Big Reactors Mod : General Discussion

[GreenZombie]

All 3.3.4b coolants:

http://wiki.technicpack.net/User_talk:Farproc

Cyrotheum is much better than all other coolants, bar resonant ender in an edge (ha!) case and even there its a percentile difference between the two.

--
Also, control rods do not need to be in contact to fertilize. They simply have to be cardinally aligned, within less than 4 blocks between them. Obviously the further apart the more radiation is absorbed and not available for fertilization.

 

[Yusunoha]

+1 for an A-Team picture.

I'm willing to wager (and think I'd win with zero contest), that fuel consumption is actually higher with the reactor running as is than with the on/off method I was using. Since I'm not using the radiation to improve output (if I don't misunderstand various posts on the subject...my control rods are not in contact), switching it on and off provides 3k rf/t for about 90 seconds, burning something like .0030 mb of fuel per tick. Something like that. Probably a little higher. Running it full-time at 88% is producing a bit over 300 rf/t, and burning 0.0008 mb of fuel. Fuel consumption is obviously higher. This actually encourages me to consider reactors of differing levels of efficiency. Maybe something that has fuel rods in contact and makes better use of the radiation levels.

maybe.

On a different subject, for liquid cooling. Is cryotheum as good as liquid ender? Given the difficulty of even finding a blizz and the steps necessary to make it, you'd think it'd be the best stuff ever conceived in comparison

I believe cryotheum is the most efficient for cooling, but the difference isn't that much when compared with liquid ender

 

[zilvarwolf]

All 3.3.4b coolants:

http://wiki.technicpack.net/User_talk:Farproc

Cyrotheum is much better than all other coolants, bar resonant ender in an edge (ha!) case and even there its a percentile difference between the two.

--
Also, control rods do not need to be in contact to fertilize. They simply have to be cardinally aligned, within less than 4 blocks between them. Obviously the further apart the more radiation is absorbed and not available for fertilization.

Hmm. So

X= fuel rod

..X..
.XXX.
..X..

fertilizes more efficiently than, but cools less efficiently than

.X.X.
..X..
.X.X.

?

 

[GreenZombie]

Thats the theory. The center fuel rod's heat is all trapped in the first design. One fuel rod (the center) can "see" 4 other fuel rods to fertilize, and each of the outer rods can see 2 fuel rods to fertilize.
In the other design, each of the outer fuel rods can see two other fuel rods, and the center fuel rod can see none.
The excess heat trapped in the center fuel rod will totally ruin that reactor. Always ensure that a fuel rod has at least one face exposed to coolant.

 

[Xheotris]

I tend to have good luck with an O design, though I haven't tested extensively.

C=cryo
R=rod
E=res. ender

EEEEE
ERRRE
ERCRE
ERRRE
EEEEE

 

[GreenZombie]

I tend to have good luck with an O design, though I haven't tested extensively.

C=cryo
R=rod
E=res. ender

EEEEE
ERRRE
ERCRE
ERRRE
EEEEE

I like that one too

 

[MigukNamja]

Depending upon your modpack, you may be able to make Cryo without Blizz's by melting redstone in a Magma Crucible and coating snowballs with it in a Fluid Transposer. That will produce the blue blizz powder. To make snowballs if not near a wintery-type biome, use a Glacial Precipitator.

For the niter, I pulverize sandstone. To make sandstone, craft 4 and in a 2x2 pattern into 1 sandstone. To make sand, pulverize cobblestone. To make cobblestone, Igneous Extruder.

 

[MigukNamja]

That's the default TE3, I believe. I used it in MagicFarm2 recently. However, there's no MineTweaker recipe for it, nor any cofh config for it, so I suspect it's base/core TE3.

Your modpack may have MineTweaker'd it out.

 

[Pyure]

I don't use big reactors anymore. It was fairly fun to do so, but I dislike it's efficienty.
Everyone just looks at how much fuel it consumes, but very few actually take in account how much fuel you need to actually make a reactor! I mean, it's awesome to produce 20k rf per tick for 0.2 mb per tick, but most of us forgot to calculate that it took you 300 yellowrium too make the reactor. This inefficienty just leads me away from it

Dunno that I've ever heard anyone argue that BR's fuel consumption (even including parts) was too harsh. Especially you, mad.

Also, to be fair, that wouldn't really have anything to do with efficiency (or at least, nothing negative). Once you let the reactor run long enough, the impact of those 300 yellorium literally and infinitely approaches zero.

PS: Minetweaker & configs are your friend. In my current world we presently have 8x fuel consumption, and in addition to all that yellorium, the parts require stainless steel plating (eep, expensive!).

For a while I had it so that you only got 1/9th of a graphite by processing coal, but decided it was too harsh.

 

[Pyure]

Turns out this didn't work either. The interpreter didn't like dealing with the result from calling Math.floor, so I had to store it in a temporary variable.

The code, for anyone who might be interested, ended up being

energyPercent = math.floor(reactor.getEnergyStored()/100000)
reactor.setAllControlRodLevels( energyPercent )

I've got that in a while loop to dynamically set the fuel rods as suggested. Looks like it's holding steady between 87 and 88% (obviously, the reactor is completely overkill at this point)

I didn't realize you could control the rods so finely. I'm a noob to the whole mod, so I've been manually adjusting from above, but I thought I was limited to 10% increments.


This "PRC" you're using...is this a BR thing, or from ComputerCraft, or something else?

 

[RenzosNips]

This "PRC" you're using...is this a BR thing, or from ComputerCraft, or something else?

Minefactory Reloaded has it

 

[Pyure]

Minefactory Reloaded has it

Oh thaaaat thing. I used that...two modpacks ago. Forgot all about it.
Incredibly powerful, flexible and complicated as sin.

Thanks

 

[Vicerious]

Doing the steady-state controller with the Programmable Rednet Controller is very simple, though.

1. Add a Rednet Port block to the structure of your reactor.
2. Connect a rednet cable from the port to a PRC.
3. Right click the Rednet Port. Set stored energy on the white channel, and control rod percentage on the orange channel.
4. In the PRC, set white I/O to Passthrough to orange I/O on the rednet cable connected to the port.

That will pass the stored RF percentage of the reactor directly into the control rod percentage. If your reactor's RF storage is 75% full, then your control rods are 75% engaged, for example.

 

[zilvarwolf]

I didn't realize you could control the rods so finely. I'm a noob to the whole mod, so I've been manually adjusting from above, but I thought I was limited to 10% increments.


This "PRC" you're using...is this a BR thing, or from ComputerCraft, or something else?

I'm not using the PRC. I'm using the Computercraft integration and wrote a program for it. Rod control is in 1% increments. If there's a port to tell me turbine speed, I could probably keep it at the 900/1800 range pretty easily with a similar method (but cycling through each rod in 1% increments). Haven't looked into turbines at all though, so no clue.

I asked about the PRC earlier because I couldn't figure the blasted thing out. Frustrating trying to carry the variables down through pages and such. I guess that despite being a half-way capable programmer, barely, I never really GOT all those funky logic gates that the PRC has.

 

[zilvarwolf]

@MigukNamja
I haven't used turbines at all yet, so upon reviewing a sort of 'how it ought to work' thought, I wanted to verify...what determines what speed you want to keep the turbine running at (900 vs 1800 rpm...that is, why one over the other)? Is rod position the only and/or best thing you can use to control turbine speed? Also, is the turbine a separate multiblock with it's own redstone control port?

In theory (ahahahahahahahhhaha), and operating under the assumption that it's two multiblocks that can be situated in such a way that a single computer can be adjacent to a computercraft reactor control block in both of them, you could do something based off the following logic (you have to make changes to use networking otherwise). (this is a very stupid program...if your reactor, for example, cannot generate enough steam to power the turbine, it'll implode and take out your base by spawning in a spontaneous red matter bomb...or just fail)

Spoiler

function adjustControlRods(amount) {
  rodLevel = getControlRodLevel(curRod) + amount
setControlRodLevel(curRod,rodLevel)
curRod = curRod + 1
if ( curRod = numRods ) then curRod = 0 end
return
end
turbine = peripheral.wrap("left")
reactor = peripheral.wrap("right")
numRods = reactor.getNumberOfControlRods()
curRod = 0
speed = 900
while true do
if (turbine.getRotorSpeed > speed) then
  setControlRodLevel(-1)
  sleep(0.5)  -- adjust value as needed to give the turbine time to adjust to the change
else
if ( turbine.getRotorSpeed < speed) then
setControlRodLevel(1)
sleep(0.5)  -- adjust value as needed to give the turbine time to adjust to the change
end
end
sleep(3)  -- check every few seconds
end

 

[MigukNamja]

@zilvarwolf



You have the right idea. For the same Turbine, 1800rpm produces twice the power of 900rpm. The only reason I can think of why you'd design for 900rpm is part of a 2-stage reactor upgrade design, where the end goal is 1800rpm @ 2000 mB/t. There's not a hard (sharp) drop-off if you don't nail 900rpm or 1800rpm exactly, but there is a prety sharp drop-off at, say, 800rpm, 1000rpm, or 1600rpm.

I don't know the exact function of RPM to RF/t output power, but I *believe* RPM is a direct function of input steam mB/t.

However, building a Turbine to match your reactor or vice-versa is not intuitive, IMHO. The only equation I know of that matches the two is mB/t of steam related to turbine blades : 25 mB/t per 1 blade.

However, the number of coils and coil material is not as precise, at least AFAIK. For my Turbine design, I built it max-sized. It's 80 blades and 36 blocks total of Enderium blocks (36 / 8 = 4.5 coils). It runs at 1813rpm with something like 1990mB/t of steam input. My reactor is *way* overbuilt. I have 25 rods @ 75% or so in a 3-high reactor (15x15x3, I think). If I did it again, I'd build a smaller reactor. I think there's 5x5x5 (external) designs that can efficiently put out 2000mB/t of steam.

 

[zilvarwolf]

@MigukNamja, so you could also throttle the input flow if you were running too high. interesting. That's another of the procedure calls. I suppose I should play with it some day, if I ever get close to maxing out the current 7x7x3 reactor I'm using.

 

[MigukNamja]

@zilvarwolf Your 7x7x3 should be perfect. I'm pretty sure 8 rods in a 7x7x3 will put out right at 2000mB/t of steam. Arrangement is as @Xheotris mentioned above:

I tend to have good luck with an O design, though I haven't tested extensively.

C=cryo
R=rod
E=res. ender

EEEEE
ERRRE
ERCRE
ERRRE
EEEEE

 

[Hottheadliberty]

just remembered something that has been bugging me for quite some time... mobs being able to spawn inside the turbines...
I hate it whenever I see mobs spawning inside the turbines, if they do I atleast want to see them getting chopped up by the turbine blades

That would be GREAT power gen + Mob Farm!!! HELL YES!!!