ReactorCraft - clever reactor setups?

[Pyure]

Pre-emptive: I'm at work and haven't read the manual. If there's an online copy of the manual which has the info I want, I'll just quietly apologize and go read that instead.

I'm going to build one of Reika's fission reactors tonight or tomorrow. I've watched the Danilus youtube example, but he's clear on the fact that his is just for show and not an efficient setup. I can't seem to find another video on the topic of "look how amazingly efficient my setup is" which is a bit surprising.

Is there any general design strategy for a good reactor setup? I don't need a specific layout or anything, but what should my goals be when locating boilers and the fuel core things (block name escapes me atm).

 

[Quesenek]

Ive been looking at the reactorcraft also and am surprised how little information there is on it aside from the videos you see from the mod author.

 

[kilteroff]

Well the thing actually doing the things, is the boiler, right? How do we heat the boiler: neutrons. Full neutron utilization is how you start planning. They come out in four directions, they don't stop until they hit something, so everything doesn't have to be touching per-se, so making sure to "catch" as many as possible is really the goal for your layout. Function > form.[DOUBLEPOST=1394831954][/DOUBLEPOST]A checkerboard pattern with a final outer ring of boilers would probably be a decent start [DOUBLEPOST=1394832103][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, the more efficient and dialed in your reactor is, the hotter it'll get (by design), better be on point with your Control-rod game

 

[xWHITExXxNinJa]

Is reactorcraft usable now? I thought it was very early alpha

 

[kilteroff]

Yep, t'is in packs and functional, even has a handbook

 

[xWHITExXxNinJa]

Yes. Nuclear fission here I come. Also I heard rumours you could make nuclear fusion reactors. Is that true?

 

[kilteroff]

Fusion reactors you say?

 

[Shevron]

Holy mother of god ....

 

[ThePixie35]

I'd like to see more... detailed videos, or pic lists, of peoples work with this mod, I really want to use it but the handbook just gives a big info dump.
Maybe a tutorial of progression through the mod might be nice.

 

[Peppe]

Did some experimenting in creative on the nuclear reactor.

I have not seen any designs, so just trial and error... mostly error.

First could not get water into the boilers with rotarycraft pipes, pumps, and machines. Not sure if I was missing something, but worked fine with ender IO or fluiducts and regular old aqueous accumulators.

Transducer tool is critical to look at what the boilers are doing.

Boilers above 100 degrees will consume 200mb of water and reduce their temperature ~2-3 degrees. Manual says they fail at 650.

Reactor fuel block, put fuel in and it transfers heat to anything touching it. These neutrinos cannot be captured by the fusion neutrino block -- if you air gap your fuel area to a set of boilers they will not heat up from neutrino capture block. Outer edge of reactor should be ~3 blocks concrete to stop these type of neutrinos.

Neutrinos do cause a chain reaction in reactor blocks they hit, so I could see two designs being useful. If you just want to get something working a solid square with ~2 boiler outer edge works well -- if the temperature is not consistently above 100 on all boilers you have too many -- not sure if there is a benefit to being far above 100. Dipping below 100 I think would be wasting heat, but basically ensures 100% safety.

The main throughput issue was supplying hot boilers water fast enough.

I did a 5x5 fuel section with ~8 boilers per side. Each side was running the biggest turbine at ~500-900 MW. Think water issues were causing the variance. ~950 MW seemed to be the max for the turbines. A few of the boilers dipped below 100c during operation, so not 100% efficient, but may indicate 100% safety as nothing in the reactor got warmer than 200-300 degrees.


Alternate design I hope to try would be long rows of reactors fuel blocks, so a chain reaction at one end could excite many fuel blocks in a long path. This may waste neutrinos in the directions with no fuel blocks, but you could scale later adding rows.

Test reactor: http://imgur.com/a/cunkW

 

[QKninja]

Hmm... Better start collecting steel for that fusion reactor...

 

[xWHITExXxNinJa]

I like what reika added to his mod and how it reflects real life. It adds that new dimension of "fun"

 

[SaintLucifer]

The only decent videos on Reactorcraft that i could find where on Spanish sadly...thanks god i understand some few words of it and the items are all named on english.

 

[EyeDeck]

First could not get water into the boilers with rotarycraft pipes, pumps, and machines. Not sure if I was missing something, but worked fine with ender IO or fluiducts and regular old aqueous accumulators.

Be sure you're on v18d, 18b-ish had a bug involving that.

Boilers above 100 degrees will consume 200mb of water and reduce their temperature ~2-3 degrees. Manual says they fail at 650.

That's only for steam boilers using ammonia rather than water. Water boilers take something like 1500C before they go.

Outer edge of reactor should be ~3 blocks concrete to stop these type of neutrinos.

Blocks of steel work a little better to cut down on size if resources aren't a huge concern - they only need to be 2 blocks thick rather than 4 for 100% neutron capture.

I also recommend building a ring of neutron irradiation chambers around your reactor, before the steel or concrete biological shield, for converting deuterium to tritium if you ever plan to make a fusion reactor - might as well put some of those otherwise wasted neutrons to good use.

Hmm... Better start collecting steel for that fusion reactor...

Steel is of lesser consequence than the 30k+ magnetite you're going to need (the central solenoid takes about 26k and the neutron injector structures takes at least a few thousand more). By the time you've quarried enough magnetite to build your reactor, you'll be able to build the entire building it's going to live in out of iron or steel blocks three meters thick. Also a ludicrous amount of wool, 15k or something.

 

[ThePixie35]

You seem to know a lot... please, impart more wisdom.

 

[EyeDeck]

You seem to know a lot... please, impart more wisdom.

Just what little I've gleaned by studying the Reactorcraft handbook, making half-assed explody setups in creative and - very slowly - attempting to build a fusion reactor in survival. There's so little practical documentation on Reactorcraft that even basic information like what I've posted is groundbreaking to most players. Shame, really.

 

[eric167]

a design reika showed was a 7x7 setup, with 4 2x2 blocks of fuel cores surrounded by boilers.

B- boiler
F fuel core

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tried it myself, runs stable, have yet to check output.

reikas response to the lack of documentation is that he is still working on the mod a fair bit.
presence of a manual will help though.
rest of it is trial and error and hoping you don't make a glowing crater in the ground.

 

[Quesenek]

Is it crazy that I can actually have a use for something that apparently produces unlimited amounts of power? Actually more than one at that. The only thing really holding me back is the highest pipe output I have found in monster is the enderIO one at 20k RF/t and even that isn't enough...

 

[SaintLucifer]

Tesseracs don't have power limit, so hooking one right on the machines would be your best option to use the excessive power you get from it.

 

[BreezyTaco]

Fusion reactors you say?

I have 0 reactor craft experience, but the thumbnail alone on that video just made me want to try it out