Series of single chamber reactors

Quote from NotCoach

New to IC2 anad the forums. So if what I am about to suggest is ridiculous because I missed something, please forgive me.

I have been reading about the multiple chamber designs using water buckets for cooling and how vital it is to maintain 5 or 6 buckets a second. Instaed of that why not 3 or four single chamber reactors each requiring only 2 buckets per second? The follwoing design produces 490EU/t. Add two more reactors and you get 1470EU/t. A foruth, 1960. The only major drawback I see is that you would need approxiamtely 50% more uranium cells to match the 1520EU/t design I saw here. Thoughts?

Reactor Design: http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1110101011201521s1r11r10

To answer your question of 'why not', well, to be blunt: efficiency.
Normally, reactor design is about balancing EU/t output, uranium efficiency, cost, and liability to explode. CASUCs 'cheat' that balance by allowing very high efficiencies that can be run continuously for very high EU/t output. While you could make multiple smaller CASUCs to equal one maximum-size CASUC, they will never be as efficient. That extra uranium needed in the smaller reactors is uranium that wouldn't have to be burned to get the same output from the big reactor.
The only reason you might want to go with smaller CASUCs is reactor cost. But, since you need at least 3 single reactors (3x2 = 6 chambers + 3x other reactor bits) to equal the one 5-chamber reactor (2+5 = 7 chambers + 1x other reactor bits), that's almost completely ruled out.

I see two possible other reasons (outside the usual reactor balance) to consider smaller CASUCs:

1) "RP2 tubes are haaard :("
...to paraphrase your main argument . Indeed, trying to push 5-6 buckets a second with so little margin for error is quite a daunting challenge. If you don't think you're up to it, or that it'll be too unstable, feel free to go for a smaller CASUC with less explosion liability. Just be aware that there's good reason to cram as much uran as possible into these things.

2) mobile power source for RP2 frames (when they arrive)
Since frames (as we've seen them so far, anyway) will only move blocks directly touching them, moving a 5-chamber reactor with frames could be somewhat difficult (but not impossible, provided Eloraam gets tubes working within frames as planned). A single chamber CASUC could be much easier to set up for such a rig. It may also be much more appropriate, as 1.5kEU/t seems a bit overkill for any activities I see a mobile platform doing.

Edit:
And welcome to the forums!
Don't worry, your suggestion isn't ridiculous.

TL;DR version:
A smaller CASUC would be much easier to engineer for, but doing so would cut down efficiency, which is fully half the reason for going CASUC in the first place. So I doubt you'll find many users to support the idea.

Speaking of frames; it's easier to setup an Efficient /air cooled/, RP2 logic pulsed 3-chamber reactor that just lays across the frame and takes advantage of having a gap around it.

Quote from NotCoach

New to IC2 anad the forums. So if what I am about to suggest is ridiculous because I missed something, please forgive me.

I have been reading about the multiple chamber designs using water buckets for cooling and how vital it is to maintain 5 or 6 buckets a second. Instaed of that why not 3 or four single chamber reactors each requiring only 2 buckets per second? The follwoing design produces 490EU/t. Add two more reactors and you get 1470EU/t. A foruth, 1960. The only major drawback I see is that you would need approxiamtely 50% more uranium cells to match the 1520EU/t design I saw here. Thoughts?

Reactor Design: http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1110101011201521s1r11r10

Thanks for the link! I'm glad you like my reactor design.

The design I made was meant to run a matter fab and not much else. It produces magnitudes more energy than would be required for normal operations of something. My design is not in the least portable, as a single chamber casuc can be, and it also uses a precise amount of water around it to cool it (as well as blocks to restrict cooling).

Also, with the 'nerf' to buckets cooling, they're awesome to work with and plan around. Each bucket provides 250 cooling, and each reactor heat pulse is 1 second. I modified your design just a bit (lowered its efficiency by 0.06, increased output by 30eu/t, and made it easier to control) This particular one needs 2 buckets a second, which is easily done by only 1 sequencer. In fact, I could run the entire system from 1 sequencer, 2 filters, 1 retriever, and 1 deployer. so much easier than the 4-6x those numbers required for the larger reactor

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1i14101011201521s1r11r10

There's no point in running a normal CARUC/CASUC hot, so replacing the top row of two + gap with 3 uranium to finish re-enrichment works; plus doing that reduces the heat produced enough to make it reliable on bucket cooling alone.

Also, that lowers the output from EV (2048) to HV (<= 512).