Experimental Changes to Nuclear Engineering

1st Official Post

    Right, so there's been some rather... fundamental changes with nuclear engineering in the experimental fork. Of course, being experimental, there's no guarantee that this fork will ever actually be incorporated into the main IC2 development. The other caveat, of course, is that it is still a work in progress, so nothing is set in stone.


    With that said...


    First off, the amount of nuclear material produced per uranium ore is dramatically increased. Then it requires a bunch more nuclear material to produce the stuff that goes into the reactors. On the whole, it is a slight nerf, but somewhat mitigated by the fact that every fuel rod drops a depleted cell, so breeders just got a whole lot more useful. At the same time, however, heating cells got removed, which is a pretty stiff nerf-bat swung at breeders in general.


    Now, fuel rods are currently made in the Canning Machine, and it takes for bloody ever... worse, it can't accept overclocker upgrades. Which means to make enough nuclear material to run a typical reactor, it's going to take for bloody ever. Oh, and because Canning Machines can't accept upgrades, that means no auto-eject upgrades either, which means automation of the task is going to be a PITA.


    Heat and EU numbers haven't changed... which means all the old reactor designs should work just fine. Of course, with the additional nonsense involved in setting it up, this can only be seen as pushing Nuclear Power into an even less viable option for power generation... unless you use the MOX generators, which means having already run nuclear generators to get the depleted cells to generate the plutonium to make the fuel pellets for the passive EU income.


    It's at least different and interesting. Lot of potential here, let's see if it pans out as well as I hope it will...

    Okay, I've only briefly toyed with the experimental builds yet, so forgive me if I'm missing something.


    But:
    - The canning machine is barely even functional yet, as of the writing of this post they're still working on it on a daily basis. It's getting a new GUI and everything, so here's hope for upgrade slots.
    - Breeding as such, does that even still exist? You're supposed to process depleted fuel rods into plutonium. which can then go for another round in the reactor in the form of heat-amplified MOX fuel, or tossed into a radioisotope generator for small but eternal passive energy income.


    I'm not fully sure, but potentially we'll have to go and toss breeder designs out the window altogether, and instead make plutonium reactor designs... which are like regular uranium reactors except that they generate more energy they hotter they run (interesting enough concept if you ask me). Regular uranium seems to still work the same, so existing setups will remain valid.


    As for buff or nerf, it seems you need more ore for one reactor cycle than you did in the past, but due to being able to repurpose the depleted rods for further energy generation that may balance itself out, depending on the potential returns on MOX fuel in a properly hot reactor... and well, radioisotope generators never run out. I'm just curious as to what happens with depleted MOX fuel rods, I haven't gotten there yet and NEI is missing most new recipes so experimentation is the only way.


    I also noticed that dual and quad cells are significantly cheaper now, porting over the GregTech way of using normal plates instead of dense ones. A dual cell costs 1 iron instead of 8 copper, and a quad cell costs 3 iron 2 copper instead of 40 copper. That's a fairly sizable efficiency boost for multicell reactors, which previously had up to a third of their efficiency advantage eaten up by running costs.


    What I did discover with some mixed feelings is the fact that early game nuclear power goes right out the window. You now need the full macerator -> ore washer -> thermal centrifuge production chain to even start processing uranium ore, and I tell you, these centrifuges are *not* cheap. And they consume something to the tune of 64 EU/t before overclocking while running (guesstimate, EU-reader is broken), which must be supplied continuously - you lose all progress should you fail to supply enough power. Granted, it's the only machine that behaves this way, and the huge internal buffer allows for 2-3 processing runs without any power supply at all... but it's still a tall order compared to the sedate 3 EU/t for the classic macerator. A batbox and a geothermal isn't going to cut it, you'll want multiple parallel batboxes or a CESU (which itself requires the ore washer to be up and running to craft) fueled by a bank of generators.


    You have a real progression tree in IC2 now, and nuclear power's sitting on the upper end of it. Better get comfortable with conventional sources on the way there. (As a sidenote, playing IC2 without lava teleportation, without automatic wood farms and without compact solars totally makes you re-appreciate the supposedly underpowered nuclear reactors, I tell you! :p)

    • Official Post

    Note that everything to do with the Reactors are WIP, and the reactor itself will become a big water guzzling multiblock eventually.

    Another 'stealth nerf' to this system is that it now requires copious quantities of EU to be able to set up, which actually reduces overall efficiency.


    Before, it didn't take any energy to produce nuclear material, now it requires several machines, some of which are real energy hogs.


    Canning machines have been around since IC1, they aren't new. The overhaul they just got kinda made me facepalm. Fridge Logic forces me to question the healthiness of any food coming out of the canning machine after it has produced uranium rods, but then Minecraft in general doesn't work very well with Fridge Logic.

    I would like people to note that although the upfront cost for fuel is not cheap uranium-wise it is much cheaper when you thermal centrifuge the depleted uranium, it is 6 U238, and 3 small piles of U235 for one enriched uranium fuel, but when you centrifuge the depleted uranium you get 4 U238 back, so the actual cost is less than 1 uranium ore.

    Quote from TuxedoSteve

    I would like people to note that although the upfront cost for fuel is not cheap uranium-wise it is much cheaper when you thermal centrifuge the depleted uranium, it is 6 U238, and 3 small piles of U235 for one enriched uranium fuel, but when you centrifuge the depleted uranium you get 4 U238 back, so the actual cost is less than 1 uranium ore.


    Umm... look at your math again:


    OLD system: 1 Depleted Cell = 1 Re-enriched cell (with breeder) = 1 Uranium Cell
    NEW system: 1 Depleted Cell = about 2/3 of the U238 and none of the U235 you need to make a uranium cell.


    So again, it is more expensive than it used to be.

    You can't calculate it like that, Shneekey. You're overselling the old system (which only gave you a 25% chance to even get a depleted cell) and shortselling the new system (which gives you useful plutonium).


    I'd try to math it out, but I don't remember the centrifuge output of uranium ore off the top of my head. Was it something like 3x U-238 + 2x U-235 per purified crushed ore? Or 2x/1x? Wish I was at home at my computer...


    But yeah, the current state of affairs is probably temporary, if there's a whole rework coming.

    Okay, so.



    ----------
    Old System
    ----------


    16 uranium ore --> 16 fuel ingots --> 16 uranium cells


    Reactor running --> average 4 depleted cells --> breeding --> 4 uranium cells


    Reactor running --> average 1 depleted cell --> breeding --> 1 uranium cell



    Total: 21 normal uranium cells with 2 refresh cycles.




    ----------
    New System
    ----------


    16 uranium ore --> 32 crushed uranium ore --> 160 U-238 and 64 U-235 --> 21 uranium fuel rods + 34 U-238 + 1 U-235


    Reactor running --> 21 depleted fuel rods + 34 U-238 + 1 U-235


    Centrifuging --> 21 small plutonium + 118 U-238 + 1 U-235 --> 2 MOX fuel rods + 3 small plutonium + 106 U-238 + 1 U-235



    Total: 21 normal uranium fuel rods + 2 MOX fuel rods + assorted leftovers, with 1 refresh cycle.





    Even with MOX fuel (and the potential recycling of its depleted variant) being an unknown factor so far, there's no nerf there, even with the WiP numbers. Unless you count the old IC2's 1 uranium --> 8 depleted cells recipe, which was honestly crazy. Not sad to see it go.

    You can also use the plutonium for pellets of RTG fuel, which is a max of 5 per RTG, with the EU/t output being 1 fuel=1EU/t, 2 fuel=2EU/t, 3 fuel=4EU/t, 4 fuel=8EU/t, 5 Fuel=16EU/t.

    Quote from TuxedoSteve

    You can also use the plutonium for pellets of RTG fuel, which is a max of 5 per RTG, with the EU/t output being 1 fuel=1EU/t, 2 fuel=2EU/t, 3 fuel=4EU/t, 4 fuel=8EU/t, 5 Fuel=16EU/t.


    If it wasn't so vastly cheaper and easier for me to make a simple water tower producing 16 EU/t than all the nonsense involved in making a fully loaded RTG generator, it might even be relevant.


    And we're talking passive water tower, which produces 16 EU/t. Not any of those automated ones.


    Don't get me started on solar flowers...

    Okay so, MOX fuel.


    Previously we noticed that through the normal uranium usage and recycling process, you get an ever-increasing pile of seemingly useless U-238.


    However, MOX fuel consumes 3 plutonium and 6 U-238, and when recycled returns 3 plutonium back... plus 1 small plutonium. Meaning that MOX fuel never consumes any plutonium at all, but rather over time converts 54 U-238 into one plutonium.


    So at the end of the uranium lifecycle you are left with no uranium at all and 100% pure plutonium, which goes into retirement in radioisotope generators. Neat.

    Regarding MOX fuel, how do you use it? Can you use it as a replacement for uranium based fuel rods in your reactors without changing anything else or do you have to change the entire reactor design for it if you don't want them to blow up? What is the difference (EU/Heat generation) between MOX and uranium fuel rods?

    Quote from NightlinerSGS

    Regarding MOX fuel, how do you use it? Can you use it as a replacement for uranium based fuel rods in your reactors without changing anything else or do you have to change the entire reactor design for it if you don't want them to blow up? What is the difference (EU/Heat generation) between MOX and uranium fuel rods?


    Supposedly, MOX fuel provides more EU/t when the reactor is hotter.


    In other words, burn your house down for a few extra EU.

    The question is more: with the removal of heating cells, how do you reliably heat your reactor up, and more importantly, keep it hot? That'll require some very detailed design work, and not all cell combinations will be made workable. You'll need a cell layout that can be exactly matched by a cooling system - you can't go over, and overclocked vents will be difficult to use (many good designs involve overclocked vents that only don't melt themselves because there is no more heat to draw from the hull when their processing turn comes around).


    And the second question is how to test EU/t, because last I checked (two days ago), the EU-reader didn't work with the new e-net.

    I'm pretty happy they removed the Heating-cells. It was IMO the symbol of breeding-system OPness (Heat = win, where it should have been Heat/tick)


    Soon with Molten Salt Reactors, right ? :D
    NERF THA FUSION REACTOR!

    Omicron, I'm not on 1.6 yet so i'm not 100% on how MOX fuel works, but couldn't you just leave out 1 heat vent or something, until the reactor gets nice and hot, they put it back in? Trouble is then you'd need a cooling setup that EXACTLY matches the heat output of the fuel.


    By the way; in the face of craftable quantum generators (aka compact solars) is 8 depleted cells per uranium really that crazy?