ReactorCraft Fission Reactor Designs
- Thread starter Demosthenex
- Start date
Unfortunately, it's just the nature of minecraft to have to be careful with chunkloading. Even in the days of Railcraft boilers being the best available power source, you had to ensure your water and fuel supply were chunkloaded if the boiler was chunkloaded, lest you starve it and cool it down or cause an explosion.
If you're to the point where you're building a ReC reactor, chunkloaders should be effectively zero-cost for you, so just use F9 to make sure your reactor is centered in a single chunk and place a chunkloader in the same chunk (I set mine to radius 3 for a 25-chunk square), and you should be good to go.
Demosthenex - I still don't know where to extract low pressure water from the HP turbine at the end of the cycle
True, I was just saying that it'd be nice if there wasn't that big "Oh, you built a perfect reactor but forgot to place a chunkloader? Here have a nuclear meltdown, free of charge."
I mean, I know that it's easy, but as EC said games shouldn't be "punishing". If you die or mess up, the mistake should be at least a little noticeable or understandable, not relying on pure memorization but also skill and planning and all that other gamey stuff. Take games like the NES Silver Surfer of BattleToads. You may wonder what they have to do with one another, but actually it's quite simple: they are both punishing. The Speeder Bike level if the latter is purely about memorizing the entirety of the level, while in SS there were tiles that seemed like part of the background but were really the foreground, thus causing pointless deaths.
My point is that IMO, it would be really good if there was something to at least give a heads-up that there might be problems when you don't use Chunkloaders. Even a Disclaimer on the main Reactor pieces would work, I just feel something like this would stop pointless topics about "broken reactors"
Demosthenex - I still don't know where to extract low pressure water from the HP turbine at the end of the cycle
I don't think you can. I thought recycling was for ammonia, and the HP's didn't use ammonia.
ReC manual says "low pressure water can be extracted from beneath the rear of the turbine using reservoirs or BC tanks".
I have tried all manner of pipes below the center of the largest stage. None will visually connect to the multiblock. I have tried a large area of reservoirs underneath the "falling water" animation. They don't collect anything. Trying to figure out which block to connect an extraction pipe to and/or what device to use to properly capture the water.
If you aren't having any difficulty in operation without capturing the water, I might just let it go. I was just going to keep a max-size steel tank of water for backup if the fresh source becomes inactive for some reason.
It is caused by vanilla mechanics. Short of making every block a chunkloader, which will see it abused for that purpose and banned on 90% of servers, there is nothing I can do.
Put it a block further back.
Oh okay, I was hoping there was a way to turn a multiblock into a Chunkloader. Thank you for the correction.
Could having only the core blocks be chunkloaders when they have fuel in it is achievable?
So after frequently building HP turbines for testing, I have automated the process with turtles.
http://pastebin.com/G4v0x6EC
This program will start at ground level and requires fuel and HP turbine parts in the specified slots, and it will build a full size HP turbine overhead.
The turbine tends to assemble early on me, so I've broke out a block in the rear and replaced it, and then again on the front to make it snap together.
What a timesaver, I'm starting a creative world to build an array of 10 so I can test output on several reactor designs.[DOUBLEPOST=1405977614][/DOUBLEPOST]Another comment for breeder fans, I threw together a quick breeder with 2x2 cores and a full air gap around each core and then reflectors outside the air gap. Pipes out for waste and the finished products, it runs fine passively cooled and outputs four processed pellets every 20 minutes. I still need to see if pipes in cause a heat issue, but it was stable for several hours of runtime.
http://pastebin.com/G4v0x6EC
This program will start at ground level and requires fuel and HP turbine parts in the specified slots, and it will build a full size HP turbine overhead.
The turbine tends to assemble early on me, so I've broke out a block in the rear and replaced it, and then again on the front to make it snap together.
What a timesaver, I'm starting a creative world to build an array of 10 so I can test output on several reactor designs.[DOUBLEPOST=1405977614][/DOUBLEPOST]Another comment for breeder fans, I threw together a quick breeder with 2x2 cores and a full air gap around each core and then reflectors outside the air gap. Pipes out for waste and the finished products, it runs fine passively cooled and outputs four processed pellets every 20 minutes. I still need to see if pipes in cause a heat issue, but it was stable for several hours of runtime.
Alas I will have to avoid performing the waste cycle on my private server. I've blown it up again, and crashed out the other players despite having an admin chunk loader and prior sustained successful tests in creative mode. At least the reactor is up, but for server health I'll have to avoid treating waste properly and void it instead. I think that makes ten. Now to heal my char (hash crashes from MCPC and radiation are a known issue) fast, kill radiation entities with Opis, and stone cover what's already in the pool.
As a result of my experiments I felt I have to publish somewhere that if you intend to use ReactorCraft on a server, especially a modded server or MCPC+, you should be very careful and be critically aware of the issues already discussed here. I don't think any of these issues are Reika's fault. MCPC makes changes and the chunk loading is controlled by Forge. If you're playing single player you should have no issues. Server players should strongly consider a separate area away from their base, perhaps crossing region file boundaries for fast restores.
As a result of my experiments I felt I have to publish somewhere that if you intend to use ReactorCraft on a server, especially a modded server or MCPC+, you should be very careful and be critically aware of the issues already discussed here. I don't think any of these issues are Reika's fault. MCPC makes changes and the chunk loading is controlled by Forge. If you're playing single player you should have no issues. Server players should strongly consider a separate area away from their base, perhaps crossing region file boundaries for fast restores.
For what it's worth, I think it may also be beneficial to stick to HTGRs on servers if there are meltdown concerns.
I have had good luck also fueling my reactor for exactly one fuel cycle and not doing it near server restart. One cycle of your 6-core is good for 2-3 hours, and I just cache the output in a bedrock coil. Auroral batteries could be another good choice.
Are you building a housing around your HP turbines? I think mine might br crashing me because of the nearby blocks despite following the 13x13x10 room guidelines.
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I may have to stick to HGTR/PBR's, but after all the research into fission I was hoping to go with a modestly powerful config. Looking forward to v25 for the next server.
No, in fact I have a pseudo-staircase under my production one. Nothing is touching to turbine, but I didn't keep the whole cube clear.
Ok first thing first. I am really enjoying the ReactorCraft mod. So thank you very much for your creations Reika.
So here is my take on what seems to be a decent reactor. As this is my third day playing around with the mod I have only melted dow...err I mean built in creative. Obviously I am trying to come up with something that I could deploy on a survival game.
Ok here's the overview:
Above: entire assembly is held in two chunks
Above: a closer look at the water setup. This was for sure the most tricky part of the build. This thing takes a metric butt load of water!
Above: ok so the secret here is the upgrades in the liquid transfer nodes. 64 of speed, mining, and stacks.
above: the reactor itself, this one is just big enough to power the turbine at maximum. the two center fuel core do not have any material in them. i am only using 7 of the boilers. again the trick is getting enough water into each boiler.
above: here is the bottom of the reactor. I am tesseracting ( is that a word) the water directly into the 7 boilers. The itemducts are pulling the spent fuel and waste out of the cores. I am just voiding that stuff. ( I know, I know -again third day the mod)
above: here you can see the A.E. system with 12 basic export busses on the fuel cores. the two cores in the middle are not getting any fuel.
above: here you can see the temp of one of the boilers that are not in use. I use it to get a feel for how hot the reactor is currently. I surrounded the reactor with reflectors, this eliminates the need for all the extra blocks for shielding. Also I trying for something symmetrical and functional. I struggled with what block to use for the blocks that are just fillers. you need something that conducts the heat so it has to be reactorcraft block.
above: here is the turbine spinning away at MAX! I can add more steam but it will go no faster. so I started backing off on my reactor until I found a place that was just above letting the turbine spin down.
above: all the beautiful power! 1.5 million RF/t
and all in two chunks.
well I'm sure that it could better in many ways, but it seems pretty stable and I am confident in deploying it into one of actual survival worlds.
seems to me that water is really the most vital part. I tried many configurations and this water supply seems to do very well. its also has small footprint which I like.
Any feedback it greatly appreciated.
thanks for looking,
Xorbot
So here is my take on what seems to be a decent reactor. As this is my third day playing around with the mod I have only melted dow...err I mean built in creative. Obviously I am trying to come up with something that I could deploy on a survival game.
Ok here's the overview:
Above: entire assembly is held in two chunks
Above: a closer look at the water setup. This was for sure the most tricky part of the build. This thing takes a metric butt load of water!
Above: ok so the secret here is the upgrades in the liquid transfer nodes. 64 of speed, mining, and stacks.
above: the reactor itself, this one is just big enough to power the turbine at maximum. the two center fuel core do not have any material in them. i am only using 7 of the boilers. again the trick is getting enough water into each boiler.
above: here is the bottom of the reactor. I am tesseracting ( is that a word) the water directly into the 7 boilers. The itemducts are pulling the spent fuel and waste out of the cores. I am just voiding that stuff. ( I know, I know -again third day the mod)
above: here you can see the A.E. system with 12 basic export busses on the fuel cores. the two cores in the middle are not getting any fuel.
above: here you can see the temp of one of the boilers that are not in use. I use it to get a feel for how hot the reactor is currently. I surrounded the reactor with reflectors, this eliminates the need for all the extra blocks for shielding. Also I trying for something symmetrical and functional. I struggled with what block to use for the blocks that are just fillers. you need something that conducts the heat so it has to be reactorcraft block.
above: here is the turbine spinning away at MAX! I can add more steam but it will go no faster. so I started backing off on my reactor until I found a place that was just above letting the turbine spin down.
above: all the beautiful power!
1.5 million RF/t
and all in two chunks.
well I'm sure that it could better in many ways, but it seems pretty stable and I am confident in deploying it into one of actual survival worlds.
seems to me that water is really the most vital part. I tried many configurations and this water supply seems to do very well. its also has small footprint which I like.
Any feedback it greatly appreciated.
thanks for looking,
Xorbot
To my overwhelming frustration my tiny cool 6 core reactor on our survival server just blew when I entered the area, despite the design running for ages in single player and having a creative admin anchor present. Crashed out my players again while I had to fix the rads.
I think I'll just make no further reactors on this server and stick to my little PBR and run it in batches. Ideally we can run the latest ReactorCraft on the next server and Cauldron with the last patchset. Maybe it will behave better.
Given Reika's thought it is related to chunk loading I may have to test the MCPC chunk loading behavior. I know we've had tuning on the server trying to keep down the total loaded chunks and have some aggressive options, and I chalk it up to a ReactorCraft and MCPC compatibility issue. It just means no fission reactors for me.
I don't suppose you can hook a pre or post event function into a Forge chunk call to instruct it to remove all neutrons in flight on chunk load or unload? I'm not familiar with the API, but you indicated that neutrons piled up during the chunk operations. Could you detect that operation and just make them vanish?
EDIT: A quick search reveals:
http://docs.larry1123.net/forge/1065/net/minecraftforge/event/world/ChunkEvent.html
Is that something you can bind to and remove neutrons if detected? That may be safer for everyone, not just modded hosts.
Forgive the tone here friends; I'm about as perturbed as I actually ever get.
If I build an IC2 nuclear reactor in one chunk, and its safety depends on infrastructure from another chunk, and I negligently chunkload the reactor but not the safety infrastructure, I deserve what happens.
But if they're both in the same chunk, then whether I chunkload it or not, I'm not going to experience problems.
I have a major, serious gripe with how this is managed with ReC. And its why I cannot recommend enough that players avoid this mod on servers.
If the mechanics do not support chunk unloading (which they should), and the mod does not provide a chunkloader, then the fact that people could theoretically abuse forced-loading is completely, absolutely irrelevant in the face of the game-destroying alternative.
This is...its just not right.
Absolutely no mod for MC should ever...ever...require constant force-loading to prevent catastrophes of this scale. Period. And as much as I like very many aspects of the mod, it stays at the top of my recommend-against list as long as this is an issue for the players.
If I build an IC2 nuclear reactor in one chunk, and its safety depends on infrastructure from another chunk, and I negligently chunkload the reactor but not the safety infrastructure, I deserve what happens.
But if they're both in the same chunk, then whether I chunkload it or not, I'm not going to experience problems.
I have a major, serious gripe with how this is managed with ReC. And its why I cannot recommend enough that players avoid this mod on servers.
If the mechanics do not support chunk unloading (which they should), and the mod does not provide a chunkloader, then the fact that people could theoretically abuse forced-loading is completely, absolutely irrelevant in the face of the game-destroying alternative.
This is...its just not right.
Absolutely no mod for MC should ever...ever...require constant force-loading to prevent catastrophes of this scale. Period. And as much as I like very many aspects of the mod, it stays at the top of my recommend-against list as long as this is an issue for the players.
