neat trick i discovered for a breeder reactor

[steve g]

i was playing with my nuclear reactor map and managed to streamline the lag a bit. part of the process was figuring out how to automate the breeder reactor. At first i had a turtle managing it. It would get depleted isotope cells, insert them into the proper slots and wait for the breeder to do its thing. this also involved turning the reactor on/off so it doesnt waste the uranium cells in it. But this only works fine...if you dont turn off the game. if I shut down the map while the turtle was in the middle of a breeder cycle..i didnt have a way of restoring the state the turtle was in and i would have to babysit the reactor until the depleted cells were recharged.

So here comes a simple and very elegant fix:

there are 4 routers pulling and adding items to the reactor. the front 2 you see pull recharged uranium cells and insert depleted isotope cells as they become available. the 2 in the back are linked to a 5th router. these 2 target the specific slots the uranium cells go into, with the 5th router bringing in fresh uranium cells as needed.

The last bit is the pipe on the top with a gate on it. the gate is set to emit a redstone signal when inventory is full...basically an automatic switch for the reactor. If any slot goes empty, the breeder automatically shuts off. Note any pipe will work, im using a cobble pipe here. Thats the neat trick, ive not had any problems with this and I've had the reactor go through quite a few cycles recharging depleted cells with this setup

The reactors underneath is an array of 'pocket reactors'. each produce 180eu/t each, 4 per layer, stacked 5 high. Im working on extending that stack to 10 high and getting 7200 eu out of this monster. they are linked via chests to 2 routers, also pulling depleted cells and inserting fresh dual cells.

 

[Darkone84]

How do target the correct slot you want with router? I have tried to do this before but the Uranium cell and Depleted isotope cells kept getting put in the wrong place. Sometime I also ended up with more than one Uranium cell in the reactor which is not good.

Could you show how you have your routers setup?

 

[steve g]

the 2 routers inserting uranium cells only have machine upgrades, set to nuclear reactor. when you select where you want to insert the item, keep changing the setting till you see slot 0. then use the +/- buttons to select the slot. in my case, slots 15 and 37 in the reactor are the slots for the uranium cells. they are both linked with iron chests (the heat from the breeder reactor will burn wood chests) to a 3rd router that receives uranium cells from my factory, that one also has a machine filter upgrade set to item router, and instead of visit all, changed to visit near (so it doesnt fill the other 2 routers pulling recharged cells and inserting depleted isotopes)

this might help, imagine your looking at the reactor from above:

 

[Darkone84]

Is there a chance that the router inserting depleted isotopes could also insert into slots 15 & 37. This would stop the reactor or do the 2 routers that insert uranium into slots 15 & 37 have speed upgrades?

 

[steve g]

yes my bad. the slot specific routers have speed upgrades to take 'priority' over the other 2 routers. the chance that both the uranium and depleted isotopes would get inserted is there, but so far i have not seen it happen. the only other way to do this without any chance of mistakes is to use a turtle with an inventory upgrade (misc peripherals, you can target slots with that as well) but like i said, Im not good enough with lua to have the turtle recover from a shutdown/reload of the map. If someone knows how to properly save/load state between map loads...that would make the turtle a perfect solution.

see the idea of the pipe/gate controlling the reactor is that when there are empty slots...the reactor stays off. so even if there is 1 unit of energy left in the uranium cells...the moment the reactor is full again it will activate and give the slot specific routers a chance to swap cells out before the depleted isotope router kicks in.

i wonder...if the reactor is on, perhaps use that to disable the depleted isotope router until the reactor goes offline again. lemme wire that up real quick

 

[steve g]

ok one more screenshot:

i forgot about the part to pull the near depleted cells...and visit near doesnt work between routers when theres a chest between them, so the 3 uranium routers are grouped together. theres a rednet cable between the pipe gate and the depleted isotope router. that will disable the router when the reactor is on, which should limit the chances of the isotope router inserting into the 15/37 slots. time will tell tho, I'm still waiting on the next cycle when the main reactors do their thing

 

[Darkone84]

Steve thanks for the information. I will give this a go.

 

[Larandar]

For the turtle the best way is to never use previous state. It can easily be made using some golden gate to detect what the turtle as in his inventory.

Note: I don't know anything about IC2 reactor but I will explain how to do it with a turtle. I may mistaken between depleted cell and uranium cell but the principe is the same. In my explanation I set to "Don't want depleted cell" and "Full with uranium" you can switch between without problem.

First thing use a golden gate for the top one and selecting = [item in inventory] depleted cell OR [space in inventory] the at any time the reactor will be stop if necessary. You can then use this signal for the turtle ( use red pipe wire so the gate is not near the turtle ).Now the turtle always know when she must run, using "os.pullEvent('redstone')" you will not wait: the turtle run when redstone change near by.

At this state we only need a main function for the loop, just a function to switch slots and if it can append a way to restart in middle of a switch. How I will process:

First infrastructure: a second golden gate of top of the turtle who emit redstone only if the turtle as a depleted cell inside, and on bottom a AE Interface with always 1 uranium cell.

Assertion: Turtle as an empty inventory

When the reactor stop ( redstone signal on by the first gate ) ( check if redstone change from good face, else wait again ):

For each slot to change ( use a list )

Pull out selected item, and look at redstone from the second gate:

- If emitting redstone ( the turtle as a depleted cell in inventory )

Put the depleted cell in AE system, and get a uranium cell
Put the uranium cell in reactor​

- Else ( The cell is not yet done )

Put back the cell​

Done​

Done​

Done
Wait for redstone state to change.

If I use IC2 reactor one day I might make this setup be I will not in next future so if someone success this way be please to put it in this thread And if lua code work but is not factorized then I might help you for that

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[steve g]

huh. see i never played much with those gates...did not know you could target specific items. gonna have to play with that...

 

[Larandar]

I think it's at least Gold to have this ability, diamond are better with even more wire/trigger. And they come in AND and OR mode, each use a different operator to know the final state.

 

[Physicist]

It's also possible to load and unload cells to charge with hoppers. This only works if every slot of your reactor is full (but it should be for a proper breeder).
(Warning... don't place a hopper under an active hot reactor without slapping down a powered lever to prevent it pulling out your heat plating. Big boom.)

Top hopper: chest on top full of cells ready to charge.
Bottom hopper: Not pushing into an inventory, just ready to collect the stacking charged cells. Just take 5 charged cells (or something else like gravel/cobble) and spread them across all 5 slots of the hopper so it doesn't remove any other components.

 

[steve g]

so far the setup in the last screenshot above has performed perfectly. spent cells get swapped out and replaced, depleted cells get recharged, its on full automatic now. now just need to add more reactors, my factory is producing a lot of dual cells