Project: Fusion Reactor - a chronicle (WIP)

Ieldra

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Apr 25, 2014
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There will probably be a slight delay in progress since I need to update Reika's mods to v25. There are several changes that will positively affect this project:
  • ReactorCraft: Fixed High-Pressure turbine consuming more steam than it could us
  • ReactorCraft: Fixed heat ray penetrating preheater structure
  • ReactorCraft: Angular transducer now works anywhere on multiblocks
  • ReactorCraft: Fixed neutron absorbers melting clientside
  • ReactorCraft: Made fluid collection behind HP Turbines easier
  • ReactorCraft: Fixed steam line connectivity console spam
  • ReactorCraft: Fireflies no longer damage turbines
  • ReactorCraft: Added handbook entries for Tokamak Blueprint and Turbine Dynamometer
...some that will affect similar projects run by others but I'm past them:
  • ReactorCraft: Deep dark now generates ores
  • ReactorCraft: Fixed fusion blueprint lighting
...along with a few others that require modifications. Thus the delay:
  • ReactorCraft: Turbines now require lubricant
  • ReactorCraft: Preheater no longer works if there are holes in the multiblock sides
  • RotaryCraft: All mod power converters that generate shaft power now require lubricant

And just because it can't be repeated often enough: *BEFORE* you update, break all your RotaryCraft engines or they'll be converted into DC engines.
 

HireAMercenary

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also if you have Opis, or ops you can do /forge tps
there are a few other ways, some require MCPC+ with certain plugins, but "/cofh tps" & Opis are the best in my opinion
 

Ieldra

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A short update: I updated Reika's mods to v25, and while the technical side of the process went reasonably well with a few ID conflicts that destroyed some Ars Magic items I had to cheat back in and some small adaptations to supply my Magnetostatics with lubricant - no problem at all, since I had 64k canola in store and a functioning infrastructure, I just needed to a few fluid export buses, two buffer tanks and some fluid conduits - updating GeoStrata was a disaster. The aesthetics of my factory room, my End Base, my mobtrap compound, my offshore outpost and my farming area has been completely destroyed because my texture pack can't find the GeoStrata rock anymore. I'll have to revert to other blocks for my industrial areas, and while replacing the walls is not so hard, replacing the hundreds of conduit facades and microblocks is....frustrating. So....I'm frustrated. No more building today. Thankfully I didn't use any of that stuff for the fusion reactor area.

Also, I discovered that I may not have enough iron ore. When I started this project I had 17k iron ore. Yes, ore, not the ingots, but one HP turbine will set me back more than 6000 steel. That's just insane. I'll have enough for this project most likely, but in the end I'll have used up about 50k iron and 30k coal....
 

trajing

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Does anyone know if the turbines requiring lubricant is a config option? If it isn't, I've got to bug Reika about it.
 

Ieldra

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This evening I spent building turbines. Gods, are these annoying to build, and they cost more steel than the rest of the reactor. No function tests today since I want the turbines connected before the next test, and I didn't have time to put in the lubricant logistics yet. Also the site needs some prettying up and a few elevators. Not sure if I'm going to do that before finishing the technical parts. I increased the threshold of steel production to 16384 - which is NOT enough for three HP turbines. Maybe I should look into faster steel production, but I'm getting a little tired of the question "How the hell do I do this" in features not directly linked to the project.

As for pictures, first some details I didn't show last time on how I do the heat exchanging. Not that there's a lot of choice there, but I'd still like to show it. I'll probably cover the water pipes up later.
110_Absorber.jpg

110_WaterSupply.jpg


And here's my turbine tower (you all knew there would be a tower somewhere in this project, right?). It's still missing the windows and some ornament, but building this has taken the whole evening, and I'm still considering what material is most suitable for the windows. What you don't see: there's an indoors corridor linking the tokamak area and the turbine tower. That, too, needs more work.....and I need to put something interesting on the top of the tower....lots to do, even when not considering the technical challenge of this project. BTW the tokamak isn't damaged. Parts of it don't render at this distance. I should mention that the turbines have a big impact on graphics performance. I'll probably not build more than these for now.
110_TurbineTower1.jpg


BTW, an interesting tidbit: I have now mined out 144 chunks for iron with the digital miner for this project. In the Deep Dark with double ore generation. Should I build the maximum amount of HP turbines, I'll use up almost all of it.
 
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Kirameki

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You should put metal spires with blinking red lights, like they have on most tall buildings for lightning conductance and collision avoidance. Sure, doesn't *do* much in Minecraft but still looks neat, especially at night.
 
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Ieldra

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You should put metal spires with blinking red lights, like they have on most tall buildings for lightning conductance and collision avoidance. Sure, doesn't *do* much in Minecraft but still looks neat, especially at night.
That would complement the helipad I was thinking of nicely. Also a Pneumaticraft elevator might fit here. I'll have to look into that. Anyway, noncritical things that require learning a new mod will be put off until the reactor is functional.
 

Ieldra

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A new day, a new ignition test. Well....there are some good news and some bad news.

First: YES! I am generating insane amounts of power!
120_Power.jpg

My three HP turbines are maxed out at 8.590 GW, so I'm definitely doing something right....

...however, things don't look so good elsewhere:
120_Lava.jpg

I'm using four transfer nodes with a stack of mining and speed upgrades plus one stack upgrade each, and it appears I still don't get enough water. It may also be a problem with the design, since the melted neutron absorbers are the same on all corners. Anyway, once a few have melted, things remain stable, I take that as evidence that it's indeed a water problem. Maybe more nodes with fewer upgrades will be better.

Regarding the fusion plasma all over the place, the thing is, I'm not sure if I really have a containment breach or if it's a result of lag - I have severe tick lag (60%), though the effect appears to be somewhat random. One game session, I have it, the next I haven't. I wish I could reset the "containment breach" achievement, then I would know. Graphics performance is borderline but acceptable otherwise (around 15-20fps)
 
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madnewmy

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the plasma escaping while the reactor is actually working is a visual bug IIRC. I think reika said it in one of the bazillions post on this reactor :p

don't forget that you never have enough water :p When I planned to do this reactor (which never happent because fission reactor killed the server :p) I planned 16 fully upgraded node per side. Lot's of overkill there, but for sure no melting down :p
 

Ieldra

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YAY! I have a functional and stable fusion reactor! Pictures first:

130_ReactorSite1.jpg

130_Turbines.jpg

130_Battery.jpg


About the melting neutron absorbers, I added a second row of steam boilers behind the 24 critical ones, and when that wasn't enough, I put cooling fins on top. Also, you see no escaping plasma. That was apparently caused by the lag, which I also almost completely removed, albeit at a cost. It was caused by the ElectriCraft batteries. Here's a comparison chart:

130_PowerSchematic.jpg


The problem is caused by active batteries which are also connected to an input wire, regardless of whether any energy comes in on that input wire. I still have two of those in my system, maybe I'll try to remove them as well, but there appear to be aggravating conditions:
(1) The battery is outputting non-constant power.
(2) The battery is outputting constant power at an amperage which is not a power of 2.
Opis reported a timing of about 300000µs for the first setup, and still an excessive 20000µs for the second. Without the problems caused by the batteries, I would have no tick lag at all.

What this means for my reactor is that possibly I can't ever have a constantly running system since I need to shut off the reactor before I refill the battery powering the reactor systems. The only way I see around that is not to use ElectriCraft to power my reactor systems. Anyway, I'll leave that for later. Now I think I've earned some rest before I go into making the status displays, making my reactor self-sustaining and prettying things up a bit. I need to learn PneumaticCraft anyway. One thing I should mention: the reactor uses up deuterium and tritium at about 200 mB per second, which is rather close to the 100B/10min reported elsewhere. However, the three HP turbines drink lubricant at the insane rate of approximately 2 buckets per second. I will need more lilypads of fertility in my canola farm, and I need to dedicate an extra grinder to making lubricant.
 
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