lot of room for improvement but even I have no clue how my MOX priorities look like. A High Efficiency would be nice, but i want to breed some Plutonium on the other hand.
Using MOX in a 5x5 reactor appears to be pretty hard too, since their heat production scales with the reactor temperature, making it nearly impossible to build up a somewhat cool Mark 1 with decent efficiency.

Sadly it is impossible to make mark 1 mox reactors in the 5x5. They are all mark 5 actually since they are either at 0 heat at which point it is not a mox reactor or spiraling out of controle because the heat they produce increase with their temperature. so they are either cooling down or spiraling out of controle. Nuclear controle works pretty well to turn the reactor on and off depending on temperature. If i remember correctly this was the best design i did that time

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…pbcurq980tcmzfs7pujc8faps

The controle i had look something like this
http://prntscr.com/4qga7x

As i mentioned previously i cycled it between 60-80% heat. All the plating is to make it less sensetive to the insane amount of heat it produces at high temperature. at 80% temperature it produces 4 times the normal amount of power so that makes it insanely unstable. the heat the reactor produces scales linearly from 1x to 5x from 0-100% heat.

It worked very nice in practice and i sucessfully used it for several cycles in survival so as long as you set up a good system to make sure it doesn't go booooom it's quite nice-

The efficiency they have is insane thought. I think that one was about 100 million eu per fuel rod. However they can never have very good output as it is still dependent on how much cooling you can have which is way less efficient when you are doing mox in 5x5.

Got to much irl stuff right now to test out the mark 5 reactor but will try to get around to it during the week.

I have designed a Mark 1 reactor with Efficiency 7. As a 5x5 fluid reactor it will produce 650 EU/t and only needs to replace 4 thick neutron reflectors per cycle.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/v3/reactorplanner.html?gncbl8i1a56mvijdp0embvvu91kl8ly666ns8tyw5ber4hbnnn3qzwew4c8cymoawxayqi6wxqpds