So my breeder went off last night... why?

1st Official Post

    Well, first of, this is my breeder: http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…56w5kdr4il7zly6lyfs9bt8n4
    I put the reactor plating in there to separate the place where the uranium belongs from the cooling system. (Heat configuration takes some more space, hence it's so big)


    I am playing on a SMP server, which has the thermometer mod installed. So I used the thermometer to check the heat of the reactor and noticed the following:
    After It went up to approx. 9400 heat, I switched from heat configuration to breeding configuration, which I posted above.
    According to the thermometer, the reactor was cooling down. The first mystery.


    I changed my design so the reactor only cooled down slowly. After I went afK for a short moment, the reactor blew up. (I got most of the stuff back, though. And no environmental damage. (It was in reinforced stone)


    I also tried removing the reactor plating to stabilize it, but it didn't work. Removing cooling systems made in heat up, placing one again made it cool down again. Couldn't get it to remain on a heat level.


    So my question is: Why was the reactor hull cooling down and how can a negative breeder blow up with a breeding setup?

    Your reactor is running hot enough to have environmental effects - any water in a 5x5x5 cube centred on the reactor has a chance of evaporating. Put another way, any water around the reactor will evaporate, and must be resupplied either as falling water supplied by source blocks out of range, or by source blocks that reduplicate. If your source blocks end up being evaporated and the reactor starts to go dry, then overheating and explosion will follow shortly afterwards.


    I think your reactor config might lose the plating in the top left corner over time because it has no cooling, but that shouldn't cause the reactor to blow.

    It won't lose the plating, because it is not connected to any heat dispensers and doesn't suck heat from the hull itself. Also, the Depleted Isotope Cells don't produce heat. The plating stays on 0% heat all the time.


    As for the water: I set it up in a way the source block is out of range and the reactor is cooled by water falling on top of it. Placing a few blocks and destroying them again causes the water to completely surround the reactor.


    So, those are not the problems, but I think I figured it out:


    After switching to breeding configuration, the reactor cooled down for some reason. I still don't know why, but that is the source of the problem.
    The cooling was only temporarily and it would have eventually stopped cooling down.
    But I changed the configuration to stop it from losing heat too fast.


    So the cooling stops now and it is still in the other config. Guess what happens? Yup, the reactor heats up again.


    It destroys the cooling systems pretty quickly and causes the hull to gain heat in an instance. And the reactor goes boom.


    I still don't know why it cooled down, though. I didn't place cool cooling systems in it, which immediately comes to mind as a possible cause.
    Actually, I only removed components to switch the configuration...

    • Official Post

    Did you, by any chance, insert new reactor parts into the reactor when it suddenly "cooled down"?
    Keep in mind, "fresh parts", f.e. a new HD have 0 heat... and given your reactor is heated to 9000ish, it will start draining heat rapidly to equal both out (most likely ending up on a level like 8500 within a couple of minutes).


    Very well possible you mistook that "distribution of heat" as a cooling effect... of course, after the new component is heated to the same level as the reactor and the other components, the sudden cooling will stop... if you changed the setup to accommodate for that fake cooling, I can see why it exploded ^^

    I've noticed that my breeder seems to slowly, slowly cool over time ( http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…wcfhtk8wngho7v5v3kcaooxkw ) as well. Since I don't use a thermometer addon, this is based on the heat bars of the components. I typically run the breeder with all components at 1 'bar' of health. If components are just barely heated to this point (ie they tick to 2 bars instantly with added cooling, but otherwise stay at 1 even after 'settling' into the breeding config), later checkins on the reactor sometimes have some of the components with 2 bars. I know any form of maintenance (fuel swaps, isotope swaps) will cool the reactor slightly, but this has occurred even within a single untouched ~80 minute breeding session.


    I would've expected a 'neutral' reactor would slowly heat over time, due to the water evaporation (if the reactor ticks before the block re-fills, that'd be 1 less cooling than expected). Yet it seems like there is a tiny bias toward cooling instead, which I'm at a loss to explain.