Mod Feedback [By Request] RotaryCraft Suggestions

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TomeWyrm

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Jul 29, 2019
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I'm with Celestialphoenix. Engine(s), CVT, shaft bus(es), extractors, water/item import/export. You can do the entire thing with RoC and one other mod for item/fluid transport, make it infinitely expandable, easier to understand, and still probably hit that footprint (or smaller)... all while using less blocks and less annoying configuration.

I mean the screens are cool and all, but... jeez that's technical for "put ore in, get lots of ingots out"

Edit: Also a heck of a lot faster to read the tutorial... I didn't realize it was quite that long (imgur didn't load all the images at first).
 

Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
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Sep 3, 2013
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I'm with Celestialphoenix. Engine(s), CVT, shaft bus(es), extractors, water/item import/export. You can do the entire thing with RoC and one other mod for item/fluid transport, make it infinitely expandable, easier to understand, and still probably hit that footprint (or smaller)... all while using less blocks and less annoying configuration.

I mean the screens are cool and all, but... jeez that's technical for "put ore in, get lots of ingots out"

Edit: Also a heck of a lot faster to read the tutorial... I didn't realize it was quite that long (imgur didn't load all the images at first).
I agree; it looks like most of the complexity came from being determined to use T4 magnetostatics.
 

RavynousHunter

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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Thank the pig for creative testing worlds. :p Made a fission reactor that went critical within less than a minute of fueling, lol. I seem to be...not good at designing reactors on my own, right now. That's cool, though; the design I jacked from this thread is making a good deal of power all on its own.
 

Plasmasnake

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
132
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Thank the pig for creative testing worlds. :p Made a fission reactor that went critical within less than a minute of fueling, lol. I seem to be...not good at designing reactors on my own, right now. That's cool, though; the design I jacked from this thread is making a good deal of power all on its own.

If you are having trouble designing a safe reactor, I would advise checking out this thread - http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/reactorcraft-fission-reactor-designs.47199/

And generally as you are learning and designing, I recommend that you put a lot more cooling than you might think is necessary and then see if you can dial down rather than finding out that you don't have enough cooling :p
 

EyeDeck

Well-Known Member
Apr 16, 2013
236
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My guess is that thorium would require "activation" before becoming useful. I believe the reason why is because the most common (and stable) isotope of thorium doesn't have as much radioactivity as uranium, which is why you can't use thorium from old lantern mantles to make a homemade nuke without a particle accelerator or some other method of bombarding said thorium with neutrons to turn it into a more unstable, and thus radioactive, isotope.
I'll preface my post by saying that thorium reactors are fundamentally very different from any type of common uranium reactors and Reika would be doing a disservice to the element if he implemented thorium reactors as just an alternative fuel source for standard reactors

Actual LFTRs - well, the very few that have been built because thorium reactors cannot be used to breed plutonium and thus make nuclear bombs so the US government has no interest in funding them - do require a jump start in the form of a blob of enriched uranium or the like to get the reaction going. Once they have been started, however, they are self-sustaining and unmodified thorium-232 can be dumped into them to keep them working indefinitely.

The main problems LFTRs have is that they, by necessity, run very hot (something like 800C iirc), and the molten fluoride salt mixture is both extremely radioactive and corrosive; not much research has been done into coming up with an optimal alloy that doesn't eventally start falling apart from the combination of radiation, heat and corrosivity of the molten salt mixture. I believe the best pipe material anyone has come up with so far is graphite. The way LFTRs work also requires that the salt mixture be periodically filtered somehow to remove the neutron poisons that the fission process eventually creates. This part I am less sure of, but it would require at least one, possibly multiple machines.

Here's how I would implement thorium into Reactorcraft. I apologize for the length, but I promise it's all to promote realism.
  • First, we need a source of lithium. The easiest, most interesting and plausible way I can think to do this is to extract it from the surface of nether lava pools with a machine similar to the heavy water extractor; perhaps allow heavy water extractor itself be used for this purpose. Lithium is known to be present in and rise to the surface of molten rock, so an inverted heavy water extractor thing makes sense.

    Alternatively, lithium could be centrifuged out of stone dust or something, but that's considerably less interesting.
  • Next, we need a source of beryllium. Conveniently, emeralds are largely beryllium, so this could be an extractor secondary for emerald ore, and/or be created by grinding up emeralds.
  • We need a machine that takes lithium, beryllium, fluorine and heat to mix and melt the salt our reactor is going to use.
  • We need a machine that can filter the waste products out of "dirty" molten salt and return clean salt, free of radioactive or neutron-poisoning materials.
  • We need graphite pipes to pipe the molten salt around. I believe Reactorcraft already has graphite as a material, so a crafting recipe is easy enough.
  • Finally, we need a reactor core block where the actual fission takes place. Realistically this would need a minimum size limit of 2x2x2 or something because too small of a reactor cannot breed u233 from th232 with high enough efficiency to self-sustain. The only upper size limit should be determined by how quickly heat can be siphoned off to keep the housing from melting.

    This machine should take an input of the molten salt created earlier and thorium metal to melt into the salt. I believe this would, at least, require an inventory slot for metallic thorium, a small tank for clean molten salt, a large tank for mixed thorium and fluoride salt, and a third tank for dirty salt that need to be piped out and cleaned. Leaving dirty salt in the dirty salt tank will poison the reaction similar to leaving solid waste in a uranium or plutonium reactor.

    In this core, each time a fission event happens, it will generate some heat and neutron(s), and transfer a small amount of liquid from the mixed salt tank to the dirty salt tank; this salt must be piped out and sent through a filtering machine which will extract the radioactive waste products, and recycle the untainted salt so it can be piped back into the reactor.

    An important point here is that a LFTR cannot explode like a uranium reactor because they are not pressurized and do not produce hydrogen gas that might ignite in the event of failure. Should a LFTR get too hot, they have a safety measure in the form of a plug designed to melt in the event something goes wrong, which will cause the molten salt to drain into a passively-cooled containment vessel where it can be dealt with later; this feature could be omitted for balance reasons, so in the event of a LFTR failure, corium will spill everywhere and generate radiation (though without an explosion).

    Lastly, this reactor will not begin a fissile chain reaction on its own: it must be started by bombarding it with neutrons from another reactor, but once it has been irradiated enough it will eventually begin to produce a net-positive of neutrons and sustain itself.
I believe this has a number of novel points to differentiate itself from conventional reactors.
  • Except for the thorium itself, there is no necessity for any additional world gen.
  • We're working with molten fuel instead of a solid fuel.
  • It's considerably more difficult and costly to set up than a uranium reactor, but once it begins working it is much more efficient and less dangerous than a conventional uranium reactor.
  • LFTRs theoretically create much less useless waste than uranium reactors by virtue of how the thorium breeding and decay chain works.
  • The molten fluoride salt is actually made partially of emeralds, so we have a higher cost to build than conventional fission reactors, and a very good reason to properly recycle our salt.
  • It can only be started by another reactor, so it'll fit in the tech tree a bit below a tokamak but above most others, with a (realistic!) material cost that roughly matches.
minor edit for clarity
 
Last edited:

Lethosos

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Jul 29, 2019
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I'd like to point out that there are small-scale "pocket" thorium reactors that can reasonably fit, say, three, on a flatbed. (Based on designs that are still being evaluated, of course.) Their main use is to provide power to small communities where power lines are impractical. Lifetime of these, which would be buried for its run, is projected to be about 10-15 years, where they would be dug back up and disposed of. So a 2x2 core for Reika's LFTRs isn't necessary.
 

SourC00lguy

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Jul 29, 2019
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Has anyone ever tried placing concrete in the reactor design to reduce the amount if fission events?

That may sound odd, but if there are less fission events then the temperature wouldn't get as high right? Creating a more stable build.

So I thought maybe placing one block of concrete in the path neutrons would travel between fission"chambers?" (couldn't remember what they where called) , would reduce the events by what? 20%. Allowing for cooler reactors.

Granted this isn't tested so take it with a grain of salt.
 

EyeDeck

Well-Known Member
Apr 16, 2013
236
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54
I'd like to point out that there are small-scale "pocket" thorium reactors that can reasonably fit, say, three, on a flatbed. (Based on designs that are still being evaluated, of course.) Their main use is to provide power to small communities where power lines are impractical. Lifetime of these, which would be buried for its run, is projected to be about 10-15 years, where they would be dug back up and disposed of. So a 2x2 core for Reika's LFTRs isn't necessary.
Fair enough, but it would likely work out that way anyway because functionally the reactors would have to be trading neutrons to sustain each other, like most of the reactors already in ReC.
 

RavynousHunter

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Jul 29, 2019
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If you are having trouble designing a safe reactor, I would advise checking out this thread - http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/reactorcraft-fission-reactor-designs.47199/

And generally as you are learning and designing, I recommend that you put a lot more cooling than you might think is necessary and then see if you can dial down rather than finding out that you don't have enough cooling :p
Thanks for the tip! I found a design there that, when stacked 5 high, seems to be able to power 4 (creative test is running at 3, but its also running a decent surplus) turbines at around 900MW a piece which would net me around 3.6GW in total, and its just as safe my Nuclear One, which I found out can actually run two turbines at 900MW instead of just one...which means that 1.8 million RF/t will now become 3.6 million RF/t! SCIENCE!
 

Plasmasnake

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
132
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0
Has anyone ever tried placing concrete in the reactor design to reduce the amount if fission events?

That may sound odd, but if there are less fission events then the temperature wouldn't get as high right? Creating a more stable build.

So I thought maybe placing one block of concrete in the path neutrons would travel between fission"chambers?" (couldn't remember what they where called) , would reduce the events by what? 20%. Allowing for cooler reactors.

Granted this isn't tested so take it with a grain of salt.

It's not odd at all, reducing the amount of fission events can be a good design in some circumstances. I know this because it is an integral to the design of my breeder reactor.

Basically I have found that my reactor would overheat if I did not have a wall between my four section of my fuel cores. I consider neutron 'walls' as a another form of cooling. In a regular fission reactor, it is not like the neutrons are really wasted because fuel only gets consumed when it undergos a fission event, so you can actually place a single fuel pellet and it will continuously emit neutrons and if you wanted, you can breed unlimited tritium with one pellet.
 

Sm31415

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
19
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Thanks for the tip! I found a design there that, when stacked 5 high, seems to be able to power 4 (creative test is running at 3, but its also running a decent surplus) turbines at around 900MW a piece which would net me around 3.6GW in total, and its just as safe my Nuclear One, which I found out can actually run two turbines at 900MW instead of just one...which means that 1.8 million RF/t will now become 3.6 million RF/t! SCIENCE!


A design I borrowed from a bod on the rotarycraft irc channel, with 2 of them, can fully power a high pressure turbine, which is 8.something GW for a total output of 16 million rf/t.

I feel like if efficiency is your goal, something slightly more compact could be achieved.
 

RavynousHunter

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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Oooooh, I'd be interested in seeing that design of yours. As much as I love my current setup, I'd really like to see what's required to fully-power a high-pressure turbine...mostly because they've already got their own housing, so I don't need to worry about encasing them in glass to protect them from the annoying flying rats that occasionally try to roost in a set of blades spinning at around 5 billion miles an hour.
 

TomeWyrm

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
898
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1
It's not odd at all, reducing the amount of fission events can be a good design in some circumstances. I know this because it is an integral to the design of my breeder reactor.

Basically I have found that my reactor would overheat if I did not have a wall between my four section of my fuel cores. I consider neutron 'walls' as a another form of cooling. In a regular fission reactor, it is not like the neutrons are really wasted because fuel only gets consumed when it undergos a fission event, so you can actually place a single fuel pellet and it will continuously emit neutrons and if you wanted, you can breed unlimited tritium with one pellet.
That makes me want to build a very exploitative set of "reactors" for tritium production... except a more traditional build would probably produce much more, and by the point I care, I doubt highly that I'm going to mind the upkeep cost in pellets :p.

Oh, I just totally thought of something and I don't know if this is something you can affect, Reika. Bee mutagen. In Alveary Frame Housings, Gendustry mutagen producer, and... um... there's probably another method, because that was Extra Bees and Gendustry, but I'm far from an experienced apiarist in Minecraft.

ANYWAY! The idea: Add some of your nuclear fuels as options for those processes.

That's probably something I'd have to present to bdew... and Binnie, except I don't use Extra Bees/Trees/Flowers anymore.

In explanation: the revamp for Genetics in 1.7.10 was... well... too far in the realism direction. It takes a frankly obscene amount of time to do any of the genetics work, long enough that I would actively prefer to breed manually with bees to transfer traits. Or, you know, use Gendustry. Though I do wish the Gendustry custom bees would let me generate world hives. Figuring out a new family tree for bees without any new base/common/hive bees... I mean if I'm trying to replicate the functionality of Extra Bees... I'm looking at a chart like this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23611137/extraBees.png. Only I can't use any hive bees, except for maybe Magic Bees... and I'd probably be removing THOSE hives from worldgen too so my new bees would be useful for people adding gendustry to a stock Forestry. I wonder if the json-bees will let you specify block-under-apiary mutations...
 
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Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
FTB Mod Dev
Sep 3, 2013
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Toronto, Canada
sites.google.com
That makes me want to build a very exploitative set of "reactors" for tritium production... except a more traditional build would probably produce much more, and by the point I care, I doubt highly that I'm going to mind the upkeep cost in pellets :p.

Oh, I just totally thought of something and I don't know if this is something you can affect, Reika. Bee mutagen. In Alveary Frame Housings, Gendustry mutagen producer, and... um... there's probably another method, because that was Extra Bees and Gendustry, but I'm far from an experienced apiarist in Minecraft.

ANYWAY! The idea: Add some of your nuclear fuels as options for those processes.
I like the idea, especially a way to add a new use for nuclear waste...is there some sort of API for this?
 

Sm31415

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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Oooooh, I'd be interested in seeing that design of yours. As much as I love my current setup, I'd really like to see what's required to fully-power a high-pressure turbine...mostly because they've already got their own housing, so I don't need to worry about encasing them in glass to protect them from the annoying flying rats that occasionally try to roost in a set of blades spinning at around 5 billion miles an hour.

Well it's a core of 9 fuel cores, 3x3, 2 layers of boilers, neutron reflectors x12, 3 per side in line with the fuel cores, with steel blocks on the outside of the neutron reflectors to block any stray neutrons.

I'm not sure what the excess is, one of the design can't get it to spin up and two can.

I'm not sure if therequired is excess and if so whether it could power anything else.

But I am struggling to transport that quantity of rf though.

I might switch to electric raft if I can find time to play around with the resistors.
 
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RavynousHunter

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Jul 29, 2019
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Niiiiiice...so Nuclear Two might be a dual-core reactor...cool!

Oh, also, @Reika, is there any particular reason why the turbine generator has to be right on the turbine? I ask because it'd be cool to use part of a reactor's power to make tonnes more lube (you can never have enough), and turn the rest into RF without having to make a large amount of rotational dynamos. Not that I'd mind making them, mind, just that it'd be less time-and-space efficient than simply setting up a turbine generator to do the whole shebang at once.
 

Sm31415

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Jul 29, 2019
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Niiiiiice...so Nuclear Two might be a dual-core reactor...cool!

Oh, also, @Reika, is there any particular reason why the turbine generator has to be right on the turbine? I ask because it'd be cool to use part of a reactor's power to make tonnes more lube (you can never have enough), and turn the rest into RF without having to make a large amount of rotational dynamos. Not that I'd mind making them, mind, just that it'd be less time-and-space efficient than simply setting up a turbine generator to do the whole shebang at once.

You could always have a small single or dual turbine separate from the one you funnel into the generator going straight into a lubricant factory.
 

Padfoote

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Dec 11, 2013
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I like the idea, especially a way to add a new use for nuclear waste...is there some sort of API for this?

There's probably something in the Forestry API for frames, not sure about Gendustry though. I'm currently looking for that.

Edit: Is this what you need?
 

SourC00lguy

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Jul 29, 2019
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So I'm not sure if this issued was covered on the other topic but I thought I'd might as well ask.

In the newest infinity, 1.6.2, non-vanilla ores will not be processed by the extractor? Is there a fix?

I tried the configuration for intermod ores or what not but that did not help.

I tried disabling Another one bites the dust, but wasn't able to play yet to see if it helps.