BigReactors Vs ReactorCraft

[Dragonchampion]

Which is more efficient per Uranium? I'm planning on making my first fission generator soon but the trick is I want each uranium to go a long way if possible, as, well, that's how real life works, with each bit of uranium lasting for a long time.

However, what troubled me is, I watched a reactorcraft tutorial (This one), and the uranium pellets were being exhausted in mere seconds after starting to reactor. Considering the difficulty of getting uranium, that makes me wince.

What should I do? What should I be aiming for now? I am sitting on a mountain of iron, thanks to Mekanism's Mechanical Miner powered by Rotarycraft... but now I need to figure out exactly what way is up, besides of course Jet Fuel. I don't know if it's the insanely high price or the difficulty of automating, but something just makes me shirk away from it.

 

[malicious_bloke]

Difficult to say which is more efficient in uranium. Big Reactors are so customisable that you can go from one that is almost self-sustaining (with the cyanite reprocessing thingy) to one that consumes more than 1000mb/s, while with reactorcraft you can have a basic design that chews through uranium pellets at a ridiculous rate OR you can use a breeder reactor to make it a bit more sensibly self-sustaining.

Of course, if you have IC2 in your pack you can grow uranium with magical crops or produce it with bees (IC2 uranium oredicts nicely with yellorium and pitchblende), so ultimately it's not that important.

Basically reactorcraft outputs more, so ignore or work round your short term resource constraints and head for the deep end

 

[Padfoote]

Just as a general warning for you, that video (and presumably most others) is outdated in terms of available blocks and designs.

 

[Dragonchampion]

Just as a general warning for you, that video (and presumably most others) is outdated in terms of available blocks and designs.

It's Rotarycraft all over again... *sigh* Well, does anyone have guides to setting up BigReactors then?

 

[Azzanine]

Reactorcraft is more of a mod you challenge yourself with, but get even a basic fission reactor setup with automation and failsafes and power problems become a thing of the past. It might even be more efficient if you make a breeder reactor too. Also the RoC extractor can net you 5 uranium per Pitchblend/ Uranium ore so fuel's not a problem even if it's not efficient.

Big reactors is a very simple and handy solution to RF problems. You also don't really need to bother about how it's set up either, in any configuration they are super efficient. Trying to make Big reactors more efficient is rather pointless despite it's benefits, becasue the range of efficiency ranges from super efficient to uber efficient.
I don't even bother looking up setups for big reactors, all I know is that if you keep a lot of rods close to each other in cardinal directions the thing uses less fuel. Also have to make sure there's enough space to put your coolant so it actually makes RF. All you need to do is make a box with reactor casings (the parts that are not the edges of the box can be reactor glass) a power tap, 1 or 2 ports for fuel in and out, fuel rods and the rod controllers to cap them off at the top. I've seen people make checker board patterns with their rods claiming huge efficiencies with any spot that' not a rod filled with Liquid cryotheum.

Turbines I haven't messed with yet though.

So if you want to make a complicated power plant that's as true to life as you can get in a Minecraft setting go for ReactorCraft. You will need to go throught the whole RotaryCraft suite before you get there though, RoC content is difficult to skip and if you do you get punished.
If you don't want to think but want lots and lots of RF on the cheap go for Big Reactors, you can make yourself a small system pretty early if you focus.

 

[madnewmy]

Look up lisimba guide fpr reactorcraft
Not fission, but its dam efficient!

One uranium makes 3 pellet for htgr which translate in 900-940 MW for around 10-12 mins IIRC (thats somewhere around 200k rf per tick)

Find me something more efficient...

Oh and it can be self sufficient, finding more rez then it uses, easly!

Set up 2/13 of the power on a boring machine with silky and eff5, you mine at 1.05s per operatoon which take 35 blocks out!

Use another 2/13 on a extractor
Finally 1/13 too power two friction heater at 1900-1950C

Gives you 8/13 of the power too spare...

 

[steve g]

big reactors + turbines = crazy amounts of rf, but you have to build quite a few turbines to see the benefits. you can get upwards of 300k rf per tick if you go crazy with it. but i hear a proper tokomak reactor from RoC will put a large big reactor/turbine farm to shame. i cant say much about RoC tho, i havent done a tokomak...(yet...muhahaha)

 

[Padfoote]

big reactors + turbines = crazy amounts of rf, but you have to build quite a few turbines to see the benefits. you can get upwards of 300k rf per tick if you go crazy with it. but i hear a proper tokomak reactor from RoC will put a large big reactor/turbine farm to shame. i cant say much about RoC tho, i havent done a tokomak...(yet...muhahaha)

A well designed small fission reactor can put a Big Reactor to shame. A fusion reactor will make it look like a single dynamo.

 

[eric167]

a simple 8 core HTGR I set up didn't burn excessive amounts of fuel, and was easily turning out more RF than most big reactors will even DREAM of.
its also quite smaller than a BR reactor/turbine combo of the same output.
ill have to remake it for the exact number.

 

[Peppe]

Not sure if all the ratios are still the same, but this tutorial on pebble bed reactor has great detail and is easy to follow:
http://lisimba.org/minecraft/howto_beginner_reactor/howto.html

This is basically the lowest tier in reactorcraft and a small setup runs ~4 full size turbines... Those are what 150k Rf/t each?

I don't know the efficiency comparison. Both can mine more than they use.

Reactorcraft is a little more challenging to build if you go about building your own. You can easily do wrong/bad things and lose power, end up not making any power at all, and die a bunch.

Big Reactors is like pressing the easy button -- after the multiblock has formed you have won. It is new and cool, but in the end it does everything with little to no downside.

 

[madnewmy]

Not sure if all the ratios are still the same, but this tutorial on pebble bed reactor has great detail and is easy to follow:
http://lisimba.org/minecraft/howto_beginner_reactor/howto.html

This is basically the lowest tier in reactorcraft and a small setup runs ~4 full size turbines... Those are what 150k Rf/t each?

I don't know the efficiency comparison. Both can mine more than they use.

Reactorcraft is a little more challenging to build if you go about building your own. You can easily do wrong/bad things and lose power, end up not making any power at all, and die a bunch.

Big Reactors is like pressing the easy button -- after the multiblock has formed you have won. It is new and cool, but in the end it does everything with little to no downside.

Look up four post xd and no the number are not the same anymore, it says 1.56 can fully power a turbine but in my testing, it's more around 2,75.

The number for cold co2 seems good and the usage too!
And the number for the exchanger seems good too
For the boiler, it seems a bit off since i could not totally max out two turbine with a single boiler (was close but not there, might have been water input)

 

[Reika]

Which is more efficient per Uranium? I'm planning on making my first fission generator soon but the trick is I want each uranium to go a long way if possible, as, well, that's how real life works, with each bit of uranium lasting for a long time.

However, what troubled me is, I watched a reactorcraft tutorial (This one), and the uranium pellets were being exhausted in mere seconds after starting to reactor. Considering the difficulty of getting uranium, that makes me wince.

What should I do? What should I be aiming for now? I am sitting on a mountain of iron, thanks to Mekanism's Mechanical Miner powered by Rotarycraft... but now I need to figure out exactly what way is up, besides of course Jet Fuel. I don't know if it's the insanely high price or the difficulty of automating, but something just makes me shirk away from it.

Fuel pellets tend to last about an hour, but it varies wildly, as it is wholly a function of reactor design.

As for power outputs....that rightmost bar is BigReactors.

Let's try a logarithmic scale.

Keep in mind that an average ReactorCraft reactor can run multiple turbines, with outputs of about 1GW, 5GW, 3GW, and 80GW (1GW = 177kRF/t) for HTGR, Fission, Breeder, and Fusion reactors respectively.

 

[Pyure]

fwiw, ReactorCraft reactors are, frankly, a bit more interesting to set up (significantly more interesting than BR passively-cooled reactors in particular)

Reika's 1.7 versions (v26?) may feature a turbine flywheel of sorts which will indirectly lead to performance improvements for many players (who use ElectriCraft in conjunction). This will be a major draw for me and I'll need to start up another RoC world.

 

[Skyqula]

@Reika Large turbine is Big Reactors? Exactly what is being displayed? Because a Big Reactors Turbine is capped at 2.000mB of steam per tick for ~24k RF/t. The maximum steam a Big Reactor can produce is 50B/t. Good for 600k RF/t using 25 Big Reactor Turbines.

 

[Reika]

@Reika Large turbine is Big Reactors? Exactly what is being displayed? Because a Big Reactors Turbine is capped at 2.000mB of steam per tick for ~24k RF/t. The maximum steam a Big Reactor can produce is 50B/t. Good for 600k RF/t using 25 Big Reactor Turbines.

My number was based on something someone one told me (based on observations in Monster)...I have never used BigReactors.

 

[Dragonchampion]

Thanks, Reika! I don't suppose you could also point me to a tutorial for Reactorcraft that is up to date for 1.6.4, can you?

 

[Padfoote]

Thanks, Reika! I don't suppose you could also point me to a tutorial for Reactorcraft that is up to date for 1.6.4, can you?

It isn't much, but it's a start: Pebblebed Reactor Guide. Based off the version in Monster v1.1.1 (v23 I think?).

 

[Pyure]

Thanks, Reika! I don't suppose you could also point me to a tutorial for Reactorcraft that is up to date for 1.6.4, can you?

I think you mean for recent ReactorCraft (v25) versions; all ReactorCraft versions afaik were for Minecraft v1.6.4

Your best bet is usually to scrounge for recent videos on youtube, or to ask questions here. Lisimba posted a fantastic written walkthrough on how to make the most basic reactor (HTGR pebble bed), but I don't know of anything similar for the boiling-water or breeder reactors (or fusion for that matter)

Edit: Ninja'd by Sir Padfoote for Lisimba's guide, and he even gave you a link cuz he's just that awesome.

 

[Bigpak]

Fission reactor guides would be amazing/fission reactor designs. I know how to set up one but with that being said I don't know too much about the cooling of them other than apparently they melt at around 1500 degrees celsius.

 

[MigukNamja]

Yes, I have RoC + ReC at the top of my to-do list. I'm doing my first, full GT playthrough. Am also playing with GC for the first time. Not sure what I'm going to do with all that GT fusion power. Maybe make a huge tank of UU-matter.

What do ReC people do with power beyond the 1GW "starter" HTGR reactor ? I can think of ways to use 177k RF/t, but what to do beyond that ?

Sooooo many things to do in modded MC, so little time.