The new 5x5 IC² Reactor

Quote from Chocohead

A flow of 25 is far too high. If you could actually supply that much heat to it, you'd be getting 2 and a half buckets of steam a tick. The base amount is a pressure of 0, and a flow of 1, which takes 100 HU/t to give 100 mb/t of Steam. At 220 Bars and a flow of 1, it takes 200 HU/t to give 100 mb/t of Superheated Steam. Each flow increase is adding onto this again, so a flow of 3 at 0 bars will give 300 mb/t of Steam for 300 HU/t.

Now it start working, thanks a lot!

Quote from ThatGerman

Hi!

1216 Hu/s
Reactor planner hash: 21p7itq69ivrsdov69c72jy91k4eyvrsfqb27auqnv0v9lnk6x3eht6eufe2gzt0ul26wd0j4xms6ww
Screenshot attached.

You will need several fluid ports for that setup to work - I have 27, but I think 20 should be enough.

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Remind me, what does this translate into in EU?

A lot more would be, what, another 50%, making around 900 eu/t?

Quote from Chocohead

Yeah, around there probably.

Btw choco, border collies rock. just sayin.

Any idea how efficiently that would burn fuel compared to, say, this thing? http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…zkp9ynvk4yranpdd9x31o2t4w

It consumes 60 uranium per cycle but I can comfortably run it at 900 eu/t (theoretical maximum of 1000 eu/t before your base becomes bowl-shaped). I'm not actually sure how much total EU it gives per 60 uranium sadly, so unless you're a hyper genius you might not be able to answer my question.

Ultimately I'm still trying to figure out a reason to abandon Good Old Simple MOX.

Edit: for clarity, that's a MOX reactor design from Alright, so: MOX reactor designs.
With the description:

6-Chamber Reactors
EU/tick: 1000
Efficiency: 20
Building cost: 396 copper, 153 tin, 657 iron, 36 lead, 48 gold, 22 diamond, 32 redstone, 2 glowstone, 2 lapis, 79 rubber
Running cost: 60 U-238 per cycle
Designed by: Blackpalt

Quote from Chocohead

They totally do.

Your example (as a fluid reactor) - efficiency 1 to 10, 9.98 Average:
1000 * Copper Cable
60 * Copper Plate
22 * Diamond
48 * Gold Plate
420 * Iron Bars
174 * Iron Ingot
258 * Iron Plate
10 * MOX Nuclear Fuel
24 * Redstone
72 * Rubber
150 * Tin Plate

One above - efficiency 0.75 to 9.5, 5.13 Average:
640 * Copper Cable
118 * Copper Plate
4 * Enriched Uranium Nuclear Fuel
56 * Gold Plate
264 * Iron Bars
120 * Iron Ingot
187 * Iron Plate
12 * MOX Nuclear Fuel
144 * Tin Plate

A lot of it is down to cost, a more expensive design would normally net you a better reactor overall (like in this case). Mixing normal uranium and MOX normally makes designs a little funky, in this case using full MOX rather than 3 Quad MOX and 2 Dual Uranium would actually double the EU output in EU mode, and increase the average efficency to 9.5. Still falls short of your example, but can be run without any pre-heating what so ever to achieve it compared to yours which is dependant on a high heat level. I guess that's a good reason to invest in all the lead (and iron) needed for a full fluid reactor setup.

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As you can see though the design I used wasn't a fluid reactor design, just a standard MOX that outputs a ton of eu/t at good efficiency.

I think my problem here is I keep asking the same question: Why should I stop making MOX reactors? They're way better than 5x5 reactors. I can make one in a few minutes, in a smaller space, and they crank out a ton of energy. Nobody seems to be able to tell me "You should use a 5x5 reactor because they give better efficiency" or "better point output" or anything like that.

As far as I can tell, they just suck.

Agreed.

I looked through the configs last week and I couldn't see this, but I wish I could make all non-5x5 scale down to 20% output. *That* would be an incentive to "upgrade".

I've finally started testing of my new 5x5 reactor typ and presently the results are promising. I am not entirely sure i will get the superheated steam cycle reactor to work but if it does it will produce 1600 hu/s at an extremly high efficiency (a lot higher than previous designs) utilizing fixed cycle mark 5 reactors. I made some post of this previously and the preliminary testing ive done so far seems to indicate that it works very well but might be sensitive to lagg as the redstone controle needs to be extremly precise not to make the reactor components accumulate heat over cycles or vary in heat production. Worst case scenario it will still work out as a stirling generator but im still hopefull that i will get it to work with a superheated steam cycle.

The second concept ive looked into i am quite certain will work will work for stirling setups but primarily for biogas to power production at insane efficiencies. The efficiency of this reactor will likely be far beyond anything that has ever been posted so far and it might make me reconsider the usage of 5x5 reactors depending on the numbers i end up with. I know the efficiency will be extraordinary however i have yet to find out the power output this design.

I will be making more extensive tests of both concept reactors the following days and posting setups and some theoretical efficiencies and power outputs of the setups.

It Works! i just screwed upp the redstone timing a little bit before.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…fofzp975xkw8nn00g0e61um0w

Here is the setup in action
http://prntscr.com/7bxkhq
Its a mark 5 reactor running on a fixed cycle where the overclocked heat exchangers work as heat buffers.

it runs for 10 seconds every 27 seconds on a fixed cycle and it produces 1600 hu/s without fail. while i haven't hooked it upp to a superheated steam i am confident it would work perfectly, especially if you had a buffer of hot coolant althought i havent seen any variation so far so im not even sure thats needed. Ive had it running for at least one hour now and no problems in sight

Here is the redstone timing i did to controle it
http://prntscr.com/7bxxzf
It should work with vanilla redstone repeaters as well as long as you can have something produce a pulse every 27 second. 1 redstone pulse every 27 seconds produce a 10 seconds long redstone signal using redstone repeaters

How is the efficiency you might ask? it produces 4320 hu/s when its activated, which would produce 4320*20 tics *0,75 (0,5 if stirling)=64800 eu/ second its activated. over one cycle it would produce 64800*20000s =1296 million eu or 43,2 million eu per fuel rod/cycle.

so 1200 eu/tick, efficiency 43,2 5x5 reactor
Not gonna lie, im quite pleased with myself

Next im gonna check how effective a biogas setup with this is...

Edit: Using 5x5 reactors to produce heat for biogas power was a project in futility im afraid. 1600 hu produces enough biogas in fermenters to give about 1250 eu/tick which is barely better than using it directly in superheated steam except then you wont need lots of biomass and semifluid generators (i was using about 79 to keep up with 1600 hu worth of biogas). So i can definetly say that ive put the nail in the coffin for 5x5 biogas nuclear reactors from an energy efficiency point of view. it is just as effective and less of a hassle to use superheated steam rather than biogas.

The setup
http://prntscr.com/7c0h6w
Fermenters are behind the semifluid generators (16 in total for 1600 hu)
eu production of the setup
http://prntscr.com/7c0hz3
the total number should become slightly higher as it has not equalized fully yet.

It's been a couple years since I played IC2, and there's been at least a couple months worth of development progress since then (kidding, kidding... sorta). The new reactors got me excited, so I've been playing with heat reactors, trying to find a way to maximize the heat output of a low-maintenance core. The basic requirements are: no replaceable parts besides the fuel rods and neutron reflectors, and low meltdown risk. The best I've been able to do so far is a consistent ~750HU/t, translating to about 525EU/t through superheated steam. The reactor planner (v3) doesn't seem to accurately report heat vent output, but here's the layout:

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…u1h0pdift7fi9iofg1an6t5og

These will run with zero chance of any of the parts melting. Is there a better way to squeeze more heat vents in there? Mathematically I have too many heat exchangers and not enough vents, but due to layout constraints I couldn't find a better pattern.

I've got the system setup using a number of other mods - nuclear control, pressure pipes, and project red - but I think this should be usable in theory with vanilla redstone timers and vanilla IC2, if you're a real masochist. Could put quad uranium rods in it for better efficiency, but I don't want to risk a meltdown if lag/chunk loading issues cause problems with the regulation system (which happened in my tests). You could also replace the neutron reflectors with heat plating for lower operating costs, but thick neutron reflectors barely put a dent in my resources. I'm not sure why everyone complains about their expense.

I have a couple questions/complaints I haven't been able to answer due to lack of documentation or impracticality of setting up experiments.

First off, is there any reason to run a boiler setup with anything other than exactly 2 liquid heat exchangers at exactly 1mb/t, 220-221 pressure? I can't figure out the point of even having settings on the boiler, since it only appears to work at very precise settings with what appears to be completely arbitrary math and a completely opaque GUI. Why even have a range of 0-300 pressure and 0-1000 mb/t when no other settings do anything useful (other than the similarly singular optimal design for distilling, which appears to be 60HU/t, 100 pressure, 1mb/t)? Why not just have a steam & superheated steam setting? Trial and error with 300,000 possible combinations isn't a game mechanic.

Second - distilled water generation - in order to have enough distilled water in circulation it seems incredibly impractical to use vanilla IC2, and impractical in general to generate distilled water. It's slow as dirt to create, for one thing. A two-boiler setup with electric heat generators outputs a measly 200mB/t for 400EU/t, which took something like 4 hours to generate enough to keep the 4 boilers from the reactor filled. This made boostrapping to a 5x5 reactor from wind power unnecessarily costly and time consuming, especially with the boilers fighting for power with the refinery (macerator+washer+centrifuge, OMFG slow and expensive). Solar distillers are basically free, I guess, if you don't want a useful amount of distilled water.

Furthermore, every time the reactor goes down and comes back online again the (apparently cosmetic) initial puff of steam as the boiler begins producing superheated steam causes leakage. In the end, I just ran fresh water through the reactor boilers till I filled up a huge tank as a buffer, then switched them to distilled after clearing calcification from the boilers. This would be impractical with vanilla IC2 due to lack of pipes or tanks. Is there a less stupid way to do this that I'm overlooking, or is it basically just "not finished"?

Kinetic steam generators: I was initially running one turbine-turbine-condenser stack per boiler until I stumbled on the fact that the turbines can handle a practically unlimited amount of steam (maxing out around 4000EU/t output for ~6000HU/t input in my tests iirc, using an infinite superheated steam supply). This isn't documented anywhere, and there's apparently no efficiency cost for pushing lots of steam through a single turbine stack vs. running multiple stacks. Am I missing anything?

Steam turbine blades: OMFG, expensive. When I was running 8 kinetic steam generators it took 4 (!) blast furnaces in continual operation to keep up with refined iron demand (27x refined iron per blade x8 for about 1 full cycle worth of blades). Total cost to run the furnaces was ~90 EU/t (counting compressors to keep air canisters circulating). I didn't work in the cost of running the refineries since they're always producing, or the metal shapers for rolling the plates. I can't find any info on the wear equation for turbine blades, and they wear too slow to do an A/B test. Do they wear out based on flat operation time or an RPM-to-time basis? If the latter, should be way cheaper and more sane to run a single steam generator stack for cost reasons as well. If the former, the cost and production needs are the same, which means 5x5 reactors are not as efficient as they appear (a flat requirement of continual 90+ EU/t consumption for blast furnaces is ~15% of my reactor design's output, cutting its total efficiency).

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Overall, this is pretty cool compared to the old system and puts nuclear farther into the endgame, complex engineering bracket (where it belongs, IMHO). I can't imagine doing this without fluid pipes and tanks though, and without redpower/project red and wireless redstone I'm not sure I'd have the patience to build the control system.

OTOH, wind generators are now crazy powerful, and I kind of feel like other than the larger space needed for a wind farm, they're now more cost effective and maintainable than nuclear. Carbon fiber blades are practically free unless you're burning coal for some reason, and scaffolds make raising a windmill to a reasonable height pretty trivial. So why not wind? The only answer I could come up with was "because it would be fun" and "eventually free energy with the plutonium pellet things".

Or I guess you can just make basic EU reactors.

Thanks for the info. So basically you might as well push all your steam through one kinetic steam generator to save on materials, that's good to know.

I actually set up my windmill stacks to minimize EU loss, but I don't seem to be experiencing any EU loss over distance, nor are the machines blowing up from overload (which I know I've done accidentally at least a few times), nor do the cables seem to care whether they're getting greater EU/t than they're rated for. I guess those features haven't been reimplemented since the last time they were broken?

I had not thought of using two turbines for all the superheated steam and now that i think of it it's a brilliant idea. You just need some mod that can handle moving large amounts of fluids and it should be easy enough. I might just test it with my above mentioned reactor as it is a big concern there considering you have to handle 1600 Hu/s which is 8-16 turbines depending on what mods you have installed. Should make for a really compact system. Might test it out if i find the time.

Of the popular mods im guessing ender io or steve's factory manager should be able to handle 800 mb/tick. Not sure about thermal dynamics thought but it could be worth a try.

Regarding the distance thing with wind power you can easily work your way around that by transporting the power in item form rather than through power lines. Just make a few MFE charging stations at 160 height that charges energy crystals. With some filtering you can then export the full batteries using item transportation down to your base (costing no power) an then you empty them out in a mfe or mfsu there. Again with some filters you can then export the empty energy crystal and then it up again to be recharged. Requires an item transportation mod that can filter based on meta data which is quite common these days. Both ender io and thermal dynamics should work to name a few

Quote from Chocohead

I forgot about trying that, will try. Is plutonium in/planned too?

Choco did you ever end up trying a 5x5 Thorium Reactor?

Requires GT 5u of course.

I've assembled a simple passively-cooled thorium reactor which produces a meager 100 eu/t at 7 efficiency, but I have no idea if it would be suitable as a 5x5. Using something like this design courtesy of Greg.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…cathr1b1h594m7ewstl3b0u80

Seems to work just fine in 5u (so far.) Been running for all of 5 minutes though, so who knows what interesting craters time will produce.

What's the rule of thumb when determining the quality of a reactor in a 5x5 assembly?

Quote from Pyure

I've assembled a simple passively-cooled thorium reactor which produces a meager 100 eu/t at 7 efficiency, but I have no idea if it would be suitable as a 5x5. Using something like this design courtesy of Greg.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.blueyonder.…94m7ewstl3b0u80

Seems to work just fine in 5u (so far.) Been running for all of 5 minutes though, so who knows what interesting craters time will produce.

I tried that in my newer reactor planner, and as a fluid reactor, that design is predicted to produce an average of 895.84 Hu/s while running.