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I am guessing you are running that at 0% temp. If that is so then it is very inefficent. Heat it up to 75% or so and watch your EU prduction rise. The higher the core temp, the more efficient your reactor runs but you still have to keep in mind of the reactor limits when it comes to melting point (~80%) and beyond.
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Tomasino132
Guest
So use a reactor design that doesn't use vents or exchangers that pull from the reactor hull. The component exchangers, component vents, and advanced vents work well. Many MOX designs I've seen use the advanced vents exclusively, just placing a couple of them next to double or quad MOX fuel rods and filling the rest of the space in the reactor with heat plating.
Worth noting that the MOX efficiency bonus only cares about the ratio between the current and maximum temperatures of the reactor- a reactor at 85% with no heat plating and a reactor at 85% filled with heat plating will produce exactly the same amount of EU, given that the rest of the components are the same, even though the second reactor is at a much higher temperature than the first. However, most MOX designs still use lots of heat plating, as if something goes wrong, it gives you a bit more time before the reactor goes boom.
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Tomasino132
Guest
Yeah,but then i have to replace advanced vents almost every minute,because they would melt quickly right ?
This reactor ( 21p7etbyby1wu5bd0l22d820x5seqstffvs848spmzej6k14a0u45719cgpr5udohkak1wo49ndatc0 ) annoys me at a fundamental level. It is a fantastic example of something that can only have been bred using a genetic algorithim: Completely asymetrical, one out of the 7 fuel cells relies on reactor hull based cooling, the rest via component convection and theres exactly 1 component heat exchanger. Whoever came up with this originally is either mad, or a genius, probably both.
Now, if you are running this as a fluid reactor (the 5x5x5 version) none of what I say below is true, as they work somewhat differently from EU reactors, but your talk of EU rather than Heat indicates a 3x3x3 reactor, so:
First: IC2 / IC2exp reactors have a totally bizarre heat model that does not mirror anything you might find in real life or consider common sense: The reactor hull has a heat level that is independent of the heat level of the reactor components. Fuel rods generate heat and pass it either to adjacent components directly (causing NO increase in hull heat) or the Hull (only if there are no suitable adjacent components). Components can take heat from the hull (cooling it), exchange heat with their neighbors, or "vent" heat.
With that in mind: When dealing with EU reactors, a MOX reactor gains efficiency from running hot - the hull must be hot. Heating a reactor to 75% of its total heat capacity gains you a 4X multiplier to your EU output. The only way to raise the hull heat of a running reactor if to have a design where fuel rods are heating the hull, and for the hull heating to be greater than the hull cooling - which would require cooling phases.
This makes maintaining a consistent high heat difficult so MOX reactor designs are usually manually preheated during the build phase prior to component insertion - and then a reactor is assembled that uses no components that do any kind of reactor hull cooling.
So, a typical EU MOX reactor would use this plan:
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This reactor has an output of 1200EU/t when heated to 75% and filled with 5 MOX Quad rods. For a total efficiency of 12x. The design uses Advanced Heat Vents, Component Heat Vents, and Component Heat Exchangers exclusively which do not cool the reactor hull. As there are no empty spaces and all the fuel cells as the same size it can be trivially automated using pipes or ME.
If you are looking for higher efficiency (more EU from each fuel rod)
090C090C0C090C09001409140A0A14091400090C0A05050A0C0900090C0A05050A0C09001409140A0A14091400090C090C0C090C0900
will produce 640EU/t at 75% heat (16x efficiency), and can also be automated with pipes.
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PS - if the long strip of numbers confuses you, its meant to be an input to the Reactor Planner tool you get from here: https://github.com/MauveCloud/Ic2ExpReactorPlanner/releases
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Tomasino132
Guest
This design (0A140A140A140A140A060A0C0A0C0A0C0A060A140A140A0C0A140A0C0A0C0A060A0C0A0C0A140A140A140A140A060A0C0A0C0A0C0A06) looks very interesting,it will keep the same heat,but sometime i had to change component though..... But thanks for this design. Now i only have to think about how to preheat it without blowing up
PS: first pre-heat and then put components in it right ?
PS: first pre-heat and then put components in it right ?
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Tomasino132
Guest
+ the heat vents and exchangers will only take heat generated from rods and others components but not the hull ?
http://wiki.industrial-craft.net/index.php?title=Advanced_Heat_Vent - vents 12 heat from itself, does not draw heat from the hull.
http://wiki.industrial-craft.net/index.php?title=Component_Heat_Exchanger - does not vent heat or draw heat from the hull. Simply balances the heat of surrounding components by moving up to 36 heat around.
http://wiki.industrial-craft.net/index.php?title=Component_Heat_Vent - does not draw heat from the hull, but will vent 4 heat from each adjacent component (so, can vent up to 16 heat)
Pre-heating can be done manually by inserting rods into a empty reactor and turning it on. A single quad rod generates 96 heat - which is per second, and you need to heat it to about 7500. So it will take ~78 seconds to heat the reactor to 7500 and 104 seconds to 10,000 (and detonation) giving you ample time to manually turn it off. (Do note that each piece of reactor plating increases the max heat by 1000, and the 4x MOX efficiency bonus is attained at 75% of the total heat, so you might need to put the plating in place and heat the reactor - be careful when re/moving plating - I don't know if removing plating lowers the heat, if it doesn't you might accidentally make the heat critical).
Alternatively you can do it more safely by using a mod like Reactor Control if available, that has modules that can monitor the heat of a reactor and turn a redstone signal on/off automatically at a set heat level. But hey, why do it safely? In the worst case you get the Crazy Ivan achievement to make up for the crater in your base.
The reactor can be partially built - the reason to do it disassembled is the fuel rod used for pre-heating can't be touching any cooling components or the heat will be vented rather than going into the hull
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Tomasino132
Guest
Were I to design a MOX reactor, I'd go through a process something like this:
Some things to keep in mind:
- Can an advanced vent (or four) completely cool a MOX fuel rod? What about a double or quad MOX fuel rod?
- Were I to stuff a reactor full of MOX rods surrounded by just enough advanced vents to cool them, would I be satisfied with the reactor's output and efficiency?
- If I were to place some MOX rods next to each other to boost the reactor's efficiency, could I still cool it with advanced vents alone?
- If not, is the excess heat low enough that adding component heat vents can cover it?
- If not, is the excess heat low enough that component exchangers can at least move heat away from the fuel rods as fast as the rods produce it?
- If so, is there enough space in the reactor that the heat could be distributed to enough vents to deal with it?
- If so, is there enough extra space to put in more fuel rods and cooling?
- In any case, if I rearranged the fuel rods entirely, could I get more out of the reactor?
Some things to keep in mind:
- Advanced vents will not transfer heat into or out of themselves. They will not function unless an adjacent fuel cell or exchanger pushes heat into them.
- Component exchangers will not vent heat, but they do transfer heat both into and out of themselves. They have a limited throughput, as GreenZombie notes. However, it's also worth noting that this limit applies to each individual exchanger- if you need to get more than 36 heat per second away from a component, you can place exchangers on more than one side of it. Also, if you place two component exchangers next to each other, one will push heat into the other, while the second pulls heat from the first, giving a total of 72 heat per second transferred between them. This is really only useful if one of those exchangers is heated directly by a fuel rod or another component exchanger, as there's really no other way to get more than 36 heat per second into the exchanger in the first place. Also, if you find yourself having to do this, you're dedicating a lot of space to shuffling heat around, rather than actually venting it. Rearranging your fuel rods is likely a better option, but it could work in a pinch.
- Component heat vents will vent 4 heat per second from each adjacent component that stores heat. They themselves, like fuel rods, cannot store or transfer heat. So the most efficient way to use them is to completely surround them with exchangers or other types of vents. For this reason, you'll often see component vents in diagonal lines or in a grid pattern, as this exposes all four sides of each vent to other components. Also, placing a component vent adjacent to a fuel rod will do absolutely no good.
- The safest MOX reactors never transfer heat between the reactor hull and the fuel rods or other components inside, at least after the initial setup. Hence the focus on component exchangers, component vents, and advanced vents, which do not interact with the reactor hull at all. This also means that every single fuel rod must be touching at least one component that stores heat- that is, a component exchanger or an advanced vent. As such, you can't get the maximum theoretical efficiency (7, before the heat bonus is taken into account) out of this type of reactor... but the MOX heat bonus more than makes up for that, and the known 7-efficiency conventional reactor designs are pretty terrible anyway, requiring single-use neutron reflectors, very short duty cycles, or both.
- As mentioned before, this style of reactor must be heated up manually before the MOX bonus will kick in. I recommend doing this by first setting up all the components in the reactor, then adding the fuel rods, running the reactor for a bit just to make sure that it's stable, then removing all the heat-storing components adjacent to one of the fuel rods, running the reactor briefly to heat up the hull to around 80-84% (any higher and it'll turn stuff nearby into lava), and finally replacing the removed components to make the reactor stable again. If you overheat it, turn the reactor off and swap out one of the fuel rods, vents, or exchangers with a basic, reactor, or overclocked heat exchanger until the temperature drops below 85%.
- Designs that use only one type of component that needs to be replaced periodically are very easy to automate, as long as every single slot in the reactor is filled (with fuel rods, components, or heat plating), as spend fuel rods can be pulled out any slots they appear in, and fresh fuel rods can be stuffed into any and all available slots. Designs that use neutron reflectors or mix single, double, or quad fuel rods require that different components be placed in different slots in the reactor without mixing them up with each other, which is much more difficult to do. In fact, I'm not certain that there are any mods in the current modded Minecraft landscape that can pull it off. I've used MiscPeripherals for this purpose in the past, as well as Factorization routers, but those things no longer exist. (MiscPeripherals is no longer being maintained, and at some point Factorization removed the routers in favor of servos).
Here's an alternative which is more fuel efficient, but doesn't produce as much EU/t:
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As you can see, it only used 4x double MOX, so it uses significantly less fuel per cycle, but only generates about half as much EU/t as your other one. Something to consider if you are low on MOX fuel still.
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As you can see, it only used 4x double MOX, so it uses significantly less fuel per cycle, but only generates about half as much EU/t as your other one. Something to consider if you are low on MOX fuel still.
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Tomasino132
Guest
You can fit the same idea into 5 chambers:
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A nice design with a base efficiency of 4x - so its a nice reactor for Uranium too.
I havn't yet seen a MOX design with a base efficiency of 4.33x (or better) which seems to be the limit for automatable always-on reactors.
An interesting generator I came up with for a very specific purpose: Chewing through your Uranium to produce as much Plutonium as possible. It is a simple reactor:
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basically, a grid with single-rod fuel rods and basic heat vents. Not too interesting, the least efficient reactor in the game, but it produces 27 spent rods per cycle. Also makes 135 EU/t, but that's not really the point of this reactor, power is secondary.
To my knowledge, this produces more spent rods per cycle than any other reactor design I have found. Very good if you are wanting to make MOX/RTG fuel.
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basically, a grid with single-rod fuel rods and basic heat vents. Not too interesting, the least efficient reactor in the game, but it produces 27 spent rods per cycle. Also makes 135 EU/t, but that's not really the point of this reactor, power is secondary.
To my knowledge, this produces more spent rods per cycle than any other reactor design I have found. Very good if you are wanting to make MOX/RTG fuel.
Yep. This is the standard Go-To reactor for Infinity Expert players who just want plutonium and don't care about efficient energy generation.
Lets edit that knowlede and insert this design into the library with no less than 42 fuel rods worth of plutonium per cycle. (yes, it is automatable)
020D010D020D010D020D020D020D010D020D010D020D010D020D010D020D010D020D010D020D010D020D010D020D010D020D010D020D
Not as easily automated without something like CC or SFM or something, but possible, I suppose. Nice!
Truth is, it is not that hard to automate at all. I did it with a couple of Ender IO item conduits some filters, a togglelatch and a timer. use the toggle latch to set which Ender IO item conduite is active at any time with each set to extract and replace certain fuel rods.