New Type Nuclear Reactor

A nice idea and a good la<out, but the reactor was redone recently and will probably stay as it is for a while, but there are several addons changing the reactors system.

Quote from Laamapalmu

Thanks. Well i hope someone will do this...

Quotergeddon?

The idea is nice, but like sworddude just pointed out, Nuclear reactors have just been redone, the devs must tired of them. Still, i would love this as an addon, i already use reactor steam mode, given its more realistic.

Quote from Viper8797

Quotergeddon?

The idea is nice, but like sworddude just pointed out, Nuclear reactors have just been redone, the devs must tired of them. Still, i would love this as an addon, i already use reactor steam mode, given its more realistic.

Quote from GregoriusT

I plan to make a whole new Concept of Nuclear Reactors.

Quote from Sinnaj63

That is neat! Is it a recent quote or a older one? Greg-tech is probably (who am i trying to fool, it IS) my favourite addon for IC2. Just love the (relative) realism, and a new reactor, greg style would be awesome.

Quote from Viper8797

That is neat! Is it a recent quote or a older one?

Very recent. Like 2 days old

Although I'm looking forward to making current reactors more fun and challenging, let's not downgrade to water cooling again. Water should be there, but only to be turned in to steam.

Quote from Ultimoos

Although I'm looking forward to making current reactors more fun and challenging, let's not downgrade to water cooling again. Water should be there, but only to be turned in to steam.

Please bear in mind that there are actual water-based cooling systems in use... Although the coolant is used to heat the water for steam, and it's role in cooling the reactor is a simple convenience. I think it's called a double-loop system or something like that...

Quote from Dj_777

Please bear in mind that there are actual water-based cooling systems in use... Although the coolant is used to heat the water for steam, and it's role in cooling the reactor is a simple convenience. I think it's called a double-loop system or something like that...

Does not matter. We already had OPcheatwatercooled reactors. In real life getting water to cool reactor is a real concern, in minecraft all you need are 2 blocks of water to make an ocean. You make 2 water block pool. Place down water generator. Pipe it to the chamber and you are done. All cooling problems just disappeared. We could get rid of heat mechanics all together. It wouldn't make a difference.

Quote from MatLaPatate

Very recent. Like 2 days old

It was freshly posted when I quoted it.

Quote from Ultimoos

Does not matter. We already had OPcheatwatercooled reactors. In real life getting water to cool reactor is a real concern, in minecraft all you need are 2 blocks of water to make an ocean. You make 2 water block pool. Place down water generator. Pipe it to the chamber and you are done. All cooling problems just disappeared. We could get rid of heat mechanics all together. It wouldn't make a difference.

Not exactly. They are more complicated than they might look at first glance. Also buggy when it comes to loading/unloading chunks (ye even if its in 1 chunk).

Quote from Rick

Not exactly. They are more complicated than they might look at first glance. Also buggy when it comes to loading/unloading chunks (ye even if its in 1 chunk).

Could you please clarify what is more complicated? And chunk problem is coding issue, not actual reactor design, right?
I'm all for good changes and upgrades. But please, do not revert to "Dropmoreicewinbuttondesign".

Quote from Laamapalmu

"in minecraft all you need are 2 blocks of water to make an ocean. You
make 2 water block pool. Place down water generator. Pipe it to the
chamber and you are done." Well that part might be easy but the idea was to make player control the Rods and water flow and produce more energy with more pain, That's not easy to run after the heating.

Well, I think basically the GUI-part would be the primary water circuit, while the water you'd inject in the Reactor would be the second one, the one needed for steam.
BTW, I also think we should get rid of the current breeding system, and make it works mre like GT.

Also, to me, Water-based coolants should cool down because of the second water circuit (so they would be conduit for heat between the reactor and the 2nd circuit). And Vents could just be ... needed to prevent Hydrogen from accumulating ? (and you could even make a high-temperature running reactor with the purpose of generating H2 that you could collect ^^). Well, that's my crazy mind.
That and Molten Salts Reactors.

Quote from Laamapalmu

" Well that part might be easy but the idea was to make player control the Rods and water flow and produce more energy with more pain

CASUCs produce more energy with more pain.

Quote from Laamapalmu

MatLaPatate What diffrence is between boiling water reactor/Steam generating nuclear reactor than Molten Salt Reactor? Never heard about it.

Molten Salts Reactor are way differents, for 3 main reasons:
There is no water in. Molten salts are used instead, both for moderating purposes and because it's the liquid that conduct the heat. The water is just used in the second circuit, and it generate steam in the same way, but its supposed to be much more efficient, assuming we could build it.
It has many advantages, from the fact it's safer (if it overheat, then it just melt the thing avoiding the molten liquid to go down and fill a tank intended for that) to the its efficiency on fuel, especially assuming it could theoretically run on Thorium, and could even breed Uranium while doing so. And because it would deal with Thorium instead of enriched Uranium, it would be a lot more environment-saving. The difference of efficiency come from the fact the Thorium would be directly molten in the salts (which can be based on Li, Be, NaK or some others)
The only problem is that it would at first need a starting cycle consuming Plutonium, which is quite expensive/rare/dangerous [not speaking of Radioactivity, but of the fact due to its use for bombs, it would be quite annoying a terrorist to steal it, much more than Ura, especially thinking that Pu should have about half the enrichment needed for a bomb, where with Ura reactor is 4-5% for reactors, and 60/80% for bombs]. But once you ignite the reaction, the reactor will only use Thorium, which is WAY cheaper than Uranium, because it's way more common and easier to process (this reactor wouldn't need that much enrichment). And BTW, Thorium is not likely to make a reactor to explode, because it deals with less energy, and because you chose the concentration before starting, which also mean you calculated the heat it will generate.
BUT basically, it's also a boiling water reactor.
Oh, and BTW, molten salts reactors don't explode, they just melt. Because in most of the cases, reactors explode because of too much water turning into steam (--> too much pressure) or in fukushima's case, because of H2 generation. The temperature needed to turn these salts into gasses is way higher, and un-reachable in a reactor).

Did I mention that molten salts, due to their high internal energy (even higher than steam, which already contains tons of Joule, because you need 6 times more energy to turn 1 L of water at 100°C than you needed to bring that water from 0°C to 100°C), could even be used as Heat-Battery, in Nuclear Reactors or in Solar Boilers ?

u_u, that was a bit long lol.

Sorry Laamapalmu for posting ideas in your topic, but I think its better to keep everything In one place.
And you can't just keep complaining without actually giving something back, right?

So here is my idea to upgrade what we already have. I remember someone posting a similar GUI some time ago.

Explanations of what we see:

Nuclear reactors would become a multiblock structure. There would be only one shape of
reactor but there would be many variations of structure blocks.

Reactor structure:

“Reactor Hull” block is standard radiation blocking element, made of copper or lead. It doesn't provide any special functions.

“Out Ring” blocks. Those provide “Out Slots” and come in 3 variations:
“Standard”, cheapest with no effects.
“Upgraded”, increases efficiency of cooling modules.
“Advanced”, greater increase of efficiency for cooling modules and reduces module failure chance.

“Mid Ring” blocks. Those provide “Mid Slots” and come in 3 variations:
“Standard”, cheapest with no effects.
“Cooling”, increases efficiency of cooling modules.
“Neutron”, provides reaction point for fuel cells like neutron reflection modules does.

“In Ring” blocks. This one provides “In Slots” and come in 3 variations:
“Standard”, cheapest with no effects.
“Neutron”, provides reaction point for fuel cells.
“Advanced Neutron”, provides 2 reaction points for fuel cells and reduces module failure chance.

Any ring has to be built with one type of block for reactor to work.

GUI”

“Out Slots”. Those can only be filled with cooling modules.

“Mid Slots”. Those can be filled with both cooling modules and fuel cells.

“In Slots”. Those can only be filled with fuel cells.

Mechanics:

Now to make things more fun. I propose to change heat generated by cells from constant to fluctuation. So a single cell would produce not a constant 10 heat/tick but a random number from 5 to 15. So 50% - 150% /tick. Overall the heat generation would be the same, but this gives a chance for spontaneous heat surges to appear. But it’s just a proposition.

Another fun aspect. Now heat is boring. It does not take any role in normal reactor cycles. You either have a cold reactor or near explosion one with no benefits, only dangers. So I propose to make heat useful. Normal reactor runs at 100% capacity. Let’s increase that by heating it up, for a cost of course.

First of all. You can turn off reactor and remove modules and cells only when reactor is cold. You can’t just take items out from it when whole world is burning around you, right?

Activation of cells and cooling items is performed by right clicking on them in GUI.

When reactor heats up its fuel efficiency also rises. But a chance of module failure appears. But, what happens when module fails? For cooling item like vent it means, it just stops working. A vent failure means that your already hot reactor is getting hotter with every tick. Failure for fuel cells means that you cannot turn it off. So now you have a double problem. Your vent does not cool reactor down and your stuck cell just keeps heating it up. You still have a final solution. An “Emergency cooling cells”. They take a cooling slot but does not take part in normal reactor cycle and are one time use only. This cell will take a lot off heat out of reactor but will disappear when used. And since they take a cooling slot, they can also fail/get stuck and be unusable.

If you let too many modules to fail function, you are doomed with a sure meltdown.

So, you can run this reactor cold at 100% capacity and have it pretty much safe, so you can leave it alone till cycle ends. Or you can heat it up getting more power/steam but also risk module failures, so you have to keep an eye on it.

Sorry, I still think that water should be used only to generate steam when steam reactors are turned on.

If anyone thinks that this idea is worth actual debate, you can ask moderator to move it in to its own topic.