ReactorCraft - clever reactor setups?

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trajing

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Jul 29, 2019
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I guess the way i look at it is...I can refine uranium until I get, say, 8 enriched ones. I can plonk those into a tiny reactor and easily net 1TJ of power, which will keep me running for a long time unless I'm really wasteful.
Well, you do need to store it safely, and industrial coils aren't very safe, so you may end up spending it on ElC batteries.
 
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Pyure

Not Totally Useless
Aug 14, 2013
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Well, you do need to store it safely, and industrial coils aren't very safe, so you may end up spending it on ElC batteries.
I know *I* like to store it safely, but I dunno if everyone does that, or if they just run their industry wastefully off the output.

PS: those ElC auroral batteries are expeeeeensive (in diamonds), but man they hold a lot of juice. I run my entire building off of one.
 
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trajing

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Jul 29, 2019
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I know *I* like to store it safely, but I dunno if everyone does that, or if they just run their industry wastefully off the output.

PS: those ElC auroral batteries are expeeeeensive (in diamonds), but man they hold a lot of juice. I run my entire building off of one.
Yeah, I know. That's a ton of diamonds.
 

Ieldra

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Apr 25, 2014
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I know *I* like to store it safely, but I dunno if everyone does that, or if they just run their industry wastefully off the output.

PS: those ElC auroral batteries are expeeeeensive (in diamonds), but man they hold a lot of juice. I run my entire building off of one.
I'm planning on that as well - with 350 diamond ore blocks I can run through my extractor, the cost isn't really a big issue at this point - but the lack of documentation is really frustrating me. Also, there is the matter of the fixed output. I have no idea if that's feasible for the way I run things. Maybe I should create a room full of Resonant Energy Cells as intermediate power storage.

Anyway, I would like to get back to my original question: does the tokamak reactor create neutron entities so that I can use it to make its own tritium after the initial power-up?
 

trajing

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Jul 29, 2019
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I'm planning on that as well - with 350 diamond ore blocks I can run through my extractor, the cost isn't really a big issue at this point - but the lack of documentation is really frustrating me. Also, there is the matter of the fixed output. I have no idea if that's feasible for the way I run things. Maybe I should create a room full of Resonant Energy Cells as intermediate power storage.

Anyway, I would like to get back to my original question: does the tokamak reactor create neutron entities so that I can use it to make its own tritium after the initial power-up?
Yes. It does.
 
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Reika

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Sure, I'd look at it the same way if I was into it for the power alone, but the thing is that's not my primary consideration. I ask "how much tritium can I make from that, and is that enough to initiate a self-sustaining fusion cycle"? I also feel *really* uncomfortable about anything I can't make renewable. That's why I want to go fusion ASAP in the first place. Apart from the coolness of it and the technical challenge of course.
Is a mining machine that goes on forever not effectively renewable?


The numbers are a bit low, but honestly, the amount of power you can get out of a properly built fission reactor is plenty to power several Digital Miners and the uranium processing at the same time.

I don't like the low ratio (this is just me being a hoarder, nothing against the design choice), but I feel like the power output makes it worth it since I can use that power to get more uranium.
The 8% chance was calculated from the relative proportions of U235 in natural and reactor-grade uranium.
 
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Padfoote

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The 8% chance was calculated from the relative proportions of U235 in natural and reactor-grade uranium.

Which makes sense. I don't have a problem with the design choice, I'm just not a fan of low percentages for things, MC or otherwise.
 
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Ieldra

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Is a mining machine that goes on forever not effectively renewable?
*Chuckles* You have no idea of the train of throught triggered by that comment. That I don't consider those equal is part of how I approach games like this, namely, as a simulation of a fictional world rather than just a game. Call it a playstyle preference. Please note, yet again, that I am not complaining and approve the design choice. This is strictly my perspective.

(1) There is a difference between infinite resources and renewable resources. Everything you take out of the world permanently and which can't be replaced is by definition not renewable. It may not make a difference for gameplay, but I always consider the MC world as a fictional world, and I am reluctant to exploit a trait like infinite resources if it's a gameplay convenience rather than a design decision rooted in the lore of a fictional world.

(2) There is the matter of realism to consider, especially in mods like yours which are designed to be realistic. I feel it is against the spirit of how to use ReactorCraft if I use mechanics that exist as gameplay conveniences to get around problems that almost define the technology in the real world, namely, scarcity of fuel and waste disposal.

(3) If you think through (1) a little deeper, you'll realize that everything we call renewable comes down to some resource being effectively unlimited (like sunlight on Earth, or hydrogen in the solar system), and considering thermodynamics you might say nothing is truly renewable and we're all deceiving ourselves. Still, nuclear fission is a real-world technology, if you didn't want real-world problems like scarcity of fuel to be associated with it, why make the mod that way in the first place, rather than, say, calling your resource "yellorium"? If I'm using scarcity of resources to drive some of my decisions, then I feel I'm acting like I'm supposed to when using ReactorCraft.

(4) For some reason, I am unable to take off my (moderate) enviromentalist's hat when I play Minecraft. When I enter a pristine new world, I inevitably feel that it would be a sacrilege to destroy parts of it just for convenience. I hate nothing more than to create large holes in the world, I do not like to leave poisonous stuff behind and my constructions aim to integrate themselves naturally into the landscape where that's possible. Yes, we have mining ages, but it doesn't matter. Every time I see those large holes created by mining machines in dimensions with any life at all, I think "I don't want this", even in the Nether because it makes things look ugly. The only place where I don't care is the Deep Dark, but unfortunately, pitchblende does not spawn there.
 
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Ieldra

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This is a bug I am going to fix right now.
Nice. :)
Which brings me to the question: why did you originally chose the Twilight Forest and Mushroom Island biomes as places where pitchblende would spawn? It appears a rather odd choice for something like uranium.

Meanwhile, uranium enrichment is up and running. 8% is almost perfectly on the spot. I got 8 uranium fuel pellets for 106 pellets of depleted uranium. If depleted/enriched dust converts from the original 1:1, I have just burned about four stacks of uranium for an amount of fuel that won't even fill one fuel core (which can hold 12). I take it that every fuel core burns the lowest three pellets at the same time, and consequently I'm burning 24 at the same time in an 8-core reactor. How long does one fuel pellet last, approximately?
 

Pyure

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Meanwhile, uranium enrichment is up and running. 8% is almost perfectly on the spot. I got 8 uranium fuel pellets for 106 pellets of depleted uranium. If depleted/enriched dust converts from the original 1:1, I have just burned about four stacks of uranium for an amount of fuel that won't even fill one fuel core (which can hold 12). I take it that every fuel core burns the lowest three pellets at the same time, and consequently I'm burning 24 at the same time in an 8-core reactor. How long does one fuel pellet last, approximately?

So much negativity :p Be positive!!

In an 8 core reactor, only 8 pellets are burning at a time. You only need 8 to get started.

A pellet's duration is tied to how much its reacting: it will last a smaller amount of time in a larger reactor (producing more heat and correspondingly more power).

Approximately 20-30 minutes in an 8-core reactor surrounded by reflectors I'd guess, getting you well over 1TJ of power via water, 2TJ via ammonia. You might be able to get more if you leverage pipe-pumps and the HP turbine, not sure.

Edit: this is going to drive you nuts, but some pellets are going to last much longer than others. 30 minutes average for the first few is probably about right, give or take 10 minutes. The last ones will stick around almost indefinitely, since they'll be reacting less and less as others peeter out.
 
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Ieldra

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Wait what kind of reactor are you building? BWRs take 4 pellets.
I'm building a boiling-water fission reactor, since I need either that or a breeder in order to use the irradiation chamber. The fuel core for this type of reactor has 12 slots in three columns of four, so I assumed it burns three at the same time. It's been a while since I last watched a spotlight video, so I may remember wrongly.

Also, you misunderstood. I am not negative, that was just a half-facetious comment on a known fact. In fact, since I've started actually building reactor infrastructure, I'm getting somewhat confident that I can actually pull this off and work my way up to the fusion reactor eventually. I've also mined 2500 pitchblende in the End in a rather short time thanks to my Digital Miner.
 

Pyure

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I don't care, I shall force my unmitigated positivity on all. Be happy or else.

Ok so, for your reactor: fuel goes in the center. Waste comes out the side-columns. It should be pumped out the bottom via your method of choice, otherwise it contaminates and ruins your energy production.

I cheatfully void all my waste because I don't feel the waste-handling mechanism is intuitive yet. Last I checked, there was an arbitrary "long-lived-waste" rule which determined which waste went where, and it wasn't super-friendly with itemducts when inserting into the waste containers.
 

Pyure

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Aug 14, 2013
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Anyone know how fast an isotope centrifuge can go?

With the net power output of 8 pellets of uranium, I'm thinking @Ieldra should be able to create an obnoxious quantity of refined uranium pretty quickly.

I suspect the power-efficient way would be to run X centrifuges at regular speed, but I'm curious what would happen just running 1 centrifuge at much much higher speed. Thoughts?
 

madnewmy

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Jul 29, 2019
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Anyone know how fast an isotope centrifuge can go?

With the net power output of 8 pellets of uranium, I'm thinking @Ieldra should be able to create an obnoxious quantity of refined uranium pretty quickly.

I suspect the power-efficient way would be to run X centrifuges at regular speed, but I'm curious what would happen just running 1 centrifuge at much much higher speed. Thoughts?

on lowest speed. iirc, about 10 seconds per operation
 

Ieldra

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Apr 25, 2014
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Anyone know how fast an isotope centrifuge can go?

With the net power output of 8 pellets of uranium, I'm thinking @Ieldra should be able to create an obnoxious quantity of refined uranium pretty quickly.

I suspect the power-efficient way would be to run X centrifuges at regular speed, but I'm curious what would happen just running 1 centrifuge at much much higher speed. Thoughts?
I'm running four centrifuges at 2MW each which appear to produce around 16-20 uranium fuel pellets in half an hour using up about 50-60 buckets of jet fuel. I should be able to run a 16-core reactor off that if my production of raw materials for jet fuel can keep up. I don't know about maximum speed. There's usually a point where production makes a jump, but below that you'll usually be better off running more machines.

I've also noticed that fuel efficiency in terms of fuel pellets per stack of uranium ingots is higher than I expected since apparently you get more than one dust out of the bucket of UF6 the uranium processor makes from one ingot.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking a reactor with 8 cores might not work if I put down irradiation chambers. Does anyone have an idea about where best to place those irradiation chambers? They must be somewhere where neutrons pass, of course, and I guess the more, the better, but I wonder if I should replace neutron reflectors from regular designs or steam boilers. Or if the main components should stay the same and I just put irradiation chambers on the outer edges where you'd put concrete otherwise.

If I can make it work, I'm thinking of building an 8-core as one boiler surrounded by fuel cores surrounded by boilers surrounded by reflectors, and no control rods, and then replace some components with irradiation chambers. Does anyone see a reason why a design like that should or should not work? Remember my main objective is not power, but the reactor should still generate some.

Also, I'm worried about those steam entities causing lag. How do I deal with that?
 
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Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
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Anyone know how fast an isotope centrifuge can go?

With the net power output of 8 pellets of uranium, I'm thinking @Ieldra should be able to create an obnoxious quantity of refined uranium pretty quickly.

I suspect the power-efficient way would be to run X centrifuges at regular speed, but I'm curious what would happen just running 1 centrifuge at much much higher speed. Thoughts?
on lowest speed. iirc, about 10 seconds per operation

You can get it down to less than one second with insane input speeds.

Also, I'm worried about those steam entities causing lag. How do I deal with that?
They are blocks, not entities, and due to odd designs of MC code will never affect TPS or FPS, but will affect UPS (block updates per second). To avoid them, condense steam and/or use the HP turbine.