Hi, Reika!
I have some questions for you about HTGRs and their usage. I will post some pictures and try to provide a general commentary on my thought process. I hope you can help me!
Here is my entire HTGR setup. The reactor is on the left. I am able to power two turbines at ~940 MW each using water and one heat exchanger per boiler node. More on that later.
I am using dual-redundant pumps powered by 2 steam engines each to supply each boiler node with water. I was using a 3x3 pool of water (1 block deep), but I found that if the TPS dropped or I got unlucky, the pump was running fast enough to empty the pool before it refreshed. I went to 4x3 pools of water and have not had any problems since. Turns out, both pumps are required to meet the boiler water needs. I have a pressurizer hooked up to recirculate condensed water, but I am not sure it's actually working.
This is boiler node #1. I am assuming that the heat exchanger conducts heat only on its own y-level and only in the 4 cardinal directions. I was also getting 400-600 C boiler temperatures, so I threw some additional boilers around the outside of the first set of boilers to try to harvest additional heat (and spread it out to avoid an explosion).
This is boiler node #2. I noticed that the boilers stack into a visual multiblock vertically, so I tried to exploit that in boiler node #2. Does it help draw off excess heat at all to have 2-high boilers if there is no exchanger next to them on the same Y-level? I have not noticed a decrease in performance from having the 2-high boilers. I also have a suggestion: Could heat exchangers stack on top of each other to match the boiler stacking? I recognize that right now they are a single block with specific input and output sides, and stacking may be prohibitive based on how they work. I also recognize that boilers stacking is probably a way to match stacking in regular fuel cores to allow for "tall" reactors, but it might be nice if I could do a 2 or 3 high heat exchanger for high-throughput steam conversion.
This is my shaft power bus setup. I post this for illustrative purposes because I've seen some questions about how to set them up. The shaft power bus controller has a side that just has a single circle. That side should receive shaft power. Pipe lubricant in (the empty tank is for lubricant). The rest of the blocks in the same line as the controller are shaft power buses. The rotary dynamos are receiving power from the horizontal sides of the buses. Each bus has a GUI. I place 8x HSLA gears into each output and set it to gear UP the torque. The turbine puts out 65 krad/s, and the rotary dynamos are limited to 8192 Nm and 8192 rad/s, so gearing up the torque keeps both torque and speed in the acceptable range for the dynamos. If you are splitting the power the right way and still wasting power at the dynamos, add more shaft power buses and more dynamos to split the torque more. In my setup, 950 MW is getting split to 21 dynamos, each outputting about 7.15k RF/t. That goes into the large EnderIO capacitor bank to the right.
Finally, (and this is where my questions arise) this is my reactor itself. I noticed in Danilus's videos that he found the stacking nature of the pebble bed fuel cores and the CO2 heat exchangers. I had a 6-high reactor in the below pattern. Sorry for the obscured picture. I was lazy. The pattern is an "X" of CO2 heat exchangers with pebble bed cores in the gaps. I see so many people make large blocks of cores surrounded by boilers or heat exchangers, which I think is sub-optimal because the center cores get very hot and can't transfer their heat out to a boiler well. Now, that discounts the extra neutrons you get from a central core sharing cardinal axes with the other fuel cores, but I am able to power 2 turbines at 950 MW with the above design in a 3-tall configuration. The cores fluctuate RIGHT around 800C if they are not completely full of fuel, so I end up getting "bursts" of hot CO2 to the exchangers, but I haven't seen any decreased performance.
When I had my 6-high reactor, I filled it completely with fuel in the exact same configuration, walked away for 30 minutes, and came back to check temperatures and found core temperatures over 8000 C (not a typo). This was with version 19b. I cut the core height down and moved carefully and haven't seen any other anomalies.
My questions:
Is this configuration better than a central core because of the better heat transfer?
If I make the reactor taller, will I get higher temperatures? I'm assuming the reactors don't interact on different y-levels, so I should just get a higher quantity of hot CO2 at the same temperatures, correct?
What is the max (disaster inducing) temperature for a pebble bed reactor? I've seen 8000 C with no bad effects, but I think that may have been a bug in a previous version (19b).
Thank you for taking the time to read this! To others, if you have reactor-based questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them!
Thanks, Reika! I really enjoy Rotary- and ReactorCraft a whole lot because of their complexity and rewarding outcomes when the complexity is embraced.
I have some questions for you about HTGRs and their usage. I will post some pictures and try to provide a general commentary on my thought process. I hope you can help me!
Here is my entire HTGR setup. The reactor is on the left. I am able to power two turbines at ~940 MW each using water and one heat exchanger per boiler node. More on that later.
I am using dual-redundant pumps powered by 2 steam engines each to supply each boiler node with water. I was using a 3x3 pool of water (1 block deep), but I found that if the TPS dropped or I got unlucky, the pump was running fast enough to empty the pool before it refreshed. I went to 4x3 pools of water and have not had any problems since. Turns out, both pumps are required to meet the boiler water needs. I have a pressurizer hooked up to recirculate condensed water, but I am not sure it's actually working.
This is boiler node #1. I am assuming that the heat exchanger conducts heat only on its own y-level and only in the 4 cardinal directions. I was also getting 400-600 C boiler temperatures, so I threw some additional boilers around the outside of the first set of boilers to try to harvest additional heat (and spread it out to avoid an explosion).
This is boiler node #2. I noticed that the boilers stack into a visual multiblock vertically, so I tried to exploit that in boiler node #2. Does it help draw off excess heat at all to have 2-high boilers if there is no exchanger next to them on the same Y-level? I have not noticed a decrease in performance from having the 2-high boilers. I also have a suggestion: Could heat exchangers stack on top of each other to match the boiler stacking? I recognize that right now they are a single block with specific input and output sides, and stacking may be prohibitive based on how they work. I also recognize that boilers stacking is probably a way to match stacking in regular fuel cores to allow for "tall" reactors, but it might be nice if I could do a 2 or 3 high heat exchanger for high-throughput steam conversion.
This is my shaft power bus setup. I post this for illustrative purposes because I've seen some questions about how to set them up. The shaft power bus controller has a side that just has a single circle. That side should receive shaft power. Pipe lubricant in (the empty tank is for lubricant). The rest of the blocks in the same line as the controller are shaft power buses. The rotary dynamos are receiving power from the horizontal sides of the buses. Each bus has a GUI. I place 8x HSLA gears into each output and set it to gear UP the torque. The turbine puts out 65 krad/s, and the rotary dynamos are limited to 8192 Nm and 8192 rad/s, so gearing up the torque keeps both torque and speed in the acceptable range for the dynamos. If you are splitting the power the right way and still wasting power at the dynamos, add more shaft power buses and more dynamos to split the torque more. In my setup, 950 MW is getting split to 21 dynamos, each outputting about 7.15k RF/t. That goes into the large EnderIO capacitor bank to the right.
Finally, (and this is where my questions arise) this is my reactor itself. I noticed in Danilus's videos that he found the stacking nature of the pebble bed fuel cores and the CO2 heat exchangers. I had a 6-high reactor in the below pattern. Sorry for the obscured picture. I was lazy. The pattern is an "X" of CO2 heat exchangers with pebble bed cores in the gaps. I see so many people make large blocks of cores surrounded by boilers or heat exchangers, which I think is sub-optimal because the center cores get very hot and can't transfer their heat out to a boiler well. Now, that discounts the extra neutrons you get from a central core sharing cardinal axes with the other fuel cores, but I am able to power 2 turbines at 950 MW with the above design in a 3-tall configuration. The cores fluctuate RIGHT around 800C if they are not completely full of fuel, so I end up getting "bursts" of hot CO2 to the exchangers, but I haven't seen any decreased performance.
When I had my 6-high reactor, I filled it completely with fuel in the exact same configuration, walked away for 30 minutes, and came back to check temperatures and found core temperatures over 8000 C (not a typo). This was with version 19b. I cut the core height down and moved carefully and haven't seen any other anomalies.
My questions:
Is this configuration better than a central core because of the better heat transfer?
If I make the reactor taller, will I get higher temperatures? I'm assuming the reactors don't interact on different y-levels, so I should just get a higher quantity of hot CO2 at the same temperatures, correct?
What is the max (disaster inducing) temperature for a pebble bed reactor? I've seen 8000 C with no bad effects, but I think that may have been a bug in a previous version (19b).
Thank you for taking the time to read this! To others, if you have reactor-based questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them!
Thanks, Reika! I really enjoy Rotary- and ReactorCraft a whole lot because of their complexity and rewarding outcomes when the complexity is embraced.
