Help on Nuclear Steam

1st Official Post

    Ok everybody. I didn't quite know which section to post this on, but support seemed adequate. Pardon me if that is wrong.


    Ok, so I tried messing around with Steam Nuclear Reactors. Awesome, exactly what i was looking for in a nuclear reactor, however, i have some questions:


    1st: Is there any disadvantage in using this reactor mode (excluding the additional turbines, pipes, e.t.c). Will it produce less, or more EU than conventional reactors? Or is it just slower/faster?


    2nd: How much Steam turbines are required? Just enough so that all of them aren't in 100% use mode, or just a little bit more?


    3rd: Could you please post some good layouts (the steam pipes and turbines layout I mean), I always get pipes full of steam close to the reactor, and almost empty near the turbines...

    The Viper will hide in the shadows... unseen... unheard... and when you least expect, she strikes.

    • Official Post

    Some Reactor layouts can be more Efficient, but most produce less. The Most efficient amount of Reactor's is actually 4 Chambers, like this:
    ___:Wind Mill:
    :Wind Mill: :Reactor: :Wind Mill:
    ___:Wind Mill:


    You need more Turbines per layout, preferably so that you are using ALL of the steam made. If you have Thermal Expansion installed, use Liquiducts as they Transport Liquid instantly to their output, can store a fair bit of Steam, AND can Condense steam so that 4 Liquiducts connected to the Nuclear reactor will Transport the Steam into one pipe.
    Main reason for Steam reactor's is
    1. Balance
    2. MJ's AND EU's <3
    3. More fun (in my opinion), Hooking up a Cable is both Unrealistic and BOOOORIIIIING

    Thanks SirusKing


    but still, with the steam reactors, will you produce less or more EU per uranium...?

    The Viper will hide in the shadows... unseen... unheard... and when you least expect, she strikes.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Viper8797

    Thanks SirusKing


    but still, with the steam reactors, will you produce less or more EU per uranium...?

    For most Designs, less.
    For some, a little bit more.

    Quote from Viper8797

    Thanks SirusKing


    but still, with the steam reactors, will you produce less or more EU per uranium...?

    I have gotten everywhere from slightly less to slightly more in my experiments, but always within 1 EU/t. You might have problems if you don't have enough steam to produce any EU in a turbine though now that I think about it (it'll produce at partial capacity, but not at very low capacity).

    As far as distribution of steam, a big enough reactor appears able to overrun even a large number of liquiducts, but it'll fill a iron tank at full speed, and you can put a whole bunch of valves on the tank, then use redstone powered liquiducts to draw 160 mb/tick per valve. As bonus, you get a buffer of a few million steam for a mid sized tank.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Requia

    As far as distribution of steam, a big enough reactor appears able to overrun even a large number of liquiducts, but it'll fill a iron tank at full speed, and you can put a whole bunch of valves on the tank, then use redstone powered liquiducts to draw 160 mb/tick per valve. As bonus, you get a buffer of a few million steam for a mid sized tank.

    Hmm... Wonder if i can make an xycraft tank out of reactors....

    • Official Post

    Get powercrystals powerconverters, plug energy bridge, steam consumer + mod energy producer you want and you are good =).
    OR
    Place Liquid Tesseract (Thermal expansion) directly adjacent and link it to others Liquid tesseracts that are connected to Steam turbines, Steam engines or Tanks (quantum tank ?)

    Quantum tank is limited to the output speed of just 6 pipes I believe.


    Same with tesseract, but I suppose you could always have a dozen output tesseracts to do the same thing as a big iron tank much more compactly (and maybe cheaper, depending on your ender farm).

    • Official Post
    Quote from Requia

    Quantum tank is limited to the output speed of just 6 pipes I believe.


    Same with tesseract, but I suppose you could always have a dozen output tesseracts to do the same thing as a big iron tank much more compactly (and maybe cheaper, depending on your ender farm).

    Reactor -> Directly adjacent tesseract (Freq X)



    Multiple Tesseract (Freq X) -> Multiple steam accepting stuff

    Thanks for all the info guys, but im still a bit lost. If you are wondering, i play with feed the beast techs world mod pack, so no thermal expansion for me.


    One thing came trough my mind: What produces more power, a turbine at 50%output capacity, or two at 25% output? Also, are there any disadvantages of laying the turbines too far from the reactor or no?

    The Viper will hide in the shadows... unseen... unheard... and when you least expect, she strikes.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Viper8797

    Thanks for all the info guys, but im still a bit lost. If you are wondering, i play with feed the beast techs world mod pack, so no thermal expansion for me.


    One thing came trough my mind: What produces more power, a turbine at 50%output capacity, or two at 25% output? Also, are there any disadvantages of laying the turbines too far from the reactor or no?

    Pretty sure they will both output the same amount, but there is loss in non-liquiduct pipes so the 1 50% is probably a little better.

    I'm pretty sure you have that backwards and liquiducts have loss. (bug, rather than design). However, if you don't have them to pipe steam I'm not sure how the hell you'll get the steam away from the reactor. You can barely get the steam with liquiducts higher capacity, and splitting off an iron tank isn't practical with gold pipe, so the only option would probably be to put one or two turbines right next to the reactor, and pipe the rest of the steam off.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Requia

    I'm pretty sure you have that backwards and liquiducts have loss. (bug, rather than design). However, if you don't have them to pipe steam I'm not sure how the hell you'll get the steam away from the reactor. You can barely get the steam with liquiducts higher capacity, and splitting off an iron tank isn't practical with gold pipe, so the only option would probably be to put one or two turbines right next to the reactor, and pipe the rest of the steam off.

    You can hook up Terreracts directly to it, so covering every block efficiently

    Guys, i like the amount of help im getting, but you are confusing the shit out me. Im mostly new to this mods and i have no idea about most of what you talk about, including tanks and tesseracts (whatever that may be).


    I'm still fooling a bit around with FTB (now i use FTB ultimate, without EE3) so i so now have liquidducts.


    Happy to see a good supportive community :D .

    The Viper will hide in the shadows... unseen... unheard... and when you least expect, she strikes.

    Tesseracts are a Thermal Expansion item (why SiriusKing is suggesting it when you already said you weren't using Thermal Expansion I don't know) transfer between themselves at unlimited distance and as far as I can tell, unlimited speed, there's three different kinds, one for items, one for liquid, one for energy.


    An Iron tank is a Railcraft multiblock structure, ranging in size from 3x3x4 to 9x9x8, you can store 10,000 buckets in the big one, but the advantage for our purpose is that it can accept steam from the reactor at unlimited speed, then output steam from up to 56 spaces for the biggest tank, allowing for all that steam to be piped away.

    More about iron tanks:
    Max size can be changed inside the config file. It's a massive, complicated, expensive beast that can have as many valves as you want. Valves pump and accept any liquid registered with the Liquid Dictionary. What that means is if you hook, say, a Stone Waterproof Pipe to a valve and pump oil into it, the tank will start filling up with it. Works vice versa.
    http://railcraft.wikispaces.com/Iron+Tank+%28Device%29

    Quote from Requia

    Tesseracts are a Thermal Expansion item (why SiriusKing is suggesting it when you already said you weren't using Thermal Expansion I don't know) transfer between themselves at unlimited distance and as far as I can tell, unlimited speed, there's three different kinds, one for items, one for liquid, one for energy.


    An Iron tank is a Railcraft multiblock structure, ranging in size from 3x3x4 to 9x9x8, you can store 10,000 buckets in the big one, but the advantage for our purpose is that it can accept steam from the reactor at unlimited speed, then output steam from up to 56 spaces for the biggest tank, allowing for all that steam to be piped away.

    Thanks for the info. I do now have thermal expansion (changed to ftb ultimate - EE3).


    There are a lot of gadgets and machines, its overwhelming.


    I'd like to place a challenge to everybody out there. I am looking for a way to have two nuclear reactors feeding the steam to a turbine room at a moderate distance, without clog-ups or turbines at 7% efficiency, in order to able to produce a good amount of EU at a decent speed.

    The Viper will hide in the shadows... unseen... unheard... and when you least expect, she strikes.