[Reactor Designs] The GregTech-Thread for Reactor Designs! (Please dont spam me like Rick, with tons of noobish Plans, PLEASE!!!)

Quote from jonch

So Iv'e made this breeder, which is a modification to the simple 0-chamber breeder in the OP. What I wanted to do is get some re-enriched U cells fast, so I've added 10 healing cells and some vents, and it appears to keep it stable at 10K heat (4X faster charging), without going to crazy on resources.

Stable breeder is one that stays stable no matter what will hapen with its components. When thorium cell burns out in your reactor, components will melt.
I this it would be much better to use this simple design that stays the same all the time.
Then just keep adding plating and heating cells to get faster breeding. This is the point where no more heating cells can be added and breeder will breed 432 cells in one thorium cycle. After that you can think about adding more cooling to support double or quad thorium cells.

Ah, I see. Was wondering why the planner showed it was a MK-II and not a MK-I.
I didn't actually plan to use my design as a full-time breeder, I just wanted to get re-encrichies quickly, when I'll have more time (and copper) I will make a good, fast breeder.
Thanks for the advice.

Something I slapped together :
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…lrdxp4zl17ocmraynp4ampn9c

4 chamber, 314 EU/tick, efficiency 4.44. No iridium reflectors. Also, the thorium : plutonium ratio is 16:6 per cycle, which is much closer to the ratio you can produce plutonium and thorium in. (a better ratio would be about 5 : 1, since you can get a lot more thorium than plutonium)

And another n00b design : 5 chamber, 367 EU/tick, 4.41 efficiency. No iridium reflectors, and the thorium : plutonium ratio is 4:1. Better, but still not ideal.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…modvr1ufr46oztj82l9yeew3k

I could use some help from the reactor engineers : the perfect reactor would be 5:1 thorium : plutonium, would provide lots of power per reactor (someone has to insert all these components by hand, and so fewer reactors that give more power is better), and would have decent efficiency. (not as big of a factor : a reactor with a higher efficiency number that doesn't provide the right ratio is junk)

Oh, and no iridium plates.

Best design so far : http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…c49kb8dppu63bvlromd9i28zk

I realized something.

You can use thorium as reflectors of sorts.

proof of concept: 325 EU/t, 4 quad thorium cells, 5 uranium cells.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…fnr92q86l3t8k760oajwpv11c

Did not test in computer cube.

Works for creating high efficiency plutonium as well: http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…5jah2n9jmcsuv22k712hbjeo0

416 EU/t, 4 plutonium and 4 quad thorium.

Some actual production designs off of this concept tomorrow I think.

Edit: Damn, other people ahve hit the concept.

I'm not sure where you're getting 5:1 from though Bricked. Thorium and plutonium come out at 4:1 in the centrifuge (re-enriched as the source), you can get craplaods of thorium and a little bit of plutonium from mining by hand of course, but rock cutting a stack of coal is not worth my time by the point this is relevant. After you figure in the difference between how long they last you want 10 thorium in the reactor for every plutonium, which is *exactly* what you have.

(Jesus, if I did all the math right that's the equivalent of 367 EU/t for 5 uranium and 40 copper)

Ok, something I'll probably actually build. This is not nearly as efficient as BrickedKeyboard's designs in terms of uranium ore (takes twice as much plutonium), but uses 1/5th the copper and still manages 324 EU/t.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…9xuakrk51ozo6mugza2jj22gw

I can probably throw the excess thorium into an LV reactor for an extra boost.

Here's a relatively cheap hybrid thorium plutonium 4 chamber 220EU/t Eff 4 Mark I reactor (3 double thorium cells and 4 plutonium cells twice). I wanted to reduce the non-renewable copper while getting more EU/t. Checked with GregTech computer cube to be stable.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…yub1ncuq24zad1syp0irl8y68

Here's a quick change to SSD's really cheap breeder to double output and make it be automatic (via BC/RP) (per cycle).

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…hke1wngiiryifp3b1ve7vofls

And finally a simple way to make your reactor/breeder automatic* (for 1 cycle). The manager to the left has nothing set and the chest it controls has only enough materials (plutonium cells or depleted isotope cell) to complete one cycle. The emerald pipe to the right extracts (can be re-enriched cells or near-depleted ones) with an autoarchic gate set to "items in inventory = pulser".

Quote from Requia

I'm not sure where you're getting 5:1 from though Bricked. Thorium and plutonium come out at 4:1 in the centrifuge (re-enriched as the source), you can get craplaods of thorium and a little bit of plutonium from mining by hand of course, but rock cutting a stack of coal is not worth my time by the point this is relevant. After you figure in the difference between how long they last you want 10 thorium in the reactor for every plutonium, which is *exactly* what you have.

Monozit ore also gives thorium if ground in the industrial grinder. In the most good modpacks (such as Mindcrack) the ore is present.

In any case, I found it difficult to get above a 4:1 ratio.

Quote from Requia

Ok, something I'll probably actually build. This is not nearly as efficient as BrickedKeyboard's designs in terms of uranium ore (takes twice as much plutonium), but uses 1/5th the copper and still manages 324 EU/t.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…9xuakrk51ozo6mugza2jj22gw

I can probably throw the excess thorium into an LV reactor for an extra boost.

Here's the problem : for 1 every unit of thorium you burn, you end up with THREE excess unburned units of thorium. This is terrible for efficiency : you'd need to create a whole bunch of thorium reactors for every one of these in order to burn up all of that thorium. (since you started you wanted to avoid consuming copper)

Or, more realistically, you won't bother and that thorium will pile up in chests.

Point is, unburned fuel is inefficient, even if you get great numbers for the fuel you did burn.

And having to create tons of extra reactors and reactor parts is also inefficient, since that's usually the limiting factor, not fuel availability.

My unoptimized design is better, because instead of making 2 reactors with two different designs : one to burn the excess thorium and one to burn the plutonium + thorium, you build 2 reactors of that same design that each give 367 EU/tick. (versus getting 416 for one and maybe 100 for the other)

Ok, now that I've gotten (partially) the hang of the "minigame" for reactor planning, here's the latest creation :

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…ymxri6yeufxrqgy53n15hzq4g

420 EU/tick. 6 chambers. 4.38 efficiency (as if that mattered)

And most importantly, 4.8 thorium for every plutonium! As long as you're running any modpack that has MFFS (bonus thorium) or some other source of extra thorium, this is perfect. You burn up almost all your fuel evenly.

MFFS gives 1 whole thorium for every single monazite ore found. That ore seems to be more common than uranium, but assuming it has the same rarity, then the math works perfectly.

Now, it does burn copper every cycle. The efficient place to get more copper is from lava - either from the nether or by melting it using a magma crucible. If you get it from the nether, the energy cost is negligible. Assuming you got it from a magma crucible, currently, that will eat up 54 million of the 420 million EU the reactor generates. You can "rate down" the EU/tick to 366 EU/tick.

However, Greg also recently changed the recipe for double/quad thorium cells. They now only require copper ingots, not plates. So 1/9 the copper, eliminating this as an issue.

How do you refuel the plutonium? Simple : use an electric advanced regulator. You just count : build the reactor, and figure out which slot number has which fuel component. For instance, the top quad thorium cell is slot 1 (slot 0 is the upper left). So stick a quad thorium cell in the middle holoslot of the regulator, and right click until the number for that slot is set to "1". Do the same for each additional component. For instance, the next quad thorium cell is in slot 10.

I'm still not a master at the minigame. Can someone take this reactor design and, leaving the fuel configuration alone, optimize the cooling components to minimize cost and/or complexity. I added a couple of component heat vents after I built the reactor in creative mode and noticed a couple hot spots.

Another thing to factor in is the efficiency per uranium. Every uranium you find, you can create 8 nearly depleted cells. Breed them, and you get 8 re-enriched cells. (that go in the centrifuge) You get, ultimately, 5.5 thorium and 1.375 plutonium from this uranium. You also get more lots of thorium from monazit ore, assuming the modpack you are playing has MFFS (virtually all of them do).

This means it costs 3.64 uranium ore to fuel this reactor, so you end up netting 115 million EU per uranium ore.

By contrast, if you do uranium breeding : with top notch breeding, you net about 9 uranium cells per uranium ore. (since you have a 25% chance of getting a nearly depleted every time you burn one, and you get 8 for every ore when you craft near depleted). Assuming a tip top efficient reactor, from the "designs" page, with an efficiency of 4, and you get 36 million EU per uranium ore.

Played the minigame some more. Did my best to "regularize" the layout inside the reactor to make it easier to build. Still not ideal, however. http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…cokn57z7w5n041a0dk5edyo74

Quote from ElectroBot

And finally a simple way to make your reactor/breeder automatic* (for 1 cycle). The manager to the left has nothing set and the chest it controls has only enough materials (plutonium cells or depleted isotope cell) to complete one cycle. The emerald pipe to the right extracts (can be re-enriched cells or near-depleted ones) with an autoarchic gate set to "items in inventory = pulser".

I would rather use GregTech electric translocators since they are a lot less laggy.

Quote from BrickedKeyboard

Here's the problem : for 1 every unit of thorium you burn, you end up with THREE excess unburned units of thorium. This is terrible for efficiency : you'd need to create a whole bunch of thorium reactors for every one of these in order to burn up all of that thorium. (since you started you wanted to avoid consuming copper)

Or, more realistically, you won't bother and that thorium will pile up in chests.

Point is, unburned fuel is inefficient, even if you get great numbers for the fuel you did burn.

And having to create tons of extra reactors and reactor parts is also inefficient, since that's usually the limiting factor, not fuel availability.

My unoptimized design is better, because instead of making 2 reactors with two different designs : one to burn the excess thorium and one to burn the plutonium + thorium, you build 2 reactors of that same design that each give 367 EU/tick. (versus getting 416 for one and maybe 100 for the other)

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Copper has always been my limiting factor, and 5 quad cells costs more copper than a single chamber reactor reactor complete with cooling.

Though, the price drop in copper cost for thorium cells you mentioned is a freaking huge deal, so I'll probably be jumping on your earlier fuel config once I update gregtech.

I was trying to find a high-efficiency thorium breeder that wouldn't consume copper per cycle, and came up with this:
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…hl9rv59hrc0jfhw4nglcgr00p

It is a little heavy on the diamonds though, unfortunately...

Anyone have any ideas on how to improve the design?

I like using reactor heat vents, because breeder is then very simple to keep hot. Overclocked vents are always failing when used with lava cells, because of how they work.

It may be expensive as hell, but here is your design redone by me. http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…hwis31a0i0okaqbknj2u14s1s

5 chamber high power reactor for a mining ship : http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…w05vj81frrxfat1h9giagg0sg

Not suitable for exclusive use because it requires too much plutonium per thorium.

5 chamber, 406 EU/tick, 4 quad thorium and 3 plutonium. Thorium : plutonium ratio of only 2.13, so only good if you have 1 of these and a whole bunch of reactors that burn a lot more thorium.

Oh, and 4.79 "efficiency". (a number that turns out to mean exactly nothing)

What's the big deal about thorium:plutonium ratio, max you'll end up with extra thorium, what's the problem? You can never have too much thorium

so what IS the "perfect" ratio of plutonium to thorium to be uaed at the same rate as production ( 1:4 production ratio and a 2:5 usage ratio) as far as i worked out its a 5:8 ratio on the reactor ( 5 plutonium and 8 thorium will be used at the same ratio as its produced)

Ten to one, you applied the usage ratio on the wrong side. Some mods may make extra thorium available from automated mining via new ores, (its available in massive quantities from mining by hand as well).

And yeah, extra thorium is useful, I'm finding thorium reactors make for excellent portable installations if you don't have some sort of magic ability to summon endermen to get eyes.

Quote from Requia

Ten to one, you applied the usage ratio on the wrong side. Some mods may make extra thorium available from automated mining via new ores, (its available in massive quantities from mining by hand as well).

And yeah, extra thorium is useful, I'm finding thorium reactors make for excellent portable installations if you don't have some sort of magic ability to summon endermen to get eyes.

DOH! thanks for the correction. luckily before i started the component build-rushes for any reactors time to go play the minigame some more

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…ymxri6whppacct7l1038vk4qo

Here is a slightly refined version of Bricked's reactor

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…eod1t9s6bobofcplm4fetnnk0
That is the breeder used in all my builds.
Only uses ~1300 Copper to build (Less than 1 x64 Quarrys worth with default IC2 spawn rates)

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…t7ghpeoi27mb890agjw82no5c
Is the ever so slightly more maintenance intensive breeder, but its quite a bit faster. Only uses a tiny bit of lapis per full cycle.

Edit: Iv never bothered to try and get the ratios perfect as I have a tendency of running thorium reactors everywhere.