Hi,
First of all, I want to thank you Alblaka for this great mod!
However, the nuclear reactors are some kind of strange. You put some uranium in it and wonderfully electric power comes out.
In reality reactors are some more complex. They produce nothing but heat (and waste).
So I decided to suggest some changes to the whole reactor thing.
To explain my thoughts, I've made a drawing:
Now I try to explain it step by step.
- The reactor produce heat ( let's say 100 Heat (HE) per tick (t))
- Water as cooling liquid takes per kg 100 Heat out of the reactor
- In a heat exchanger the energy is given to a secondary water cooling system
- The water in the first water cooling system has the heat of 0 after the heat exchanger and will be pumped into the reactor again
- Every Pump takes 5EU/t to provide a mass flow of 1kg/t water
-Water in the second cooling system will be evaporated to steam in the heat exchanger (it has now the 100HE / kg)
- Through a pipe it goes to a high pressure turbine, which takes every heat above 50 HE
* Steam with 100 HE/kg => 50 HE/kg will be converted to mechanical energie (ME)
* Steam with 75HE/kg => 25HE/kg will be converted
* Steam with 40HE / kg => nothing will be converted
- After first turbine the steam goes into the medium (everything between 50 and 25HE/kg) and into the low pressure (everything below 25HE/kg) turbine
- The steam is lead to a condenser, which converts it back to water
- After the condenser a second pump will bring the water back to the heat exchanger
- The ME will be converted to EU in the generator by a factor of 5EU per 1ME
- The turbines are have different levels of efficiency
* HPT: .15 ME kg / HE
* MPT: .10 ME kg / HE
* LPT: .08 ME kg / HE
- To make the reactors as risky as they are:
* No water flow in the first cooling system -> BOOM
* Too less water flow in the first cooling system -> reactor hull heats up -> BOOM
* No water in the second cooling system -> No heat exchange with the first system -> reactor heats up --> BOOM
* To less water flow in the second cooling system -> ... -> BOOM
* Reactor has to heat up to about 2000 or something like that
* Too much water -> less HE/kg i.E reactor produce 100HE/t and 2kg/t water is provided => 50HE/kg in the second cooling system -> just the MPT and the LPT are working -> less power out of the system
* Reactor produces heat after shutting down for a while
* No HPD -> 100 HE/t to the MPD -> MPD gets damaged and will explode
* Same thing with LPD
- The condenser will make water out of steam ( does not matter how much energy is remaining in the steam)
(The same principle could be transferred to coal or gas Power Plants)
I hope you like my concept!
Greetings from Germany,