Hello, I'm new to this reactor generator thing in IC2 and I've been playing around with setups, trying to understand the principles that govern it.
I'm stuck understanding why this particular setup blows up and why this one doesn't. More specifically, what is the principle that leads to one blowing up and one not.
Question regarding principles of Nuclear reactor configuration
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It has to do with how the reactor calculates what each component does each tick or second, which starts from the items in the top left and moves right and then down to the bottom right slot.
From how I understand it, in your first setup none of the vents and exchangers have anything to do because there is no heat. And then at the end of each cycle the uranium quad rods add their heat. Now the next cycle that heat should be dealt with, but why I don't know.
In your second setup the uranium quad rods generate power and heat and then subsequently the heat vents and exchangers deal with the heat.
This is also why most designs found here have the uranium in the top left corner in the reactor.
It just works that way.
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I understand but at the same time I'm still a little confused.
If every tick or second or (whatever counts as a cycle), the algorithm starts from the top left and moves right and down and so on until it gets to the bottom right slot. Then the consequence would be that for the very first cycle the vents and heat exchangers would have nothing to do. But after that cycle there is now heat stored within the vents/hull that the vents can deal with on the second cycle and so on.
The only downside according to this would be that throughout the entire process the reactor would hold a cycle's worth of heat extra than it would otherwise. But I don't see why it would compound and blow up?
I assume that by "Now the next cycle that heat should be dealt with, but why I don't know." you're expressing the same confusion that I am.This shit hard
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I assume that by "Now the next cycle that heat should be dealt with, but why I don't know." you're expressing the same confusion that I am.
This shit hard
Yes, it's pretty late and I start typing vague, but that's indeed meant as confusion to why the heat from the previous cycle isn't dealt with in the current or next one.
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Even more confusing, if I switch the Advanced heat exchanger with a component heat exchanger, the same phenomenon does not happen. In fact, it's kind of the opposite-ish.
The component heat exchanger has much greater heat exchange rates between components compared to the advanced heat exchanger, at the cost (or benefit actually) of not being able to transfer heat with the hull. The overclocked heat vents already draw heat from the hull anyway, so the advanced heat exchanger is somewhat irrelevant in this case. You just need much greater component heat exchanging rates when you want to even out the heat between overclocked heat vents. I THINK I GET IT.
I think I got it. ... hot as well.
Nice that you figured out many of the mechanics of the reactor on your own.
Indeed, the fuel rods either dump their heat into adjecent components if they can accept it (ie heat vents, exchangers, coolant cells) or dump it straight into the reactor hull.Now, when you have a setup where your rods create immense amounts of heat, it could easily destroy a heat vent because it takes all of the generated heat directly before your heat exchangers can balance the heat generation between other components. That is when you could either use coolant cells as a heat buffer or depend on hull cooling through overclocked heat vents.
Whether this still works in the latest versions I don't know, but some players used these high capacity coolant cells and created a high efficiency and highly powerful reactor setup where coolant cells cooled the main reactor, then swapped nearly depleted coolant cells to specialized 'cooling reactors' where heat vents or component heat vents would cool down the coolant cells and subsequently move those back into the main reactor.
Get creative with it.