My Fluid Reactor Experience - fun, but sadface

TLDR:
I built a fluid reactor in survival! -It sank into the swamp.
I built another fluid reactor! -It fell over, burned down, THEN sank into the swamp.
BUT THE THIRD ONE STAYED UP!

Oh, and their explosions aren't so bad.

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I built a fluid reactor in survival. It was a BEAR to get all the lead, and I immediately tried to maximize its capabilities. I got it to 608Hu/t, removing 600Hu/t, and it might take an hour to eventually overheat. Well, I got distracted and left it running for something like 3 hours... the core exploded. Fun fact: The liquid shell remained!

So I rebuilt the nuclear core from a side reactor I had. I had to re-create all of the cooling components, but before too long I had a fluid reactor running again.

Over time, I made some iridium and got my reactor all the way to 1350Hu/t, with 1400 Hu/t cooling. Yay! no more overheat problems! As long as I had enough room for the resultant EU, I was fine!

So then I left it on for 3-4 hours with nothing using EU. No heat was converted, no heat was removed, heat built up and it exploded, taking my 4 iridium reflectors with it.

But the liquid shell remained! again!

I will eventually make another nuclear core, and will make more iridium reflectors over time... but for now the sheer amount of production disheartens me. It was fun to make such an accomplishment!

The moral of the story: Make SOME kind of check for reactor shutdown. Levers are cheap but not recommended for reactor control.

I made a past, "Liquid reactor Fundamentals", which tried to show what I did. Obviously, I was wrong

Here's my reactor component setup: 672 heat -> 1344 Hu / t -> 672 EU per tick with stirling generators. I haven't gotten to blowing up a reactor involving steam turbines yet
(Link for IC2Reactor Planner V3)

Ok, so this uses 4 reflectors. They don't have to be iridium, but iridium doesn't die like the others. I try to make my reactor maintenance-free. This is the highest heat Mark I reactor I have ever found.

A temporary reactor for when your iridium blows up and you need to make more:

Only 640EU on stirling, and double the uranium, but mostly the same components.

Here's the core of my shell design. This minimizes the lead needed. Basically, I made 3 corners to get the heat removal capacity I need.
you need 140 heat conductors, 15 fluid ejectors, and 3 fluid pullers by the end. Many rubber balls died to make this reactor.

After setting this up, you place one Liquid Heat Exchanger against the non-corner port; give it 10 heat conductors and a fluid ejector in the center slot. Place a tank next to it against the center Liquid port. shift-click the wrench on a good location to point the LHE, and place a stirling generator on the orange square. Shift-click the Stirling to make sure the wierd design is visible in the same direction as the LHE orange square and you should be good.

You need a minimum of 2 squares beyond your reactor on the front, sides and bottom to make this fit. Also, Stirling generators will dump energy from any side like other generators, so you DON'T need 3 spaces for a wire to fit on the "end".

In the following image, I added arrows to all stirling generators and LHEs to show the side I shift-clicked with the wrench. Tanks are marked with a T. You should be able to get 6 LHE / Stirling (or other heat user) combos onto each corner. Tanks get NO UPGRADES.

The fluid process is: non-corner port pushes fluid into LHE. LHE cools fluid and pushes fluid into tank. Corner LHE pulls fluid from tank. Reactor heats fluid.

1400 cooling is 2 corners plus part of a third.

Here's my actual reactor. Still broken, I need more lead again

For those without iridium, I suggest this build until you can get the iridium. This way you can build directly into your iridium build when you need to.
(Ic2 Reactor Planner v3) http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…anxnwykdqe4ji9u4vu2q2ovls