Alright, so: MOX reactor designs.

Mox fuel burns in half the time right? So maybe using smaller mox reactors first will help speed things along.

0 Chamber 1 Cell Mox: Clicky

100 EU/t, 20 EFF

1 Chamber 2 Cell Mox: Clicky

250 EU/t, 25 EFF

Are heat exchangers still transferring twice the old value for core heat?

35 EFF

Did a similar but better 0 chamber reactor previously however i dont think omicron likes that kind of reactor

I did one run with it and it worked really nice. Its actually the only mox reactor iv'e used (much funnier to create them in theory). If you have a lot of tin and copper its a really nice cheap alternative to regular reactors. However you still need 2*3*9 fuel spent before you can make it. However this is a LOT quicker than waiting for the bigger ones and it has really nice efficiency. It is probably the first reactor i will make every time since i can get it going quickly.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…x9iaoe1cken1m8l9j0cfprz9w

When it comes to reflector designs i believe it is better to try to not have it on 3 sides, running cost kinda runs away, For a 1 chamber reactor i would probably do something like this
Edit: This one is actually really nice, due to the setup it keeps a really high effieciency while still having a pretty low running cost (for its type). I)f you compare running cost with the power you are getting this is twice as effective as the previous reactor and even more than the one under it. it produces 80 million eu per cycle using only 4 basic reflectors compared with the one above using 4 for 40 million. Or the one below producing 50 million for 6. All in all i think this one should be on the list for the early efficiency freaks. If you compare it to the effiecieny 5 four chamber reactor designs its even better. That one produces 100 million eu for 8 basic reflectors. so all in all, this is a great starter reactor and probably the most feasible reflector designs for standard ic2 experimental.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…tguovuhm0tm2egtxarqloqst0

If you do want to do your design i would go to a 2 chamber design like this (design with 3 surrounding reflectors). Because of symetri you can make it much cheaper and skip on most of the advanced vents. The running cost on these kinds of reactors are somewhat excessive so its nice to have a very low initial cost to go with it.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…8zbtngkc7xoyj6oat5pklh3dg

The 1 chamber reactor got me inspired for this one.. It uses 2 standard reflectors per run, produced 600 eu/tick at efficiency four with only 2 chambers. 120 million eu for 2 reflectors at efficiency four in my opinion is as well spent tin and coal you are gonna get with reflectors. Since it is quite small the cost for building it is probably not all that bad. Only problem is that you could probably go for my reflecorless 3 chamber design with efficiency 20 however this one should be quite a lot cheaper initially.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…8od8hxf6gc4hme3b146cn3h3o

My oppinion is that the optimal route for mox is probably start upp with the 0 (2 rods) chamber reactor which you upgrade into the 1 chamber reactor (4 rods) and after that you turn it into the 2 chamber reactor or my 3 chamber reactor (6 rods, lower intitial cost vs lower running cost). After this you should be able to start working with the larger reactors where you get efficiency 4 with no running cost such as my 4 chamber reactor. As far as efficiency vs power output i would say that the efficient reactors wins out most of the time since they generate more power/plutonium which in reality is the biggest restricting factor (not the u-238 cost, you have loads of that shit by the time your making mox reactors). However going higher than efficiency 4 is rarely worth it cause they are just slighly better than efficiency 4 but have extremly high building and running cost.

Bonus 4 chamber reactor

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…nutmop4wvacj5gufqayzw3z0g

I propose that we add another factor to evaluate mox designs, Plutonium efficiency. This is because mox fuel is so scarce due to the time it takes to produce plutonium which is porly reflected by the current factor: (with regular reactors you can almost assume that people have as much fuel as they want which is why this isn't a problem with regular reactors)

total eu output/ total amount of plutonium used per cycle = Efficiency/27 (efficiency=million eu/fuel rod, 27=plutonium per fuel rod)

for example my 0 chamber reactor: 20/27 which is roughly 0.74 million eu/(small pile of) plutonium. Ofc this is linearly dependent on efficiency so all efficiency 4 reactors will have a value of 0.74 and all efficiency 3 reactors will have the same value also (15/27). This factor better discribes how much bang for your buck you are getting for those few plutonium scraps you have managed to gather than efficiency.

For example: In the case of omicrons Heart of the mountain plan we can simply divide his intended output by his plutonium efficiency and he would realise that maybe this isn't such a good idea: (intended output/plutonium efficiency

19,3/27= 0.7148, 5400/0.7148=7554. Meaning before he could use the heart of the mountain at full capacity he would have to go through 7554 fuel rods (either mox or regular).

Similarly we can also evaluate the power potential of the plutonium we have produced thus far: Power per cycle= plutonium efficiency*small piles of plutonium, power output=power per cycle*5

Simply multiply the plutonium efficiency of your intended reactor design with the number of small piles of plutonium you have and you will know the maximum power per cycle you can produce with that amount of plutonium or the power output by multyplying the power per cycle with 5(example: 108 small pile of plutonium, the maximum power using a efficiency 20 reactor is 20/27*108= 80 million eu/cycle, or power output: 20/27*108*5=400 eu/tick).
All in all i think it is a great tool to plan your mox reactors on a server on what is feasible under a certain time frame.

So efficiency discribes how well you use your U-238 (the late game restricting factor) and besides that my proposed plutonium efficiency which describes how well you use your plutonium (the early/mid game restricting factor):

1 Chamber Mark 1 EA
EU/tick: 400 eu/tick
Efficiency: 20 million eu per rod
Plutonium efficiency: 0.74 million eu/ small pile of plutonium
etc etc

This is the one I've been using for years, you need a good supply of lapis though, one auto shutdown system (when the inventory is not full), a way to extract the depleted LZH (the middle one will get melted first, so you need to get prepared to extract one completely cooled down and shutdown the reactor itself), to refill it, but it'll be producing 640 eu/t. At this rate, I think it's producing 1 bucket of UU each 2 minutes (Estimation). It doesn't require any chamber.
The design I'm using is here.
EDIT : Or you can see this page (that I found) to see some reactor designs : CLICK HERE.
EDIT² : The whole setup here. The transfer node keeps always one stack in the cyclic assembler (to let room for the LZH), there is one itemduct which is extracting from the reactor, another one who leads the new LZH to the reactor, the gate above the MFSU says "Capacitor full => Red wire ON", the gate above the lever (which we can't see here, but it's the gate above one random black granite block) says "Redstone signal ON => Red wire ON", and the one on top of the reactor says "Inventory full => Redstone signal [AND] Red wire OFF => Redstone signal ON". This way the reactor is toggleable, and when the MFSU gets filled, the reactor stops running.

I don't understand why you would want to look at plutonium efficiency seperately, it's always just standard efficiency/3, isn't it?

Also, even though it's counterintuitive, you should always run the reactor that uses as much fuel as possible while supplying enough power for your base.
Why? burning fuel gets you more plutonium, and plutonium is probably your limiting factor.

Quote from snahsnah

I don't understand why you would want to look at plutonium efficiency seperately, it's always just standard efficiency/3, isn't it?

Also, even though it's counterintuitive, you should always run the reactor that uses as much fuel as possible while supplying enough power for your base.
Why? burning fuel gets you more plutonium, and plutonium is probably your limiting factor.

In most case, they're using GT, as I am.
Why are we looking for plutonium efficiency ?

The industrial grinder makes one small pile of plutonium per Uranium ore, 4 of them can make one plutonium, 12 of them makes one rod. Than you can throw the purified uranium 238 into either a rock crusher, one universal macerator or to throw it into one thermal centrifuge. When you throw into a rock crusher / universal macerator, you have 10% of chance to get 1 more plutonium, when you throw it into the thermal centrifuge, it makes 1 tiny pile of plutonium (9 of them make 1 plutonium) per purified uranium 238.

To make the standard IC2 rods, we have to centrifuge 4 uranium 238 dust (so 4 macerated uranium ingots) to get 1, and only 1 tiny pile of uranium 235. This process takes 2500 seconds. We need 6 uranium ingots + 3 tiny pile of uranium 235 to make 1 rod.

So, if you want to start early with nuclear power, you'll have to WAIT. But when you have one industrial grinder, looking for MOX fuel rod is the better way. The uranium is still useful to make the MOX itself.

yeah, I use gregtech, too, and I start with Mox because of the insane timespan it takes to centrifuge Uranium-235, too.
I still don't see why Plutonium efficiency provides any insight into reactor design that the standard efficiency doesn't.
And as I said I don't think it's even useful to look for high efficiency reactors, especially early in the game, because you should be turning all your plutonium into fuel to get more plutonium anyways.

You can calculate it from standard efficiency however that is standard efficiency *5/27

Since i dont use gregtech i can't use the industrial grinder. So that route isn't available to me. It's a lot different if you only have IC2 experimental which i think is the major focus for this thread. The only way i can get plutonium is to centrifuge spent fuel rods, and then i only get 1 small pile, with 9 needed for a full amount. The way i see it is that they are different sides of the same coin however plutonium efficiency better describes the limiting factor when building mox reactors. it is also easy to calculate other informative things from it such as how much power and power output you can generate with the amount of plutonium you have.

If you have a limited amount of plutonium that is what will limit the amount of power you can generate. And the amount of new plutonium you can generate with your mox is also capped by the amount you already have. If you have exactly 4 mox rods its not gonna generate more plutonium regardless if you have efficiency 3 or 4. however efficiency 4 generators will generate a lot more power. and since mox reactors are so much stronger than regular reactors it's well spent resources compared to making more regular reactors.

And yes, for regular reactors it is a good tactic to make really low efficiency reactor initially so you get enough plutonium to start making small mox reactors early

Omicron, i dont mean for it to replace efficiency, but something you add to besides the standard efficiency. It would also point out the scarcity of plutonium for people new to building mox reactors so i do think it has its purpose beyond what you can calculate with it.

Something like this perhaps
Efficiency: 20 (0,74)

It should be easy enough to explain the numbers at the start of the reactor list. Its usefull for calculating stuff and gives information about what is different between regular reactors and mox reactors so i think it has its place on the list.

Regarding the temperature thingie i would love if you hade some ups and downs with different temperatures. Now you just keep it as high as is possible because it is just better. However if they made it so each level, 2,3,4 and 5 had different effects on the reactor. All managable but presenting an increasing difficult in managing the reactor that would be awesome. So if you wanted a bit easier mox reactor you would only manage to make perhaps a x3 reactor but if you really put in some effort into making the reactor chamber you could go to x4 and perhaps even x5. But it would require a lot more effort into prepping the area around the generator. At the top of my head something like that you would need to put a shield (some kind of lead based block :D) around the generator or it would irradiate everything in a large area surrounding the reactor. maybe just a visual effect on x2, at x3 you would nead 1 layer of shield and at x4 you would need 2 layers. For the last level you would also have to ad some cooling system to stop the sheild from melting like needing at least 1 layer of water between the reactor and the heat shield so for x5 you would have the generated surounded by water, followed by 2 layers of shield.

Right now i dont really think there is an actuall tradeoff in keeping the reactor at extremly high heat as long as it doesn't destroy the enviroment. I think you could do something really fun and challanging with introducing some kind of progressive difficulty in keeping reactors at higher and higher heat(and making runaway reactors even more dangerous ).

Hello!

Omicron asked me to post this one from another thread I replied in.

It's a 6-chamber that may be a good compromise between Blackpalt's and Zombie's design in the list.. it produces more EU/t than Blackpalt's and uses less Uranium / Plutonium than Zombie's, so it may be worth looking at.

It's 100% thermally stable (+-0 heating), so once you have it heated up to 85%, it STAYS there with no automation required.
Heat-up is swift if you remove the overclocked vents, takes me about 40 seconds or so to boot it up from zero.

Output COLD: 270 EU/t
Output HOT: 1,177 EU/t
Efficiency 3.86

(in case I missed a similar design in all the posts, Omicron feel free to this response of mine

Might as well go http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…z6sq1cbmc7f991navmakoldmn
Omicron doesn't like those designs though, because they're hard to automate.
You have to use something that can access specific slots. Although, now that I think about it, if there are equal amounts of the different types of cells in the design, like the one above, does your favourite way of automation work? What do you guys actually use to automate your reactors?

SpwnX
I like the idea of making specific things unmeltable, but I can't think of a way to do that while maintaining compatibility with other mods, so we had to use e.g. gregtech's automation.
I don't like it when mods do that.

Ah, I didn't get that before. Sorry for misquoting you.

Although I'd wish you would make a category for them, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one browsing this thread who is playing with more than just IC2 (gregtech would definitely suffice).
Blackpalts first attempts into that field don't really use the full potential of core heat transfer reactors.

Are you using that vanilla sorting method with hoppers? It's been a long time
If not (I'd guess so since that would require a lot of depleted fuel cells just sitting there unused)
you need other mods for the automation of any reactor though.

Still, I'm definitely going to test whether I can build something with just IC2 to properly automate core heat transfer reactors when I get home.

Quote from snahsnah

Although I'd wish you would make a category for them, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one browsing this thread who is playing with more than just IC2 (gregtech would definitely suffice).
Blackpalts first attempts into that field don't really use the full potential of core heat transfer reactors.

Since Omicron hasn't accepted that type of design i havent really put any effort into constructing them. The ones i posted above was just a quick work, proof of concept perhaps

As far as efficiency go they are a lot cheaper material wise than using vents and advanced vents and generally need larger reactors to efficiently use the overclocked heat vents which is the reason why they are interesting.

Quote from Blackpalt

Since Omicron hasn't accepted that type of design i havent really put any effort into constructing them. The ones i posted above was just a quick work, proof of concept perhaps

Well I gathered as much
He linked that post on his list though, and I don't think they're that good of an example because, as you said, they're not that thoroughly optimized

Quote from Blackpalt

As far as efficiency go they are a lot cheaper material wise than using vents and advanced vents and generally need larger reactors to efficiently use the overclocked heat vents which is the reason why they are interesting.

Actually you can fit significantly more cooling into the reactor with core heat exchange. Just take a look at my 2 chamber design, it has more cooling than any other 2-chamber in this thread, and it's small. In fact it has the same fuel rod configuration as one of your 4-chambers.
That means you can actually make them smaller, not larger.
The only downside is the automation. But if it's fast enough, they're 100% heat stable as well, because the reactor just doesn't tick fast enough to notice the time it takes to exchange the rods.

Edit:

I did the tests, it's possible to automate core heat exchange reactors without heat loss with vanilla hoppers.
So you don't need any other mods. Does that mean they go on the list?^^

It's pretty easy to do for reactors using just 1 type of cells. I am still working on a method for multiple types, but I already have an idea that should work.

Have you actually checked if they are heat stable. They arent according to the simulator. The 19 overclocked heat vents draw out 684 heat from the core of the reactor while only 640 is produced. While the actuall heat vents can handle 640 heat only this means that when the reactor is at a higher temperature it will pull out more heat that it can handle, damaging the components in the process, and cooling down the reactor. So when i crank up the heat for your reactor it will be down to low temperature with several damaged components before the cycle is over. However if you tried it in game and it worked i guess it must be something wrong with the simulator.

As i understand it, for these designs to work you need 640+ heat vent. As long as it is more it does not matter. However the amount of heat drawn out of the core needs to be exactly 640 heat. Or the reactor will cool down and in worst case scenario (as in your case) will also damage the components since the heat pulled out of the core does not match the cooling capability. it works well as a regular reactor thought.

This is a modified version of yours that is heat stable. However it still damages the components for some reason and i can't figure out why. Feel free to give it a go. ive tried some different setups but havent solved the problem. If i get the time i will try it in game, however if someone got some time on their hands feel free to do it and tell me how it goes.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…n6s3lb3l11burdmyr6b1huezn

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…m50f305v6y1zukydiwk08dw85

first one has 17 overclocked heat vents, 5 heat exchangers and 1 advanced heat exchanger which gives 17*36+5*4+8=640 heat taken from the core with a venting of 644. ive played around with the heat exchangers a bit however i haven't found a setup so far that doesn't damage the components. the second instead has 3 advanced exchanger and 1 normal 612+24+4=240. However the problem stays the same. If someone can answer why i would be happy

Sure I can explain how they work. You're right, the OC vents actually transfer too much heat from the core, but the heat is given back to the core via the reactor heat exchangers.
-> the components stay at about the same % heat as the core.
I have to admit that I didn't test the 6-chamber ingame yet (hence the missing up to xx multiplier note), although I'm confident that it works, because I already ran various very similar reactors ingame.
But I'm a little confused as to why the reactor planner tells you it's unstable. I get 640 for the vents as well as the core. Are you sure you didn't change something?

Edit: The vents in your design are getting damaged because your system is not asymptotically stable, in case that means something to you. I.e. you have 2 seperate sytems of vents connected with exchangers, but because you limited the core heat transfer, they can't exchange heat with each other.
That means if one of the two gets just one heat point more than the other, this error will accumulate.
But I can't find the component that isn't running at full speed, so I don't know where that error comes from.

That design principle would be the way to go though if they enable 5x multiplier mox reactors again, because they components don't get damaged, so you could actually run it at 5x.