ReactorCraft - clever reactor setups?

[Reika]

Thanks Reika.

This is identical to a proposal I submitted a few days ago. Maybe I failed justifying to you that neutrons in low moderation fluid could be regarded as neutralized (mechanically absorbed due to excessive velocity).


Boilers are cooling. There's nothing artificial about this: the mechanic is 100% justified and intuitive.

In fact I assumed they performed this cooling on each other and on fission reactor cores, which is why I've avoided "over boilering" my reactors. Was this an error on my part?

They do not provide "active" cooling above what is done by heat transfer.

The thermal neutron absorption cross-section for Sodium is about 0.400 barns, compared to Oxygen at 0.002 and Boron (Used in control rods to catch neutrons) at 758.86 barns. (7k barns for Cd and 180 for In). That's for reference.
For fissioning U-235 you need thermal (slow) neutrons. Water happens to be good at this neutron slowing. Sodium not so much, but to breed U-238 and to fission Pu-239 you need fsst neutrons. Since sodium transfers heat very well but doesn't slow neutrons it's great for breeders (and burning Pu). But if water were around it would slow them down too much and the reaction couldn't happen.
Conversely, if Sodium was the moderator on a reactor using U-235 the neutrons would be too fast, and it wouldn't fission.

While I would suggest something similar for the Plutonium I'm pretty happy with that change.

On a side note, you could have a thermal rector modified by graphite like the Russian RMBK reactors (i.e. Chernobyl), which could allow you to use other coolants. Essentially, the moderator doesn't have to be the coolant.

Love your work Reika, keep it up!

To be honest, I did not model neutron moderation at all, as that adds another level of complexity with little additional gameplay value, and is a mechanic that likely 99% of the mod users will neither be familiar with nor understand. That said, it does not stop me from "exploiting" the nature of moderation to tweak the RC physics as needed.

 

[Demosthenex]

* Steam was collected using the new "pipe pump" block to evaluate performance.

Can you explain what this block is? I was looking for a way to measure steam output too.

Lovely diagrams btw!

 

[Reika]

Can you explain what this block is? I was looking for a way to measure steam output too.

Lovely diagrams btw!

Are you using v24?

 

[Demosthenex]

Unfortunately 23c, which is from Monster 1.1.2. I see 24 added a pipe pump. What exactly would that do to let you measure steam production?

Also does anyone know of a way to measure temperature without standing there with Walia? The CC support appears broken in the current Monster version (Reika, I see where you explicity include Lua data in the sources)

I'm experimenting to see if I can measure heat expectations and it'd be nice if I could collect the data differently. One oddity I did notice is that in a plains biome, my empty reactor core is 24C, but an empty steam boiler is 30C and it never changes.

Edit: NM, after a half hour AFK I returned to find the boiler had reduced to 24C.

Edit2: I was also unaware the sun would change temperature. The boiler swings rapidly between 24 and 30 depending on if it's noon or evening, while the reactors are slow to change or don't respond to the sun.

 

[Pyure]

I see 24 added a pipe pump. What exactly would that do to let you measure steam production?

It pulls 99.9% of the steam in a system into the block behind the pump. Since the lines don't have a maximum capacity, you can run a full cycle on a reactor, and see how much steam accumulates there. I can't think of a better gauge of how much total power the reactor produces.

However because there are two levels of turbines and they require different minimum inputs, your total power will still vary depending on which turbines you use.

Edit2: I was also unaware the sun would change temperature. The boiler swings rapidly between 24 and 30 depending on if it's noon or evening, while the reactors are slow to change or don't respond to the sun.

Yep, time of day is definitely a factor. So is the biome. So is the elevation. Possibly so is the sunlight exposure, I forget. [DOUBLEPOST=1403838138][/DOUBLEPOST]

 

[Demosthenex]

I haven't seen a transport mod yet that includes a flow meter. I'm glad Reika has the dynometer in RoC. The best method I've had for measuring fluid so far was what I used in my water creation testing.

I setup a ComputerCraft computer with a simple program to emit redstone for 10 seconds, and stop. That was hooked to a sticky piston that moved a pipe section into place to allow input to a tank. After 10 seconds I could measure what was in the tank to estimate the throughput.

 

[Pyure]

I haven't seen a transport mod yet that includes a flow meter. I'm glad Reika has the dynometer in RoC. The best method I've had for measuring fluid so far was what I used in my water creation testing.

I setup a ComputerCraft computer with a simple program to emit redstone for 10 seconds, and stop. That was hooked to a sticky piston that moved a pipe section into place to allow input to a tank. After 10 seconds I could measure what was in the tank to estimate the throughput.

cool

Any idea what this "turbine dynamometer" does? How does it differ from the usual dynamometer I hook up to my turbine output?

 

[Reika]

cool

Any idea what this "turbine dynamometer" does? How does it differ from the usual dynamometer I hook up to my turbine output?

It emits redstone based on the turbine speed as a fraction of its max speed.

 

[Thorinair]

Sorry for the necro, but I couldn't find any other thread to post this in.

Anyway, my friend and I have been working on a Fusion Reactor setup on survival, and this is what we came up with: http://imgur.com/a/J268e

Spoiler

 

[trajing]

Necro? The last post was 10 days ago. It isn't a necro.

 

[malicious_bloke]

Necro? The last post was 10 days ago. It isn't a necro.

Ain't necro if she's still warm yer honour

 

[Reika]

Sorry for the necro, but I couldn't find any other thread to post this in.

Anyway, my friend and I have been working on a Fusion Reactor setup on survival, and this is what we came up with: http://imgur.com/a/J268e

Spoiler

I saw this on Google Images last night and was hoping to find somewhere to contact the creator; this design is extremely impressive, though the shutdown for the injectors is a bit redundant, seeing as a redstone signal applied underneath the actual injector block will similarly shut it down.

 

[thorium_engineer]

I saw your imgur shortly after you posted. Fantastic job. Can you give some details on how long it took to buold and some of the logistics? Where's the a H-2 and H-3 coming from?

Just finished my fusion reactor in ssp yesterday. Haven't started it yet though. Glad Reika mentioned the injector shutoff.

 

[Thorinair]

I saw this on Google Images last night and was hoping to find somewhere to contact the creator; this design is extremely impressive, though the shutdown for the injectors is a bit redundant, seeing as a redstone signal applied underneath the actual injector block will similarly shut it down.

Wait, it will? That is awesome!

I saw your imgur shortly after you posted. Fantastic job. Can you give some details on how long it took to buold and some of the logistics? Where's the a H-2 and H-3 coming from?

Just finished my fusion reactor in ssp yesterday. Haven't started it yet though. Glad Reika mentioned the injector shutoff.

It is produced in a fission reactor that is located in another Age, looks like this: http://imgur.com/a/QbccN
It is a very simple setup, just enough to produce some Tritium. It took relatively quickly to build, 1-2 days.

 

[Ieldra]

@Thorinair:
I've seen these giant generators in your setup that convert power to RF. What are those? I haven't built any Reactors yet but I don't recall having seen them anywhere, either in the handbook or in LP videos. Are those ElectriCraft machines?

 

[Thorinair]

@Thorinair:
I've seen these giant generators in your setup that convert power to RF. What are those? I haven't built any Reactors yet but I don't recall having seen them anywhere, either in the handbook or in LP videos. Are those ElectriCraft machines?

It is a Turbine Generator, straight from ReactorCraft. You can find a blueprint how to build it in this post by @Reika: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum...ge-smp-reikas-mods-tech-worldgen?comment=7756
It can only be attached directly to a turbine.

 

[Ieldra]

It is a Turbine Generator, straight from ReactorCraft. You can find a blueprint how to build it in this post by @Reika: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum...ge-smp-reikas-mods-tech-worldgen?comment=7756
It can only be attached directly to a turbine.

Thanks. If you don't mind, I have another few questions:

(1) How much fuel does the reactor consume? That's something I'd rather not find out by experimentation.
(2) How did you make the railings of the walkways? I've wanted to make such things for a while now but couldn't find the right blocks to do it.
(3) Odd how complicated things appear easy and simple things difficult: I can see how to make the gauges in the control room, but I wouldn't know how to make text appear that way. How did you do that?

BTW, this looks truly impressive. Shows how much you can design things in different ways in spite of core components like the toroid and the solenoid being always the same.

 

[Thorinair]

Thanks. If you don't mind, I have another few questions:

(1) How much fuel does the reactor consume? That's something I'd rather not find out by experimentation.
(2) How did you make the railings of the walkways? I've wanted to make such things for a while now but couldn't find the right blocks to do it.
(3) Odd how complicated things appear easy and simple things difficult: I can see how to make the gauges in the control room, but I wouldn't know how to make text appear that way. How did you do that?

BTW, this looks truly impressive. Shows how much you can design things in different ways in spite of core components like the toroid and the solenoid being always the same.

1) I am not entirely sure, I didn't specifically measure, but it definitely doesn't consume a lot, maybe like 100 buckets or so per 10 minutes of production? This might seem a lot, but with the right setup, you can make this amount very quickly.
2) The railings were made using the Forge Microblocks mod, which is a replacement for microblocks from RedPower2.
3) The text was made using Advanced Industrial Information Panels in combination with Text Cards, both from Nuclear Control mod. To make them this small, I just used a lot of spaces to move the text around and position it.

I am glad you like the build! It was very fun making it.

Also, I have updated the build a bit. Considering it uses redstone now, I also added some sound effects, like an announcer for the startup. Will post a video later today.

 

[Ieldra]

To think I've been using microblock strips to insulate redstone wire, and never considered using them for walkway railings... There's definitely a principle of simple things being too obvious to see at work in my mind.

Looking forward to the video.

 

[Pyure]

Sorry for the necro, but I couldn't find any other thread to post this in.

Anyway, my friend and I have been working on a Fusion Reactor setup on survival, and this is what we came up with: http://imgur.com/a/J268e

Exceptional assembly, and I really like the aesthetics; are you actually maxing out with just the 4 HP turbines? I assumed you'd be able to do more.