Reactor: What Went Wrong?!

Nuke · Oct 14th 2011

I've been running my first reactor(+2 chamber) for a couple days now without incident. Last night I decided to try refining some old uranium cells I'd been holding on to just to see how it works. I used the online designer and came up with a design that worked. I put everything in and it seemed to be working. I let it run overnight. When I came to look at it in the morning, it was shut down, the old cells were recharged, the new(now used) cells had turned in to partially depleted cells(both of them! Wow!), and everything seemed fine. EXCEPT. The water surrounding my generator was almost all gone, and a wooden sign that was near it was also gone. Did my generator nearly meltdown? Have I miscalculated heat and nearly had the worst accident? That's the only thing I can think of... Thoughts?

Nuke...

Direwolf20 · Oct 14th 2011

The first signs of a nuclear reactor getting close to critical is water evaporating (which of course then causes the reactor to heat up even faster). It also causes fire around it, and generates some lava.

Then it disappears, leaving behind a big hole filled with lots of tears.

I'd wager that yes, you got close to overheating. Did any of your coolant items inside get destroyed/changed?

Nuke · Oct 14th 2011

No... everything inside the generator was as I left it. I purposely engineered the setup to have the reactor just behind the uranium cells in heat. In my test models, the reactor ended up at something like 9500 heat at the end of the cycle when both uranium cells finally wore out.

Direwolf20 · Oct 14th 2011

Quote from Nuke

No... everything inside the generator was as I left it. I purposely engineered the setup to have the reactor just behind the uranium cells in heat. In my test models, the reactor ended up at something like 9500 heat at the end of the cycle when both uranium cells finally wore out.

Thats it then -- it explodes at 10,000 but will cause the other effects at lower temps. 9500 is definitely enough to evaporate water.

If you put your source blocks a few blocks above your reactor, so that they basically 'rain' onto it -- the reactor will evaporate the 'moving' water blocks, but the source water blocks will remain intact.

Nuke · Oct 14th 2011

Ah...well then. My design can actually run a little cooler and still complete refining both cells in one go, so I'll try that. =D Thanks for the info, and I'm glad my reactor didn't explode since it's 4 blocks away from my home. =D (Yeah, that probably wasn't a great decision...)

Nuke · Oct 14th 2011

BTW, Here's the setup I used that nearly blew up. =D

http://test.vendaria.net/index…XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

OCAdam · Oct 14th 2011

http://test.vendaria.net/index…XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

This reactor goes along the idea of just saving some resources while doing the same as yours (start no heat, end with finished cells). I'm not a good breeder reactor designer at all, so probably should get dezu in here instead.

dezuman · Oct 14th 2011

Quote from Direwolf20

Thats it then -- it explodes at 10,000 but will cause the other effects at lower temps. 9500 is definitely enough to evaporate water.

If you put your source blocks a few blocks above your reactor, so that they basically 'rain' onto it -- the reactor will evaporate the 'moving' water blocks, but the source water blocks will remain intact.

Actually the boiling-, melting- and exploding-points are variable, depending on number of chambers and reactor plating. So with a few chambers you can sefely pass 10k heat

Nuke · Oct 14th 2011

Since the water was basically gone, I took the opportunity to expand the area of the reactor to handle a couple more chambers, which should keep things safer for me. I think.

dezuman · Oct 14th 2011

Having the water flowing down from above prevents it boiling away

Nuke · Oct 15th 2011

Done. I just completed a full cycle and no loss of water, and both cells recharged. Thanks for the tips! =D

Nuke...

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