Help me with CRCS reactors

JTTCOTE · Oct 28th 2013

While the CRCS FAQ thread was very helpful, it left me with quite a few questions. I'm playing FTB Unleashed on a server, so I don't have gregtech.

At one point in the thread, it links this design for a cooling tower:
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…v5107480vcutgf5op852o4um8

(apologies, I don't know how to do links here) and says this:
"However, considering it gets a revolutionary 95 cooling per cell per second,"

I replaced the 60K Cooling cells with Quad Uranium cells, which it can't cool, and found that it had 544 vent cooling according to the reactor planner:
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…uk/v3/reactorplanner.html?ghevwa9fs3vgy6g4uhzwrbdem3u6x03bzp9oy93wpwdozcnp3c1a2bq43fuaz8dmnn5fh8eea8bp4w

544/6 cooling cells = 90.666 Cooling per second, not 95. Is replacing it with quad cells and measuring vent cooling not a valid way of finding cooling power, or is the math wrong there?

I'm also confused on applying this. Let's say I have a reactor with a 65 second microcycle time that uses 18 60K Cooling cells, to choose really high numbers. Through the magic of being able to make your own numbers, this conveniently splits into three of the "95 cooling/sec" reactors linked above. 60000/90 (giving a safety margin) is 667 seconds, which is 10.26 times the microcycle time. Does this mean this reactor would need 3 groups * 11 cooling stacks = 33 cooling stacks, or can a ME network reduce that by storing full ones? (No GT, so no freezers).

Help would be appreciated in understanding CRSC

ShneekeyTheLost · Oct 28th 2013

Before we begin, a few caveats:

That was originally written back in 1.4.7. Not all of the information is 100% accurate anymore. Reactor design has advanced still further from that thread.

My primary goal here is to introduce you to concepts, not to give you a blueprint to copy and paste.

Right. So, Applied Energistics. Which version are you using? If you have fuzzy buses which can be set to pull at greater or less than a percentage, then you can use AE. Simply pull at under 25% and insert when greater than 75% and you're golden. Then you can have that same AE network send the 'spent' cooling cells to cooling towers and retrieve from the same. Please don't forget to use Nuclear Control to set up a shut-down switch if it gets too hot.

There were a series of advances in cooling towers, one of them has a cooling of over 100 per tick, but I don't have the link handy.

JTTCOTE · Oct 31st 2013

I've got the right version of AE, I tested it in creative (only exploded two reactors, once from forgetting to change the damage value split on the removing bus and once from forgetting to power the ME Network)

I was wondering about how exactly nuclear EU/t is calculated. Reactors pulse every second, do they give a massive pulse of energy every second, or is it spread out over time? If it's spread out, I assume it would spend one second outputting the EU generated the previous second, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Second, for getting energy out of nuclear reactors - are there any machines in IC2 (no GT) that can directly take >2048 EU/t, or do I have to step it down with multiple HV transformers?

Third, what's the difference between a CRCS and DDoS reactor, if there is any?

Lastly, in your opinion, what defines a CRCS reactor? I would say a reactor that cycles cooling items and produces no hull heat to be able to run continuously without turning off and cooling down, but others may disagree.

Quite the barrage of questions, answers would be appreciated!

ShneekeyTheLost · Nov 1st 2013

Quote from JTTCOTE

I've got the right version of AE, I tested it in creative (only exploded two reactors, once from forgetting to change the damage value split on the removing bus and once from forgetting to power the ME Network)

Only two? Wow, you're a quick study!

Quote

Second, for getting energy out of nuclear reactors - are there any machines in IC2 (no GT) that can directly take >2048 EU/t, or do I have to step it down with multiple HV transformers?

Nope, you're going to have to use multiple HV Transformers... at least until you chance to the experimental branch.

Quote

Third, what's the difference between a CRCS and DDoS reactor, if there is any?

Okay, the DDoS reactors are the first generation of the CRCS concept. They are a specific design series which I created and modified. HAYO Corp also has a line of CRCS reactors as well.

So, DDoS reactors are a subset of CRCS reactors.

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Lastly, in your opinion, what defines a CRCS reactor? I would say a reactor that cycles cooling items and produces no hull heat to be able to run continuously without turning off and cooling down, but others may disagree.

CRCS is defined as "Continuously Reapplied Coolant System", in other words: a reactor which uses components to store heat and swap them out for fresh components and cooled elsewhere. Any reactor which uses this mechanic can be classified as a CRCS reactor, although there are also 'CRCS Hybrid' variants which have both in-reactor cooling and swapping out of components.

Someone Else 37 · Nov 3rd 2013

The latest-generation cooling toward Shneeky mentioned are of my design, and are linked below.

Version 1: 1 chamber, cools 2 cells at 120 heat per cell per second, 240 heat per second total. This is the most compact tower, in terms of cooling per cubic meter.

Version 2: 5 chambers, cools 4 cells at 124 heat per cell per second, 496 heat per second total. Basically the above design stuffed into the same reactor twice over, and is slightly more cost-effective- Somewhat less than double the cost of Version 1, with slightly higher cooling efficiency.

Version 3: 6 chambers, cools 4 cells at 144 heat per second per cell, 576 heat per second total. This is actually the theoretical maximum cooling rate per cell, since no single component can pull heat from another faster than the 36 heat per second of the component exchanger. I'm not certain as to how its cost-effectiveness compares to that of the other towers.

The heating cells in these designs stand in for cooling cells- I just used the heat cells for testing purposes. I can't recommend this sort of testing for all cooling tower designs (particularly in cases where component vents are adjacent to the cells), but nobody seems to have cast doubt on my towers yet.

The caveat to these towers is that they will never actually dissipate the last 100 heat or so- which AE Fuzzy Busses can work around easily enough. Just yank cells out when they're 75% cooled. The 99% thing on the fuzzy bus is a bit of a misnomer- it actually only pays attention to whether the damage bar exists or not, so it's not helpful.

Another tip: Use a Buildcraft gate to only let the production reactor (or reactors) run when all slots in its inventory is full. May not be entirely failsafe, but it's certainly better than nothing. And it could prevent problems if enough heat gets dumped into the hull to melt the reactor instantly (think MOX), which Nuclear Control just can't do.

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