Steam turbines

  • So I'm playing around with moving over to railcraft steam for my reactors, instead of straight EU production (cause it seems cool). However apparently steam turbines have parts that break and need to be repaired, given that this comes to 46 stacks of steel per stack of uranium I want to burn, anybody know if there's an alternative way, or a way to turn that off in configs?

  • industrial steam engines producing MJ run though a transformer mod at a 16MJ to 25EU is one option, the other is get repairing turbines with blades instead of making new ones, cuts the steel cost by a large amount (around a 75% saving)

    • Official Post

    Powercrystals Powerconverters v2.2 which converts the following energy systems :
    EU (Industrialcraft²)
    MJ (Buildcraft/ThermalExpansion)
    J (Universal electricity)
    CG (Factorization)
    STEAM (Railcraft)


    With that, you can convert steam into any mod energy, for example.

  • I am personally NOT a big fan of steam turbines. I tend to prefer water towers, as it costs about the same in initial investment for EU output, and doesn't have any reoccurring costs. Alternately, geothermal batteries or windfarms.

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    I need a Thaumium or Tungsten Steam turbine X(
    Enchant it with Repair or Cool the Tungsten one down to get its Durability down.

  • I've actually been thinking that a tungsten steam turbine that is cheaper and never wears out would be perfect. The steam turbine is meant to be (or at least, serves this purpose anyway) so expensive in order to prevent railcraft from obsoleting IC2 generators. By requiring tungsten first the player has to build up the gregtech infrastructure ladder it means you still use all the early game IC2/gregtech stuff, but then get to use steam for late game power. The only problem I see is that I couldn't use nuclear to get tungsten in the first place (I switch over to nuclear on day two or three, maybe day 1 next time, since I've developed better low end thorium designs).

  • Yea, Thorium reactors are pretty good workhorse reactors. Not a whole lot of power, but generates it over a much longer time. Also much less heat generation, which makes it much easier to CRCS it. For example, this cute little one-chamber number produces 192 EU/t at Eff 6 (although you'll probably have to use regular NR's to start with). With a micro-cycle time of 715 seconds, and a cooling time of around 630ish, you'll only need a single pair of cooling towers to swap out.

  • I actually start with LV designs, this one is ludicrously cheap and good for filling 3 MFSUs before its fuel needs to be replaced:


    http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…xq41nwqxq94af94nxsnlr8lxc


    Only takes 10 copper/thorium cycle if you have up to date gregtech, and you can also tile the design in obvious ways for more power.


    As far as CRCS/CRHV goes, you have your work cut out for you against the new thorium/plutonium hybrids, here's a the big one:


    http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…3hn2q7305ojevdwlgr2te2n7k


    484 EU/t Note that the planner doesn't take lifespan into the efficiency calculation or new thorium costs, this consumes just 6 re-enriched cells, and 5.2 copper per 10,000 seconds, with thorium left over.

    • Official Post

  • The one I linked is much more easily stackable, by virtue of only being a single-chamber reactor. You can stack six of 'em in the same space as that 484 hybrid reactor, for more EU/t and about the same resources, excepting the cooling towers. However, having a battery of cooling towers means you can eventually upgrade to 2k+ CRCS reactors later on.

  • Hmm


    Three of them is a bit better. The only problem is breeding uranium doesn't make thorium, it makes thorium+plutonium, and since you need the thorium to get good plutonium efficiency you either waste plutonium, or have to come up with a big source of thorium other than uranium to keep efficiency.

  • Oh, and the iridium reflectors. Those are ludicrously expensive.


    I did mention you would have to start off with regular NR's and work your way up to the iridium ones. The NR's can be skipped, just throw in four more Quad-Thorium cells and cooling cells. I use them mostly to have an even distribution of heat.

    • Official Post

    Hmm


    Three of them is a bit better. The only problem is breeding uranium doesn't make thorium, it makes thorium+plutonium, and since you need the thorium to get good plutonium efficiency you either waste plutonium, or have to come up with a big source of thorium other than uranium to keep efficiency.

    Coal ore?

    • Official Post

    + industrial grinder.

    + Multiblock nukes

  • Coal ore?

    Difficult to get. You have to cut it by hand, or obtain a silk touch pick and use it with an arcane bore, neither method will produce particularly good yields though.


    Maybe a frameship with bore attached would work, since no player intervention is needed...


    As for the fancy MFFS ore whose name I can neither spell nor pronounce, I'm not sure there as I don't use any mods that include it, but I think it spawns as often as uranium and is good for one throrium each?


    Lessee, I average 84 uranium per quarry (run just below surface to avoid making my world look like shit, so you could do a little better) you could reliably run three or four per quarry at that rate, its not very good yield (in comparison, one quarry will run that hybrid reactors for about three months off the uranium yield, though you'll suck up much of the tin, coal, and copper yield of said quarry too). But if you're mining at a serious rate it'd be a good way to use up all the thorium.