Reactorcraft Questions.

[Bigpak]

Alright, I have quite a few reactorcraft questions and I figured it would be better to start a new thread than to post them all in a simple questions thread.

1. What is the MAXIMUM power output of a high pressure turbine? I think I have maxed it out at 8.590 GW, but can it produce more with ammonia? What is the difference between using water and ammonia with a high pressure turbine?

2. Reactor fuel types, what is the difference in the reactor between plutonium and uranium, I can't find it in the reactorcraft handbook. Also, what is thorium.

3. is there a maximum output of a turbine generator? can it convert as much RF as a high pressure turbine produces?

4. Reactor setups, the one I am currently using is this:

5. The fusion reactor, are there any good build guides to it? Is there only one setup or can there be many? What is the best setup if there can be more than one.

 

[Aetherpirate]

I think I saw that ammonia will boost it to 12.5GW ish. You will want to make a return-loop to recover the ammonia, and you will need to re-pressurize it.

Plutonium burns hotter and makes more waste, I think. I haven't looked into Thorium yet.

Not sure about turbine generators.

Reika made a video about how the parts go together for the Fusion Reactor. There is also a blueprint tool in-game. A lot of tweaking is possible for optimizing, I am still experimenting myself.

 

[Bigpak]

Does plutonium last longer as well or?

also, do the control rods in that image even do anything? they are on the very outside past the neutron reflectors, I thought they would need to be in between the fuel cores to stop the fission events. Am I wrong? Do they do their intended purposes in their current locations in the image above?

 

[malicious_bloke]

The highest i've ever ragged an HP turbine to is just over 8GW. I'm sure you can get higher and more efficient but for the amount of time it takes, I just found it easier to add a second turbine

Also I noticed the reflectors on your reactor don't cover all the paths neutrons can come out. Not the best use of them. Or are you having issues dealing with the heat if you capture them all?

 

[RavynousHunter]

I'll answer as well as I can, in order...

1. With water, the maximum is, as you've guessed, 8.59GW. If memory serves, ammonia nets an extra 50% power, but you need a closed loop converting low-pressure ammonia (output from the turbine) back into useful ammonia. Also note that ammonia can explode if it gets too hot, so be careful.
2. Plutonium burns hotter than uranium and (this is guesswork, but educated guesswork) likely fires more neutrons per unit fuel than standard uranium, giving you more overall bang for your buck, but with the added risk of increased waste output and more rapid temperature rise. Thorium is for the new thorium reactors, which are safer fission reactors and are liquid-fueled. However, I believe (haven't gotten around to messing with them, quite yet) that you need some form of standard fission neutrons to get the thorium reactor going. It works with liquid fuel and waste, so you'll need to account for that when designing it from a logistical standpoint.
3. The turbine generator has no known limit on how much RF it can make. The only limit I believe it has is Integer.MAX_VALLUE, which is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2.4 billion RF.
4. I don't see any reflectors for the edges, and you may want an extra layer of boilers on the outside. Remember, it is always better to run a reactor cool than it is to run one hot, you not only use less fuel, but its also a great deal safer.
5. There's a building guide item you can craft (redstone torch and blue fluorite, methinks) that will show you where to place the injectors, toroid magnets, and central solenoid magnet. The handbook has construction plans for the injectors and solenoid, and you want to point the toroid magnets toward the centre of the solenoid. Also note that the toroid magnets need to be charged by Van de Graff generators and filled with liquid nitrogen to contain the fusion plasma. Four gasoline engines and four Van de Graff generators, one in the middle of each quarter of the toroid ring, should suffice for containment, and you'll probably want to use bedrock pipes for the liquid nitrogen and make sure to let them pressurize first before turning the thing on! Lastly, the magnetic containment pipes must be charged like the toroids, otherwise they'll melt when they start getting plasma going thru them.

 

[imPlayin]

5. Fusion Reactor:
Magnetic Containment Pipes need very little charge (a DC Engine every ten or twenty blocks will be enough) and Toroids need above 1000V to function. Also note that you should always place the Injector block (the one block that's actually in the way of the plasma) facing in the direction of your desired plasma flow.

 

[RavynousHunter]

Aah, another note about the fusion reactor that I forgot initially: you'll be able to tell if you've got a problem with your toroid magnets' rotation when you start charging them with a VDG. Blue electricity between them means all's well, yellow could use more power, black means needs more power, and if there's a part that doesn't have electricity arcing between it, you need to rotate your magnet.

 

[Bigpak]

A note about the neutron reflectors, it runs hot as is on plutonium, makes noises etc, working on a better design HOWEVER, I forgot to mention this in the original post as I am a complete idiot, I did not design the above reactor, I used it from some really old post. It works, but hey I plan to work on it, by the way, what did you mean by a second layer of boilers? can you elaborate please?

 

[RavynousHunter]

Expand the outermost boilers by one on each side, horizontally, like...

BBB
BCB
BBB

to

BBBBB
BBBBB
BBCBB
BBBBB
BBBBB

B = Boiler; C = Fuel Core

The reactor will run at least a little cooler, which will translate to extra safety and longer fuel life.

A very useful note is to not think of these like IC2 reactors. Running them hot will end with a pile of radioactive slag where your reactor used to be, and you'll waste fuel which, for fission reactors, is quite precious until you get up to ludicrous U-235 processing speeds.