[Official] New Reactors design thread.

    Quote from Omicron

    Well, we basically ended up with the single LZH or cooling cell design. None of us could manage to make it fully coolable on just internal vents... I even got it down to 0 excess heat but still couldn't keep the components from melting over time. It's just not happening with the fuel cells consuming so much room, sadly. :(


    Quote from Omicron

    Well, we basically ended up with the single LZH or cooling cell design. None of us could manage to make it fully coolable on just internal vents... I even got it down to 0 excess heat but still couldn't keep the components from melting over time. It's just not happening with the fuel cells consuming so much room, sadly. :(


    I didn't make a signifigant improvement to LZH version, but did find it interesting if you change the exchangers around a bit you can shift how much heat makes it to the LZH.


    Go from 1290 seconds per lapis to 1481.
    http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…vvrazss4pzv78m1gbtyaj3h1c

    Yeah, because the condensator actually consumes all the heat it can get. And not just the leftover heat the internal vents can't handle.


    So by shifting the setup you might be able to throttle the heat intake a bit.

    It's an okay start, but it could be better.


    For starters, the heat plating is unnecessary. You need those only if you want to run a breeder reactor that you keep permanently at a high heat level. For safety, use containment plating. But even those are unnecessary when you have a heat-stable full cycle reactor.


    Second, your efficiency is not very good for a hybrid system. Your improved variant has a cell value of 66 million (12.5 plutonium cells and 16 thorium cells per cycle), and a total output of 397 million, for an efficiency of 397 / 66 = 6.015.


    This is because you are using too many plutonium cells. Hybrid reactors function on the basis of the single plutonium -> quad thorium pairing. You want to maximize the number of cell pairings while creating the least possible amount of heat. Since plutonium cells run far hotter than even quad thorium cells, that means the ideal setup has as little plutonium as possible and as much quad thorium as possible. This is the highest efficiency cell layout you can build. Cell value of 20, combined with 222 million energy yield, results in an efficiency of 222 / 20 = 11.1. If you surround the whole thing with reflectors, you can you even push this up to 270 / 20 = 13.5. DERP! I miscalculated that. Why doesn't anyone call me out on it? ;( What I linked has a cell value of 26, not 20. The ideal efficiency setup is of course an infinite lattice of thorium and plutonium, though that is in no way practical. Still, maximizing the amount of plutonium/quad thorium pairings is the ultimate goal. Minimum cell value for maximum total yield.


    However, there's another thing to to keep in mind: when producing thorium and plutonium, you almost always get both products from the same recipe, and almost always in a 4 thorium : 1 plutonium ratio. That means that the ideal setup above has a problem: it consumes 67% more thorium to keep running than you would get while producing the plutonium. 6 extra thorium cells are required per reactor cycle that you need to procude somewhere... or on the other hand, if you produce it the same way you produce all your other thorium, you'll end up with 1.5 plutonium cells per cycle that are not used and just pile up in storage. What a waste of energy!


    Thus it's generally recommended to design reactors to be "thorium neutral", i.e. to consume 4 thorium cells for every plutonium cell (unless you run a whole group of reactors, some of which are thorium positive and some negative, to make the whole group neutral). And you must keep in mind that plutonium cells have a much shorter lifetime than thorium. The ideal thorium neutral cell setup is pictured here.


    If you read through this thread you'll see it in several places; there's a variant that can be cooled with only 4 chambers, and another variant that breeds its own isotopes while running.

    Oh, while I was at it, I made this today.


    What is this? It's the "hybrid effect", that's what it is. Put into numbers. It works with all possible kinds of fuel combinations, with varying results. Some cell combinations score above the expected efficiency for some reason, while others fall below.


    Disclaimer: valid only for 1.4.7 until further notice.

    Question for you gents: Which reactor setup (or multiple parallel reactor setups) produce the most EU/t per resources needed to build?


    There are obviously quite a few very nice setups, but most tend to focus on maximum efficiency with cost being a secondary factor. I am more interested in setups that have a quick return on investment to power quarries, where I will likely be mining more uranium then I use. The components themselves are reusable of course so eventually they would mine enough to pay off the investment, but this takes many shafts and means I am that much more slow to scale up to more and more quarries.

    Quote from userjjb

    Question for you gents: Which reactor setup (or multiple parallel reactor setups) produce the most EU/t per resources needed to build?


    There are obviously quite a few very nice setups, but most tend to focus on maximum efficiency with cost being a secondary factor. I am more interested in setups that have a quick return on investment to power quarries, where I will likely be mining more uranium then I use. The components themselves are reusable of course so eventually they would mine enough to pay off the investment, but this takes many shafts and means I am that much more slow to scale up to more and more quarries.


    If you plan to dismantle and move I would go with a zero chamber.


    Hard to beat Zombie's design:
    http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…d83b78y8enonfoolys5g23280
    Beginner Reactor 3:


    Eu/tick: 100
    Efficiency: 3.33
    Overall Efficiency 3.33
    Cost: Iron 98, Copper 186, Tin 25, Gold 22
    Running costs: 0 UU
    Credits: Zombie

    Peppe, the planner is showing 234 copper cost for that design, not 186?


    Also, here's a potential alternative, *IF* you have thorium and plutonium available to you (for example as side products from pulverizing/industrial grinding coal and uranium, or from a breeder reactor). It adds a minor copper running cost in order to pull significantly more energy and EU/t per uranium ingot invested and reduce maintenance overhead. Whether that's worth it to you of course depends on your situation and supplies.


    http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…jvwb1laxo925kajba5w2rwzr4


    Eu/tick: 116
    Efficiency: 6.44*
    Cost: Iron 100, Copper 223*, Tin 35, Gold 14
    Hybrid balance: +2 thorium positive
    Maintenance advantage: it runs twice as long before you need to replace a fuel cell
    Running cost: 10 copper per 14 hours


    * reactor planner calculates hybrid reactor efficiency and copper cost of multicells wrong.

    Quote from Omicron

    Peppe, the planner is showing 234 copper cost for that design, not 186?


    Just copied from the front page of the thread. Whatever the cost it is a solid reactor. Really depends if 1-2 could run the quarry to bedrock fast enough or on one fuel cycle then it us probably a good fit for the poster. If you have to go refill the reactor then probably not good. Then a plutonium cycle might be a better fit.


    I was think cost wise uranium would keep it simple, but if the poster doesn't mind centrifuging plutonium/thorium will get the most out of a fuel supply.

    Well, if you have a TE pulverizer with GregTech's overloaded recipes (TE config setting required in newer versions) or an industrial grinder and use them to process silktouched uranium and coal ore, you'll get plutonium and thorium dust as side products. So depending on how a player goes about their mining, they might have some spare plutonium and thorium even without a breeder + centrifuge.


    And then there's also the 16 uranium dust = 16 uranium cells + 4 thorium cells + 1 plutonium cell centrifuge recipe, for those who don't want to mess with breeding. Using that you could run a mixture of uranium based and hybrid based reactors.

    I'm aware, but I compounded the info in one sentence because a hybrid reactor needs both thorium and plutonium, and because I am lazy ;)

    Does the downloaded version of the reactor planner work for anyone? I try and use it and it doesn't even open up a window, but throws no errors. I am on 64 bit linux.

    Quote from NolanSyKinsley

    Does the downloaded version of the reactor planner work for anyone? I try and use it and it doesn't even open up a window, but throws no errors. I am on 64 bit linux.


    I'm running Ubuntu 12.10 and have no problems with it. In fact, it has far fewer problems than the in-browser one, which tends to crash Firefox.


    However, I'm running it with 32 bit rather than 64 bit. That could be your problem.


    I am running it on Java, not on OpenJRE, though. That might be your problem.

    Highe End 0 Chamber Reactor (mobile)

    Code
    21p0axsp4lrld2nenca19dry8hdnffezvlgwxx6a0x5tk7sm2xl2v3olig0j75qtgtivm97gmkyd8u8


    120 EU/t
    Eff 3
    O-Eff 2,78
    Cost: Copper 282, Iron 110, Gold 24, Tin 30

    Peppe, Requia, care to have a quick look and share your thoughts? https://docs.google.com/spread…VHhEZzUtX0dTZ3E2aVE#gid=3


    I finished documenting the fuel type properties (as far as the Computercube can be believed) for the latest GregTech build. Things are starting to take shape; right now there are no more obvious bugs, but some things open for interpretation are left.


    In summary, both thorium and plutonium got nerfed to half their 1.4.7 values. Thorium lost half its lifetime, while plutonium lost half its EU/t. As a compensation, plutonium scales up much faster in efficiency thanks to its double tick feature (but only up to 11 still, not 14 like Greg intended). You can see the results in the tables at the top of the relevant tab.


    Also interesting is the effect on centrifuging re-enriched isotopes: if you do not have at least a dual neighbour situation (such as a 2x2 square of cells), you are getting more EU by not centrifuging but simply upgrading the isotopes to uranium cells. Also documented in the relevant tab.


    The hybrid effect may or may not be gone. When combining uranium and plutonium, of which I know they work correctly, they deliver exactly the expected efficiency in all possible combinations, with no deviations up or down at all. However, thorium is another story.


    I'm not yet sure that thorium works correctly, because although its neighbour scaling was fixed, the hybrid tests showed some really strange results. Back in 1.4.7, you had bad results when using two single cells, but things got better when upgrading to a dual thorium or even a quad thorium for maximum effect. In this build, however, the opposite seems true: you're getting a bonus when using two single cells, and moving away from that layout, no matter what combination, results in a smaller (and sometimes even negative) hybrid effect.


    Note that this happens not only with plutonium as a partner, where the changes made to how plutonium ticks has a large effect on efficiency. It also happens with uranium. And the only thing that changed in the uranium/thorium pairing is the fact that thorium's burn duration got halved, nothing else. It still has the same EU/t, the same neighbour scaling. I don't understand why such a thing would completely reverse the trend - especially when the uranium/plutonium hybrid shows that there is no hybrid effect happening between them at all. If anything, it should either reinforce the trend, or also show no hybrid scaling whatsoever. On the other hand, thorium seems to behave exactly like it should in all the other tests aside from hybrid scaling...


    What do you think? Do the figures make sense for you, and I'm just failing to see it? Is my math off somewhere, maybe? Or do you also think something is fishy with the way thorium behaves here?

    Quote from Omicron

    What do you think? Do the figures make sense for you, and I'm just failing to see it? Is my math off somewhere, maybe? Or do you also think something is fishy with the way thorium behaves here?


    This seems to be right with in-game reactors and sims. Having negative hybrid affect seems wrong -- think your math is right, so something may still be off with how the fuels interact.


    Thorium still does not seem right -- it may be fixed from where it was, but it still does not seem worth it and like you said the fuel now is barely better than running it as uranium. If it stays like this there really isn't much incentive to make the fuel.

    Negative hybrid effects aren't necessarily wrong. You had them in 1.4.7 as well 8check the first tab in the spreadsheet). What surprises me is that the effects I'm getting in 1.5.1 are so completely against the established trend.


    At first I thought I calculated the expected efficiency wrong, but I doublechecked it. Also, if I had done it wrong, the trend should still be present, just shifted up or down a few tens. And not reversed.