Nuclear Tower of Power (or how to create obscene EU/t)

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I do have 1 problem with this - it has a rather low efficiency of 3. With a good breeder this isn't a huge issue, but hey... some of us have compulsions

Well, if you have an unhealthy obsession with efficiency, you can always go back to CRCS. If you are running GregTech, you can use Thorium as an inexpensive NR Plate in a plutonium CRCS reactor. Something like this. Quad-Plutonium with three reflectors is about as close to perfect efficiency as you can get in a practical reactor. It is very Thorium-Positive, though, so you'll need to bleed thorium out somewhere.

Still it is a rather nice setup I must say, and a lot less laggy than a tree farm. I reckon i'll uild one of these instead.

Thanks, I really appreciate it!

By the way, Dave - what is this laser you mention for producing uranium? From what I gather by reading this thread its an MJ device that creates useful materials... could you tell me more about it please?

It's from MFR, and it runs on MJ by default. He's also got UE on his server, so he can convert EU to MJ via UE without too many problems.

 

[Poppycocks]

Well, if you have an unhealthy obsession with efficiency, you can always go back to CRCS. If you are running GregTech, you can use Thorium as an inexpensive NR Plate in a plutonium CRCS reactor. Something like this. Quad-Plutonium with three reflectors is about as close to perfect efficiency as you can get in a practical reactor. It is very Thorium-Positive, though, so you'll need to bleed thorium out somewhere.

Thanks, I really appreciate it!


It's from MFR, and it runs on MJ by default. He's also got UE on his server, so he can convert EU to MJ via UE without too many problems.

I have yet to see a single block of uranium or uranite from that thing.

I was kinda hoping I could run it from that .

Although tbh, the Atomic Science ballance is so bad atm that might as well not. Would be nice if Calclavia would let us do our own balancing.

 

[Shakie666]

Well, if you have an unhealthy obsession with efficiency, you can always go back to CRCS. If you are running GregTech, you can use Thorium as an inexpensive NR Plate in a plutonium CRCS reactor. Something like this. Quad-Plutonium with three reflectors is about as close to perfect efficiency as you can get in a practical reactor. It is very Thorium-Positive, though, so you'll need to bleed thorium out somewhere.

That's exactly what I was going to do with my plutonium I guess I would just use the excess thorium in some mark 1 reactors, though I don't know any good setups for them using only thorium.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

That's exactly what I was going to do with my plutonium I guess I would just use the excess thorium in some mark 1 reactors, though I don't know any good setups for them using only thorium.

Well, you could use something like this. 128 EU/t at Eff4 in the planner, although I suppose it doesn't accurately represent what it actually does anymore.

Also, something like this makes for a good single-chamber plutonium reactor with no need for duals or quads.

 

[Shakie666]

Well, you could use something like this. 128 EU/t at Eff4 in the planner, although I suppose it doesn't accurately represent what it actually does anymore.

Also, something like this makes for a good single-chamber plutonium reactor with no need for duals or quads.

Using single cell plutonium just seems like a waste. I'm not that hard up for a bit of copper not to take advantage of the increased efficiency (which is why I would never use plutonium if it isn't a CRCS setup).

 

[Siro]

Well I knew I could pull stuff out and put stuff in, after doing exactly that with routers previously (and subsequently violently exploding everything within the shielding). I'll have to play around in creative tonight getting the machine filter and specifics down. Routers are fucking awesome and if they'll work the way I'm hoping, any reactor config could be tile-able and safe (even the extremely dangerous ones where you have to swap stuff out every few seconds) assuming the requisite resources are present.

To follow up on this, Nuclear Reactor does show in the router's machine filter (no idea what I was doing wrong before, might have just been an issue with ftb 1.0.1 or I'm remembering it wrong) and reactor chambers count as connecting inventories, so any size reactor can be tiled and serviced by only two routers. The only caveat to this is that the more inventory slots the router has to step through, the longer it will take to cycle through each individual slot (also a problem with very large barrel networks and processing arrays). So don't make your towers too tall if you're saving energy by using routers.

 

[Omicron]

Thorium scales just like uranium, so pure thorium reactors get their efficiency shown accurately by the planner. Quad cells with 1 neighbor are indeed efficiency 4: 1 base, +1 for going dual, +1 for going quad, +1 per neighbor.

Plutonium scales differently due to firing two external pulses (a 'strong' or 'full' one, and a 'weak' or 'half' one) per reactor tick. They still get +1 for going dual and +1 for going quad, but they get +1.5 per neighbor. Because of this, three-neighbor quad at efficiency 7.5 is not the highest efficiency plutonium setup in a practical reactor. Four-neighbor dual plutonium at efficiency 8.0 is. Also, the three-neighbor quad outputs over 1000 heat per tick, which is uncoolable outside of CRCS, while the four-neighbor dual only does 608, which can be handled by internal vents. Add to that the cheaper dual cell (meaning more effective efficiency) and the fact that the reactor is much less thorium positive, and it's clearly the superior design.

I'm planning for something like this to be part of my in-progress build, though I haven't settled on a finished design yet... might be able to make this cheaper still. (Cooling system load mockup @ 618 heat/tick)

 

[Runo]

hey omicron, i was looking over your spreadsheet and noticed the centrifuge math tab only has one section for 1.47. i was curious if you're planning on updating it with a section for ultimate 1.1.2. i was doing some cube simulations last night and noticed that thorium is nerfed down to 500k eu in this version. just trying to figure out if using one crcs plutonium reactor plus dedicated thorium mark 1's is worth it. it seems that if I'm using quads it does (6*4m +48m = 72m vs 12*5=60m) but I don't really see any calculations on that sheet that match my results.

 

[Omicron]

Added a section for that to the spreadsheet.

Thorium is close to useless in Ultimate 1.1.x. It scales up in heat with neighbors, but almost not at all in power output. So the best you can do really is use single thorium cells as cheap reflector stand-ins, or run a reactor with zero-neighbor quad cells scattered around the reactor. That way you'll still only get efficiency 3, but at least you can get away with a really small and cheap cooling system.

 

[Shakie666]

Added a section for that to the spreadsheet.

Thorium is close to useless in Ultimate 1.1.x. It scales up in heat with neighbors, but almost not at all in power output. So the best you can do really is use single thorium cells as cheap reflector stand-ins, or run a reactor with zero-neighbor quad cells scattered around the reactor. That way you'll still only get efficiency 3, but at least you can get away with a really small and cheap cooling system.

Don't bother using thorium as NRs in this version, the hybrid effect actually lowers the power output. With quad plutonium cells on a 4x2 rectangle with NR caps, they produce 2880 eu/t. Replace the NRs with single thorium cells and it lowers to around 2600 eu/t (unless its just the computer cube thats bugged).

 

[KirinDave]

Note that Ultimate has an intermediate version of Gregtech. He's revising stuff a lot. Also note Advanced Reactors totally changes the game, and I think some of its new tools favor the OP's style of reactor heavily.

 

[Omicron]

Don't bother using thorium as NRs in this version, the hybrid effect actually lowers the power output. With quad plutonium cells on a 4x2 rectangle with NR caps, they produce 2880 eu/t. Replace the NRs with single thorium cells and it lowers to around 2600 eu/t (unless its just the computer cube thats bugged).

Bah, and I even said the same thing at the top of this page and promptly forgot about it! That's what I get for posting while in food coma. Thanks for catching my derp (again )

 

[Runo]

aww, that sucks. well at least i know my mathcraft isn't unpolished seems like sticking to uranium is the best option for this build then, as the thorium waste drags down the plutonium too heavily. i'll still need to make a hefty thorium reactor though for all the monazit byproduct. i think i have 600 thorium from two quarry runs and a day of spelunking

Also, I have one more question for the nuke aficionados. As I'm playing survival, containment is important. Is there a way to get a 'hardness scale' of all materials in a mod pack/mods? Or at least a small listing of the best options for cost/space? I've though of a possible exploit for aesthetics but am not sure it would work (tesseract containment walls placed by another player) but maybe there's reasonable less expensive but pretty options like hardened/reinforced glass that I don't know of

 

[arentol]

Warded Blocks are incredibly good for reactor containment, and they aren't to expensive either if you already have the research done or nearly done for them.

 

[Shakie666]

Warded blocks are (arguably) OP considering how cheap they are. Aside from that reinforced stone/glass isn't too expensive and has a blast resistance of 150, so any nuke with less explosive power than that can be safely contained by it.

EDIT: By the way, is there any new news regarding advanced reactors? I know its still in the alpha stage, but... it looks pretty gnarly. Though I wonder how it will integrate with Greg's planned reactor changes.

 

[Runo]

Two Chamber Uranium efficiency 3.84

You could use this in your build. Its a startup cost tradeoff for uranium and 24 copper/cycle. The ractor shape would still work fine, just like so:

-CC-
CXXC
CXXC
-CC-
 
C=CHAMBER
X=REACTOR
-=GAP

540eu/t per floor, and still able to be hooked up to properly by everything b/c each reactor has 3 exposed sides

The only annoying thing I can't figure out is if it would still be possible to do this with AE directly due to the cell types. Seems like it'd require more complicated routing.

EDIT: Link Fixed

Also, I tried my best to get 4 double uranium to work in that configuration but it just wouldn't budge unfortunately

 

[Shakie666]

Two Chamber Uranium efficiency 3.84

You could use this in your build. Its a startup cost tradeoff for uranium and 24 copper/cycle. The ractor shape would still work fine, just like so:

-CC-
CXXC
CXXC
-CC-
 
C=CHAMBER
X=REACTOR
-=GAP

540eu/t per floor, and still able to be hooked up to properly by everything b/c each reactor has 3 exposed sides

The only annoying thing I can't figure out is if it would still be possible to do this with AE directly due to the cell types. Seems like it'd require more complicated routing.

EDIT: Link Fixed

Also, I tried my best to get 4 double uranium to work in that configuration but it just wouldn't budge unfortunately

Thing is with that shape is that the cables take up room, making it 6x6. I wonder what the most compact setup would be for a group of reactors with a given number of chambers.

EDIT: You also need 4 times as much glass fibre cable. Not too expensive, but its extra diamonds.

 

[Runo]

Thing is with that shape is that the cables take up room, making it 6x6. I wonder what the most compact setup would be for a group of reactors with a given number of chambers.

EDIT: You also need 4 times as much glass fibre cable. Not too expensive, but its extra diamonds.

If you're concerned about cable costs, you can do this instead, though it takes up 1 more room for a 7x7:

---C---
---X---
---C---
CXC-CXC
---C---
---X---
---C---
 
C = chamber, X = reactor, - = blank

One diamond per 8 cable to me is inconsequential as I'd need to strip mine the world for this to get tall enough for it to matter

My bigger concern is needing two export bus and two advanced regulators per segment. maybe I'm looking at the wrong item to use

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Some other nuclear reactors that do well in a tower design:

200 EU/t No Running Cost
It is a three chamber, but you can pinwheel them around and still stack them easily enough. 2.86 Efficiency is the tradeoff you'll get for the EU/t and compact design.

140 EU/t No Running Cost
Originally created by Qwe1rty and refined by Omicron, this is a 2 chamber reactor with 3.5 Efficiency rating and no 140 EU/t.

170 EU/t No Running Cost
A recent addition by Qwe1rty. It produces 170 EU/t out of a two-chamber reactor, but the efficiency suffers at 2.43.

 

[DoctorOr]

EDIT: By the way, is there any new news regarding advanced reactors? I know its still in the alpha stage, but... it looks pretty gnarly. Though I wonder how it will integrate with Greg's planned reactor changes.

It's a complete unquestionable nerf to any reactor that doesn't use chambers, and until you use the "Tier3" chamber, a nerf overall.