Long term system efficiency depends more on a base energy storage amount (now I have 4x100m, that fills up in a hour). Some amount of water (~2000L) somehow lost on login, maybe lost in pipes or something dunno, not critical if LHE input hatch has more.
Also if system is active after energy storage is full nothing bad happens exept for fuel rods and turbine rotors continue to deplete.
When you run reactor and turbines on a long term energy loss on start is insignificant, i mean really. Turbines actually stops after steam input is empty, whatever it written in wiki (Nuclear Control Advanced Information Panel approved). I think wiki means that turbine stays in "machine processing Enabled" (in fact like all machines without machine controller installed or recent structural changes made) state that swiches by soft hammer and doesn't have effect on its inner process directly. I mean that all system depends on steam, steam depends on LHE, reactor activity and finally redstone signal in reactor redstone port.
P. S.: Actually LHE has its own startup penalty that is about 3 times longer than turbines.
P. P. S.: Turbines doesn't use up rotor durability when out of steam.
And there is no need to store steam anywhere, because steam-dist.water is close cycle system without any loss (almost). Only must have dist water buffer in LHE side input for insurance. Actually i thought this way about cseam buffer too, but it proved its useless in first minute.
IMO, nuclear power is much more promising in GT5. You don't need vast oil processing setups, or to worry about oilfield depletion and extraction effectiveness, or much of generation management (you can just set an Project Red logics to turn reactor on/off depend on base main power storage). While machinery is quite expensive nuclear fuel itself is cheap (not to mention thorium - it's like dirt-cheap an even not need much processing from raw mineral). Your mid-game power comnsumption will be EBF and you will need constant energy gain in some periods (i mean hours or even days on fullHV or even fullEV), alternating with periods of almost no consumption at all when you gather resources or processing em or using LV machinery or whatever.
Also there are late-game resources, like lutetium that can only be made from depleted thorium, and eventually you will need stacks of it. eNaquadah is also most efficient in liquid nuclear reactor (btw remember to NEVER take it without hazmat suit - you will surely die).
And when I count retrospectively resources on my oil refining facility it is MUCH more expensive than nuclear reactor with all stuffing and 3 large steam turbines.
...in fact I just got upset one day when after an GT update my 600L medium fuel field just under my base turned to 0L heavy sulfuric shit, as every chunk in at least 10 chunk radius rendering my oil refining facility quite useless before i started to use oil bees (whatever mod they came from) for plastic production
...Flight would be really handy for that, but just making a jet pack means severely compromising my armor protection. The quantum armor has built in flight... but it’s gated behind tungsten. If I had that I don’t really need the armor...
There's a mod GraviSuite, it has a Advanced NanoChestPlate that is NCP with electric jetpack storing 3m EU.
Btw made a QCP recently and it has no fly option (maybe because of GraviSuite? dunno, just too lazy to check
)
Add: Mod also compatible with GT5U, it even has assemblyline recipe for GraviChestPlate
After changing to 5.09.29pre found that my oil source suddenly changed from light oil to raw oil with same rate of extraction. Not that it's too bad, but wondering if someone had encountered same bug or it's just my savegame is corrupted?
