Posts by ShneekeyTheLost

Quote from Shakie666

I was thinking: what if you made a hybrid system, running the plutonium in a CRCS setup (for better efficiency), while using some of your thorium as cheap neutron reflectors? Something like this. It has the advantage of avoiding the extortionate costs of iridium neutron reflectors, and it shouldn't overheat, but i'm not 100%. I can't try it on the computer cube since i'm not on 1.5.2 yet, could someone who is test it?

I had a similar idea, but I don't know if regular vents can keep up with the thorium + 2 reflectors in the latest update. If it can... awesome. Otherwise, upgrade to OC vents.

Right now, I'm running with my Private Public mod pack, which doesn't have IC2 in it, much less GregTech. Between the updates and the bugfixing and config file tweaking (particularly on the forestry backpacks to store all the type-appropriate mod items), I haven't had much of a chance to do any testing in my IC2 testworld.

Having looked over the GregTech recipes for solars and other options, I find it amusing that nuclear is now the cheap option. That should be a meme... Gregtech: Where Nuclear Power is the cheap option.

Or, yanno, use netherrack in the magmatic crucible to generate lava. So you don't get all those ding-dang flowing and block update things...

I had an interesting idea concerning GT Hybrid Reactors...

Why hybridize? With the 1.5.x changes, there's no real benefit to them (unless you are just using the Thorium as a cheap Neutron Reflector). Particularly when you get into multi-reactor setups, I could easily see segregating the plutonium 'high output' reactor being set up in a CRCS system to take maximum advantage of the new heat-EU/t ratio curves, and the Thorium being put in something like an HVC system which can still produce a respectable power generation used to keep 'low but continuous power drain' systems like an AE network running smoothly and efficiently.

So you'd end up with something that resembles this quaint little setup for your CRCS 'primary' reactor, then several secondary reactors that use up your Thorium. For example, you could have 4x that look like this to use up all that Thorium. While each one may not produce a lot of EU/t, they've still got decent longevity (moreso with the one pulse every other second), and can require no automation (other than refilling thorium cells) so they can keep your other stuff running while your primary plutonium reactor runs your matterfabs

Quote from Ellegon

I just finished testing the setup Omicron mentioned and it worked like a charm Thanks again for your efforts Omicron! That really helps a lot, not only for the reactor, but also for using gates and stuff

EDIT: Just noticed something: The reactor runs for as long as there are cells in it. However, is it possible to add an additional trigger? Thought: I would love to add an MFSU to the reactor (if he's not powering the quarry) and fill it. As soon as the MFSU is full, he should stop. But since the rector runs for as long as there are cells, that doesn't work. Also a lever does not work (as you mentioned in your description...)

I wondered if I can add an additional signal to the diamond pipe with the gate that I could trigger independently. Or could I lose the red wire and just power it manually? -> probably have to test that...

Well, here's how you can do it...

Since you have RP2, this is a snap. You set up an AND gate
Input # 1 will be your manual on/off switch. In case you want to manually turn off the reactor for whatever reason.
Input #2 will be your thermal monitor. If it gets heat, it shuts down. A NOT gate is hooked up to this so it will emit if there is not heat.
Input #3 can be from your MFSU Power Full Emit Redstone. That might be borked, and you might have to hook up a structure pipe and gate to get it to work properly, however the gates' energy detection works quite well. You might want to set the gate to 'Energy 75% -> Redstone Signal' to give yourself a slight buffer. This then goes through a NOT gate to invert the signal (i.e. signal is transmitted if power is under 75%, otherwise it does not)

This way, ALL THREE conditionals need to be met: Manual switch is flipped 'on', Heat is 0, and MFSU is less than 75% full, in order for the AND gate to trigger and emit signal to the reactor to turn it on. If any of these conditionals are not met, the entire reactor immediately shuts down.

Use Wireless Redstone CBE if wiring gets obnoxious.

Yea, Breeders can extend the life cycle of your Uranium, but cannot create a closed cycle. Still, Applied Energistics can be amazing at automating a breeder. Import Bus (fuzzy import bus in 1.5.1) pulling depleted cells into the breeder, Export Bus pulling out re-enriched cells. Fully and completely automated for the life of the breeder.

Applied Energistics can, again, be used to automatically refill a reactor, assuming all of your consumables are identical, and all the other slots in the reactor are filled (plating is good for filling blank slots). I'm working on a system involving Applied Energistics to fully automate a CRCS Reactor. Having a bit of a trouble, unfortunately, but I'm working on it still. But I wouldn't suggest a CRCS system for your first reactor. Look up some of the Mk. I reactors, the one producing 420 EU/t ought to suffice for your needs currently.

A Cooling Cell will accept as much heat as offered to it, so far as I know. However, it doesn't dissipate that heat, it stores it. If there is something adjacent to it which can actively draw heat from a component, it will do so.

Therefore, a Cooling Cell next to a quad uranium cell will absorb all the heat that quad cell produces. However, if there is a golden heat exchange component adjacent to the cooling cell, it will take that heat and distribute it among everything it is touching.

This can produce 'hybrid CRCS' reactors, where you've got some in-reactor OC vents connected to the cooling cells via golden heat exchangers.

Just remember that not everything can actively draw heat from adjacent components. OC vents by themselves, for example, don't. So you can have an OC vent directly adjacent to a Cooling Cell and nothing will happen. But stick a heat exchanger between them, and Things Happen(tm).

Quote from Kenken244

Unless you use gregtech coolant cells.

That assumes one uses GregTech to begin with. I prefer to make designs which don't require GregTech, but which can take advantage of the additional options fairly easily.

Honestly, if it wasn't for a bug that will significantly impact CRCS, I'd try to cobble together a 1.5.1 build to experiment with an idea I had. Unfortunately, there's this cute little problem in Jenkens listed:

Don't register 30k/60k coolant cells, exploit worthy

Until that gets resolved, any experimentation with CRCS is rendered null and void.

Quote from Shakie666

All I can say for the new plutonium numbers is... wow. Now the extra power generated more than makes up for the extra heat. The example I was thinking of, with my CRCS setup, involves a 4*2 rectangle of quad cells, with neutron reflectors on the ends. With uranium, this generates 960 eu/t and 2688 heat/t, same as before. With plutonium however, we're now looking at a whopping 2400 eu/t, and 8448 heat/t. Thats a 150% increase in power, for a 214% increase in heat. For a CRCS system, where extra heat generated is less of an issue anyway, i'd say that's pretty damn good. Thanks Greg

Agreed completely. I can accept a 1:3.52 EU/Heat ratio. It'll still be a bugger to work, but at least it CAN be done.

For that matter, Precise Buses and Fuzzy Buses are now in Applied Energistics as of 1.5.1. These should significantly aid in automating a reactor. Use an ME Chest as your storage buffer and you won't even need a Disk Drive or Terminal for it. And hey, it's not like you aren't producing the power necessary to keep it going... hook it up to an MFSU that feeds from the output of the reactor and you're gold. Also, if you can normalize the heat buildup of the cells, you can use Precise Buses to automate the whole blinkin' thing. Just like you can calculate based on the time, you can precisely calculate the damage value at a specific time of any given cell.

I'm still working out the details, but I'm quite excited by this.

Applied Energistics have breathed new life into Breeders!

Attach an Import and an Export bus onto the breeder in question. The Import Bus pulls out Re-Enriched cells and the Export bus deposits isotope cells into the now vacant slot with lighting speed! Assuming you actually HAVE several hundred isotope cells stored in your applied energistics ME Network (quite feasible, with how it stores items, assuming you actually have acquired that many), they can be seamlessly re-enriched without needing any user input whatsoever!

I am looking into the break-points for the new Plutonium cells to ascertain viability in CRCS systems, however at this time it doesn't look very viable. The additional EU/t generated is nothing compared to the additional heat generated.

Case in point, a 'block' of four quad uranium cells in a square has an Eff 5, with 400 EU/t and generating 960 Heat. A block of quad plutonium cells has an Eff 7, with 560 EU/t and generating 2752 Heat.

For a 40% increase in EU/t, you net 287% increase in heat generation. That's not a cost effective ratio.

If you have a row of 8 quad-uranium cells with Neutron Reflector 'caps' on either end, you have an Eff 6 reactor producing 960 EU/t with a heat of 2688. First, let me point out that this is LESS than Plutonium was generating in return for 560 EU/t, then let's look at what Plutonium does in that same configuration. It has Eff 9, with 1440 EU/t, and generating 8448 heat.

Granted, you are now producing 50% more EU/t with Plutonium, but you're now generating 314% more heat. You will have less than a sixty second microcycle time... with 60k coolant cells. Even with 360k cells, you're only looking at a five minute micro-cycle. And even the best cooling tower I've yet devised, with a 110 cooling, has a cooling cycle time of 55 minutes. Meaning you're now looking at 11-12 cooling towers.

The only advantage to the plutonium is that it produces so much more EU per cycle due to higher efficiency rating. Which just means you'll be chewing through fewer cells.

Unfortunately, Import Buses tend ignore damage values entirely, and simply look at the item ID. This means hooking up import buses to cooling towers to pull out only full cells doesn't work, because it will pull expended ones as readily. I hope the rumors of a 'fuzzy bus' are not mere speculation, because they would revolutionize the CRCS industry.

Quote from skavier470

neat what mod is AE?
i think will automate my new test plant with that

Applied Energistics I don't think the fuzzy buses have been pushed yet, so they're very picky about exact damage values, and thus not being very useful for automating a CRCS system, however it really is an excellent storage system, and once you get the resources, an even more excellent auto-crafting system. It's pretty much Logistics Pipes Done Right(tm).

The auto-crafting system DOES require a significant investment of resources, apart and aside from your already existing storage network. To give you an example:

A basic 4 x 4 x 4 block (3x3x3 being the absolute minimum) requires the following:

* 32 ME Assembler Containment Walls. So, that's a couple of stacks of gold and iron right there, plus some quartz.
* 16 Heat Vents which is more iron, but not too bad
* 8 of either the Crafting CPU's (which require diamonds to create, but increase speed of crafting) and Pattern Providers (which increases maximum number of patterns your system knows).
* Blank Patterns are needed per unique combine, so you have a recurring cost in glowstone and quartz.

Also, the entire system needs to be constantly powered, or you lose access to it all. Including everything stored within.

Quote from skavier470

i find it easyier to just have a stash of 1-3 cycles of cooling cells in a buffer.

so you need with a 12 coolingcell reactor you would need

12 in reaktor
x in the cooling towers
+ 48-60 cells in a buffer

if now a reactor produces 2500 heat
and you take the C00ld0wn® REV.2b-8///544/68 you have 544 cooling in 8 cells
now from these you need 5 of these now you have another 40 cells

the sixty are needed,
on average the amount of cooled cells will be 48-60 but in peak the cooling reaktors are currently cooling 40cells and the reactor is chewing slowly threw your backup of cells.

MURHPYS LAW, ALWAYS remember everything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong.
(yes even me as a reactor specialist, master of the extreme mathematics inside advanced reactors, has lately blown his whole base up because one lever wasnt fliped to the right side)

also safety is a concern no one wants to disregard when building Reactors.

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Hmmm... that's an interesting way to come up with those numbers. I come up with them in a slightly different manner, but I think we're ending up saying the same thing.

I wholeheartedly agree that having a buffer of cooling cells is *never* a bad thing. That's why I'm so excited by the AE 'fuzzy bus' coming out in the next release. Basically, it lets you select a range of damage values rather than a single specific one. So you can, for example, say 'pull out every cooling cell with a damage value less than 1000', and AE works near instantaneously. It also can store your buffer at the same time, allowing you to reload it easily. You will want an Import Bus that tells it to keep it full of cells, and a fuzzy export buss that pulls nearly spent ones out. Then you have a fuzzy import bus hooked up to your cooling towers telling the system where they are supposed to go, and an export buss pulling out full ones.

Quote from Shakie666

Hey guys, another question: how exactly do you work out how many coolers you'll need for a given reactor? I have heard that plutonium has been buffed in GT 1.5.1, and I was thinking of running a bunch of reactors like this, but I don't how many coolers I would need. So how would I work it out?

Well, I would suggest going to the CRCS Seminar because it explains precisely this topic, as well as others.

In effect, you are looking at two numbers: Micro-cycle time (that is to say, how long it takes for the cooling cells to explode) and Cooling-cycle time (how long it takes your cooling towers to cool down a cell from depleted to full). You must also keep in mind how many cooling cells need to be cooled versus how many each cooling tower can handle.

Thus, let's take an example:

Let us say that Reactor A has 12 cooling cells and a micro-cycle time of 173 (just to pull completely random numbers out of thin air, and not in the least bit related to any reactors I might actually have running at this time...). If you use the 6/95 C00ld0wn towers, this means you have a cooling cycle of about 630 seconds (rounding down for explosion prevention).

So, Dividing that out, you get just over 3.5. That rounds up to 4. Now double that, since you need two cooling towers per cycle since you have 12 cooling cells but only 6 per cooling tower.

But wait, I can already hear someone say, '3.5 * 2 is 7! You're needlessly building an extra reactor!'. And to this person who has done his math, I shall point out some simple things:

Each cycle of the reactor expels twelve cells. Once you have six of them full, you only have one left to accept cells into. Which means six cells won't have anywhere to go. Which means you get a crater. Remember, not everything in real life likes to be divided. Besides... building a spare cooling tower you will never have to use costs you a moderate amount of copper and iron. Rebuilding the entire CRCS network will cost you FAR more. Which expense would you rather pay?

Quote from Quintine

That isnt direwolf's reactor and if your running renewable lapis from bees or just have quarries running 24/7 (on a server or even just whenever you are online) you can get 100% of your lapis for a pretty hefty LZH reactor with no EU loss.

Okay, let's do the math here:

To run your reactor's Lapis on bees, you need 1 lapis every 7 seconds.

Now, Lapis Bees produce Lapis as a secondary, meaning they have to be in an ideal climate (not difficult, honestly), and even with frames they don't produce a whole lot of them. Even with Alvieries and five frame components (from extra bees) you aren't going to be getting many. Then each lapis comb only has a 25% chance of producing lapis.

Which means you're going to need 1.75 lapis combs per second. Which is faster than a centrifuge can handle. But that's okay, let's just say you've got a centrifuge per alviary.

You're probably looking at about a dozen Alviaries with five alviary frame components with proven frames kept maintained in them at all times, each with their own centrifuge attached just so they can handle the output of the non-lapis combs as well (unless you are shifting them elsewhere, because you're going to get FAR more other combs than you will Lapis combs).

Just the material components invested in something like that is enormous. By the time you've got the resources to set that up, you might've well just set up a CRCS system and gotten a better energy efficiency in the first place.

Oh hey look... it's Direwolf20's reactor design!

Which, to be honest, sucks. You're losing nearly 40% of your EU in trying to maintain those LHZ's. Remember, that thing eats a lapis every 7 seconds.

CRCS systems are more energy efficient, even if they have a higher initial layout cost.

You would do much better with a quad of 'Beast' reactors. You'd only be churning out around 1680 EU/t, but you wouldn't need to fiddle with EV and you'd end up with more EU/t in the long run by not needing LHZ's being refilled constantly.

Concerning cooling towers...

The throttle placed on the cooling factor of a cooling tower is simply how much heat you can draw out of a cooling cell at any given time. As such, the choke-point are the golden heat exchangers. Each one can only draw 36 heat out of a cooling cell. Thus, three of these would make 108 potential cooling (assuming you have the OC vents available to deal with it) and the component heat vent makes for the last 4 to make 112.

As you have only 36 heat per golden heat exchanger to deal with, having more than two OC Vents attached to each one is entirely wasteful, since each one vents 20 heat per second. Even then, you lose out on a potential 4 heat per vent, but that is an acceptable loss.

Potential cooling cannot be realized if it cannot interact with the heat from the cells.

INCOMING TRANSMISSION....

RE: Seekret Prodjekt
Attached files: DDoS_Split_Reactor_Prototype.dwg , C00lm4ster.4/112.dwg

Mwhahahaha! We've only got the thirty five second gap to deal with, milord! Project Boxed Set is progressing steadily. Results are promising, and we should be able to deliver this entire development as a single package once completed! Will need to double-up the cooling towers on each side of the main reactor, however.

Using dual cells instead of quad cells would reduce the amount of fissionable materials required, and would significantly reduce the micro-cycle time to easily permit four HAYOcorp C00ld0wn 95 towers to do the job. However, EU output would be reduced from 1600 EU/t to a mere 640 EU/t. It would function as requested, however.

The idea of putting a cooling tower on each of the four sides of the primary reactor is sheer genius, sir! This allows you to hook them up directly, reducing the pneumatic transportation system to an absolute minimal. Access ports on both sides of the Y axis permit maintenance and energy outflow. The whole thing can then be reinforced with explosion-resistant layers and installed as a simple cube nearly anywhere you like!

I repeat my request for a MagicTech assistant to look into the Golemancy cell transferring system. Also, a... 'friend'... over at Applied Energistics has leaked a 'fuzzy bus' schematic which would also make transference of cells to be trivial.

Requires more testing. Request one stack additional delta-class minions to site Whisky Tango Foxtrot Niner.

Quote from Kenken244

It would probably be much cheaper than using cooling towers, though it requires a higher tier of progression in gregtech. However, since it requires energy, in the long run you would be better off using cooling towers.

Mmm... depends. It's basically the whole 'LHZ is a trap because you spend half your EU output maintaining it' situation all over again.

However, assuming the energy requirement isn't *too* demanding, it might well be profitable. It would also depend on how quickly it cools off cells, and how many cells can be cooled at any given time. My knowledge of GregTech is minimal at best.

However, if you could get all 24 cells from a DDoS Alpha Reactor cooled within the micro-cycle time of 80 seconds, it basically replaces all the cooling towers. And if it only runs on, for example, 128 EU/t, and you are generating over 2k EU/t, it would be very much worth it.

Quote from NolanSyKinsley

Does the downloaded version of the reactor planner work for anyone? I try and use it and it doesn't even open up a window, but throws no errors. I am on 64 bit linux.

I'm running Ubuntu 12.10 and have no problems with it. In fact, it has far fewer problems than the in-browser one, which tends to crash Firefox.

However, I'm running it with 32 bit rather than 64 bit. That could be your problem.

I am running it on Java, not on OpenJRE, though. That might be your problem.

Hmmm... I haven't experienced this, but I think I'm familiar enough with the mechanics to see the problem and solution...

Here's how it works.

Okay. When heat is pulled out from an item via a heat exchanger, it shares the heat with the adjacent components. Then it looks at the components nearby and distributes the heat appropriately. For the vast majority of the cycle, this isn't a problem, because the cooling cell has far more heat than the other three adjacent components. Unfortunately, at the end of the cycle, it will try to evenly distribute the heat, including a small portion back to the cooling cell.

And here's why it's generally not a problem:

FIrst off, it doesn't consider more than 99% full to be 'damaged' for some reason. Which gives you plenty of a buffer for this sort of thing. Second off, the component heat vent takes care of the little bits returned to the cooling vent.

Which means, if you are seeing this behavior, it probably means you've got a bit of heat left, and you should let it cool an additional micro-cycle. You probably tried to cut the cycle times a bit too close. Happens to the best of us.