what is the best way to get water into the reactor?

[mathchamp]

Note that you can also use redstone, rednet, and even ComputerCraft to control reactors and turbines if you want more flexibility than manually setting control rod positions.

I run a semi-closed loop where water from the turbines goes back to the reactor. At the same time, I have a max sized Railcraft steel tank each for steam and water (so the water from the turbines goes to the tank before the reactor). Accumulators make extra water to ensure I have a surplus, while the steam tank acts as a buffer for the steam produced by the reactor. There are also three 36HP boilers producing steam from charcoal. I then modulate the control rods based on the amount of steam in the tank. This is useful since I can add more turbines and do little more than connect the additional turbines to my computer network (since the computer also controls the turbines to keep them at 1800 RPM by toggling the coils on and off). Additionally, this can deal with the variable steam demand of my Railcraft steam turbines that generate EU (the steam to the Railcraft turbines is cut off once EU is close to full, and the flow is opened again once EU drops again).

Although right now I'm running all my BR turbines at 100% since I'm filling up a max tier DE storage multiblock. I'll probably add a monitor to my system to allow me to manually toggle turbines, along with detecting when the turbines can't sink their RF anymore and cut off their steam. Before I built the multiblock I had an EnderIO capacitor bank and modulated steam to the turbine based on percent energy stored, but the DE multiblock holds so much RF that I can't read the exact RF using a computer and can only get a coarse reading via vanilla comparator.


As for getting water in, I use tesseracts (unlimited flow rate) on the reactor and turbine outlets to feed the tanks. To feed the reactor and turbines, I drain the tank into a tesseract using ExU transfer nodes (one stacks upgrade plus as many speed upgrades as needed). Energy is also tesseracts directly next to the blocks with no intervening cables/ducts/conduits that would bottleneck the flow.

 

[idjmleader]

Note that you can also use redstone, rednet, and even ComputerCraft to control reactors and turbines if you want more flexibility than manually setting control rod positions.

I run a semi-closed loop where water from the turbines goes back to the reactor. At the same time, I have a max sized Railcraft steel tank each for steam and water (so the water from the turbines goes to the tank before the reactor). Accumulators make extra water to ensure I have a surplus, while the steam tank acts as a buffer for the steam produced by the reactor. There are also three 36HP boilers producing steam from charcoal. I then modulate the control rods based on the amount of steam in the tank. This is useful since I can add more turbines and do little more than connect the additional turbines to my computer network (since the computer also controls the turbines to keep them at 1800 RPM by toggling the coils on and off). Additionally, this can deal with the variable steam demand of my Railcraft steam turbines that generate EU (the steam to the Railcraft turbines is cut off once EU is close to full, and the flow is opened again once EU drops again).

Although right now I'm running all my BR turbines at 100% since I'm filling up a max tier DE storage multiblock. I'll probably add a monitor to my system to allow me to manually toggle turbines, along with detecting when the turbines can't sink their RF anymore and cut off their steam. Before I built the multiblock I had an EnderIO capacitor bank and modulated steam to the turbine based on percent energy stored, but the DE multiblock holds so much RF that I can't read the exact RF using a computer and can only get a coarse reading via vanilla comparator.


As for getting water in, I use tesseracts (unlimited flow rate) on the reactor and turbine outlets to feed the tanks. To feed the reactor and turbines, I drain the tank into a tesseract using ExU transfer nodes (one stacks upgrade plus as many speed upgrades as needed). Energy is also tesseracts directly next to the blocks with no intervening cables/ducts/conduits that would bottleneck the flow.

Thank you for replying very good insight I am loading up my world right now to work out the kinks and do your guys suggestions

 

[idjmleader]

1: Water/steam
The whole point of using 2x Tesseracts is having one channel for steam and one channel for water and thereby recycling the water from the turbine back into the reactor. The Fluid Ports on both Reactor and Turbine can be set to both Input and Output to match this. This saves the MASSIVE lag monster of Transfer Nodes that you have created. Reuse the water and you can use a single non-upgraded Transfer Node or a Aqueous Accumulator to fill the water network initially.

2: The reactor setup
Your internal reactor setup looks to be very poorly optimized. And it is a VERY large reactor for a single turbine.
Something more optimal for a reactor of the size you have there would be something like this:
http://br.sidoh.org/#reactor-design...olRodInsertion=21&layout=O3COC3X2C3X2C3XCO3CO
But this requires a steam consumption of 6-7000mB/t to really be at optimal efficiency. In your case(one turbine only) it would have to run with +76% control rod in which case the reactor gets too cold to be efficient.
You would have to build a smaller reactor to try and get it hotter(towards the optimum temperature of 1000C) with just one turbine, but limitations in the mod rather prevents that. Therefore I would suggest at least 2-3 Turbines for any reactor.


3. Turbine
The way the turbine is built determines its mB/t usage at which RPMs. So if you want to match a Reactor with your Turbine(s), then it is important to choose the right design for your Turbines.
Specially since is VITAL that your Turbine runs stable at either 900 or 1800 RPM as it will produce MUCH more power at these values.
I don't see any mention of the stats of your turbine or which materials you are using, but this spreadsheet will give you a list of stable builds/settings:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...TUxOUGxMRlpERWtPMmtGT213bmc&usp=sharing#gid=1


4. Preventing Steam buildup in reactor
One of the things that causes the most heat buildup in a actively cooled reactor is when the steam buffer fills up. This is what I do to prevent it:
Once you have built your turbines, set the mB/t to the precise amount found in the list I posted(or value you know from elsewhere). Now slowly increase the Control Rod in the reactor point by point until you find the exact point where the buffer starts emptying out. At this point the reactor no longer produces enough steam, so reduce the Control Rod back one point again. Now go to the turbines and increase the mB/t by 20-30 points or so. This should increase the RPM to slightly over the 900/1800(which is actually also what many suggest) and empty the Steam buffer out.
I like using this CC script(with its automation set to disabled) to modify the Control rods as it allows for 1% interval adjustments as well as easier overview:
https://github.com/sandalle/minecraft_bigreactor_control


Oh and btw: No wonder that reactor is running hot. With that internal setup and only extracting 2000mB/t, it should be set to 83% control rod

I am sorry i have another question. So the control rods should all be in the middle and the cyro on the outside of them? I have them staggered to hit them all. Sorry I do not fully understand all this yet But on another note I closed the loop and this is what I am at atm.
I am at 70% insertation , about 2.5k core temp which it has dropped over 1k. My hot fluid output is 1.5k mB/t. Then on the turbine I have him to about 1.6k RPM but I been fiddiling with it to get to that right speed. My flow govenor is 1.5k mB/t my vent is dump excess exhaust fluids.
I am generating 14.2k RF/t
My steam is at 2.5k and my water is 1k mB. My capacitor bank that holds 2.5 trillion RF is full.
So is it ok to say I should make another turbine to get some more of the hot steam out of the reactor or am I still miss understanding?
Also thank you for your patience with me I am a bit slow on learning stuff like this lol

 

[asb3pe]

My base was an elevated platform over the ocean, so I hung my BigReactor Turbines underneath the platform - out of the way and out of sight. For water supply, I simply ran a Transfer Pipe down to the ocean surface and put a Fluid Transfer Node there to suck up all that infinite water. I definitely used at least one stack of world interaction upgrades and I think I put stacks of speed upgrades in the other 5 slots. I have no idea if there is a speed cap or not but this provided me with more than enough water to run my 2 Turbine/1 Reactor unit all at once.

Remember each world interaction upgrade increases the rate by 1 bucket per operation. Also someone correct me if I'm wrong but speed upgrades cap out at a stack.

 

[asb3pe]

I am sorry i have another question. So the control rods should all be in the middle and the cyro on the outside of them? I have them staggered to hit them all. Sorry I do not fully understand all this yet But on another note I closed the loop and this is what I am at atm.
I am at 70% insertation , about 2.5k core temp which it has dropped over 1k. My hot fluid output is 1.5k mB/t. Then on the turbine I have him to about 1.6k RPM but I been fiddiling with it to get to that right speed. My flow govenor is 1.5k mB/t my vent is dump excess exhaust fluids.
I am generating 14.2k RF/t
My steam is at 2.5k and my water is 1k mB. My capacitor bank that holds 2.5 trillion RF is full.
So is it ok to say I should make another turbine to get some more of the hot steam out of the reactor or am I still miss understanding?
Also thank you for your patience with me I am a bit slow on learning stuff like this lol

Here's what I did - I lowered all my control rods to 95% and checked my Turbines to see if the steam was still maxxed out at 2000 mb/tick. If the steam was okay, then I lowered the rods to 90% and checked again. Eventually, I reached a point where the steam was beginning to fluctuate and was no longer 2000 mb/tick all the time. Then I just raised the control rods back up one notch and left them all there. That should be the lowest temperature your reactor can run at while still providing full steam to the turbine. By finding the lowest temperature, you will use the least amount of yellorium fuel in your reactor to run your turbine.

 

[idjmleader]

Ok guys this is what I got with no water going in anymore and this a fully closed loop now.
I am at 88% insertion!

Spoiler

Anyways the only thing I am having issues with is the heat. But it has went down by at least 1.5k so that is good
Edit I got it to cool at 1045k now!!

 

[Pyure]

Ok guys this is what I got with no water going in anymore and this a fully closed loop now.
I am at 88% insertion!

Spoiler

Anyways the only thing I am having issues with is the heat. But it has went down by at least 1.5k so that is good
Edit I got it to cool at 1045k now!!

You're still generating more steam than you're using. You can tell because the reactor is full of it.

 

[idjmleader]

You're still generating more steam than you're using. You can tell because the reactor is full of it.

And that is why I am making more turbines as we speak! lol

 

[rhn]

I am sorry i have another question. So the control rods should all be in the middle and the cyro on the outside of them? I have them staggered to hit them all. Sorry I do not fully understand all this yet

This is the most difficult aspect of the mod by far. There is no "The ONE" way of building reactors. It all depends on the size, if it is active or passive, which materials you have available etc.

In general every reactor configuration will have a Control Rod setting where it is working at optimal efficiency(Note this optimum might be placed outside the 0-100% scale some times).
Additionally reactors are most optimal when working around 1000C. This is due to a compromise between the fuel consumption penalty and the fuel efficiency increase due to increased radiation at higher temperatures. Approx 1000C is a sweetspot between these two.

Whenever we design a Reactor is is therefore the main goal to design (by choosing Fuel rods, Cooling materials etc.) a reactor where the Optimum control rod setting falls as close as possible to the 1000C. This is what yields the most optimum reactors.


For such a small reactor needs as in your example I know from experience that the main challenge is not cooling, but actually getting the reactor to run hot enough. Therefore I chose to forgo cooling in favour for irradiating the Fuel Rods by placing them in a large clump(fuel rods sends out radiation orthogonally in all 4 directions. If this hits another fuel rod it increases efficiency of that fuel rod.).

But if you play around with the Simulator you will learn that with increasing sizes of reactors you will be forced to replace irradiation of fuel rods with more and more cooling. Specially so with Passive reactors(specially since large active reactors are pointless since even small-medium ones will create immense amounts of steam).

 

[Pyure]

T

Whenever we design a Reactor is is therefore the main goal to design (by choosing Fuel rods, Cooling materials etc.) a reactor where the Optimum control rod setting falls as close as possible to the 1000C. This is what yields the most optimum reactors.

In your experience do you find this is true of actively-cooled reactors? I generally find the optimal efficiency around 800C, although it differs depending on the reactor.

 

[rhn]

In your experience do you find this is true of actively-cooled reactors? I generally find the optimal efficiency around 800C, although it differs depending on the reactor.

The 1000C is a universal thing separate of the reactors from what I understand. It purely exists as a result of the fuel efficiency penalty due to increased penalty versus the increased fuel efficiency due to irradiation of the fuel rods.

BUT! When you build an actual reactor this optimum will ALWAYS be offset by the optimum efficiency of the actual reactor setup. That is why we need to stride toward building the reactors to have the "reactor setup optimum" at the "1000C optimum" for the best possible result.

But in my experience for most actively cooled reactors you never build them large enough to make this possible. The degree at which you can change cooling <-> Irradiation is simply too coarse, since it means replacing a whole vertical stack of blocks out.
This is why I earlier suggested this which have an optimum around 700C:
http://br.sidoh.org/#reactor-design...olRodInsertion=77&layout=O3COC3X2C3X2C3XCO3CO

 

[Pyure]

Ok good, just checking. In practice, I have yet to see an actively-cooled reactor that gives me the best fuel efficiency at or near 1000C

 

[rhn]

Ok good, just checking. In practice, I have yet to see an actively-cooled reactor that gives me the best fuel efficiency at or near 1000C

It is in practice very hard(probably impossible) to do due to the cooling boost you receive from making the reactor Active cooled and because you don't need to make the reactors very large. You would end up having too many Fuel Rods and then all the mechanics just falls apart. Like having fuel rods against the walls and absolutely no cooling materials etc.

The optimal for a 5x5x5 active reactor might very well be running at 700C or so simply because building one with an optimum at 1000 is impossible. But I find that it is a good rule of thumb to try and aim towards the 1000C.

Like for example when I decide on a size I build what I initially think might be a good setup. Then I find its optimum by probing back and forth with the control rod slider. Then I alter the setup depending on if it is above or below 1000C until I have optimized the design to my satisfaction.

 

[Type1Ninja]

Aren't Actively Cooled reactors unaffected by coolant materials? If not, how exactly does coolant in an actively cooled reactor work? For maximum steam production, do you want high casing heat or high core heat?

 

[rhn]

Aren't Actively Cooled reactors unaffected by coolant materials?

This is a common misunderstanding. The mechanics for Reactors are EXACTLY the same for active and passive reactors(except active gets a flat bonus to cooling).

For maximum steam production, do you want high casing heat or high core heat?

The mod author does himself and everyone a great disservice here by confusing Heat and Temperature on the GUI. What is listed as Heat on the GUI is actually Temperature of the Core and Casing.

The Reactor works by creating "energy" in the Core. This "energy" must be transferred to the Casing where it will somehow be transformed into Steam/RF. Your job is to design a reactor that transfers this "energy" best possible from the core to the casing. This transfer of energy is defined as "Heat". Heat is not the same as Temperature!

Examples:
If you make a reactor with a Fuel rod in the middle and just air around it you will see the Core temperature rising dramatically. This is because Air is a bad conductive material and will not transport the energy from the core to the casing very well. The energy therefore builds up in the core and raises its temperature. However Heat(the energy transfer) is dependant on temperature differences, so as the core gets hotter and hotter more and more energy will get transferred to the casing until an equilibrium is found(enough energy is transferred to prevent the core from getting hotter).

Now if we look at the same example but instead of Air we use Cryotheum. Cryotheum has an extremely high conductivity, which results in a high transfer of energy from the Core to the Casing. This means the Core never raises its temperature very much(the equilibrium is found at a MUCH lower temperature).



The main reason to keep the core temperature down is the fuel efficiency penalty that is written into the mod. The higher the temperature rises, the more fuel the reactor will consume. Up to around 1000C it will rise to a 10% penalty, but it will start to get much more aggressive after that. But like I mentioned earlier it is contrasted by increased radiation(that irradiates orthogonal fuel rods) so a compromise for these to effects is around 900-1000C.



Most important thing to remember about the reactors IMO is:

• The Casing is where the Steam/RF is produced. Priority is getting the energy from the Core to the Casing.
  
• It is not "Cooling materials", but "Conductive materials" that transfer energy from Core to Casing. You are not trying to cool something down, you are trying to get the energy to the place where it is turned into power!
  
• The "Casing" is not the walls of the reactor, but an imaginative place. You do not need to chain Conductive materials from Fuel rods to the walls. As soon as Heat is inside a Conductive material, then it is transferred to the casing.
• You NEVER wants high Core temperature(and thereby Casing temperature). Ideally you want it to be around 900-1000, but that depends on the design of the reactor(see the earlier posts I made).

 

[Type1Ninja]

This is a common misunderstanding. The mechanics for Reactors are EXACTLY the same for active and passive reactors(except active gets a flat bonus to cooling).


The mod author does himself and everyone a great disservice here by confusing Heat and Temperature on the GUI. What is listed as Heat on the GUI is actually Temperature of the Core and Casing.

The Reactor works by creating "energy" in the Core. This "energy" must be transferred to the Casing where it will somehow be transformed into Steam/RF. Your job is to design a reactor that transfers this "energy" best possible from the core to the casing. This transfer of energy is defined as "Heat". Heat is not the same as Temperature!

Examples:
If you make a reactor with a Fuel rod in the middle and just air around it you will see the Core temperature rising dramatically. This is because Air is a bad conductive material and will not transport the energy from the core to the casing very well. The energy therefore builds up in the core and raises its temperature. However Heat(the energy transfer) is dependant on temperature differences, so as the core gets hotter and hotter more and more energy will get transferred to the casing until an equilibrium is found(enough energy is transferred to prevent the core from getting hotter).

Now if we look at the same example but instead of Air we use Cryotheum. Cryotheum has an extremely high conductivity, which results in a high transfer of energy from the Core to the Casing. This means the Core never raises its temperature very much(the equilibrium is found at a MUCH lower temperature).



The main reason to keep the core temperature down is the fuel efficiency penalty that is written into the mod. The higher the temperature rises, the more fuel the reactor will consume. Up to around 1000C it will rise to a 10% penalty, but it will start to get much more aggressive after that. But like I mentioned earlier it is contrasted by increased radiation(that irradiates orthogonal fuel rods) so a compromise for these to effects is around 900-1000C.



Most important thing to remember about the reactors IMO is:

• The Casing is where the Steam/RF is produced. Priority is getting the energy from the Core to the Casing.
  
• It is not "Cooling materials", but "Conductive materials" that transfer energy from Core to Casing. You are not trying to cool something down, you are trying to get the energy to the place where it is turned into power!
  
• The "Casing" is not the walls of the reactor, but an imaginative place. You do not need to chain Conductive materials from Fuel rods to the walls. As soon as Heat is inside a Conductive material, then it is transferred to the casing.

Alright. Just to be fair, I knew a lot of that already in the context of actual science (heat != temperature, air is bad at conduction...), but MC-Science is actually pretty different from real science (whoo! Iron tools!).
I was confused, because I used to always fill my reactors with water, which is also a terrible conductor. So, would this (generalized) description of a reactor be good-ish?
A 3x3 of fuel rods (or is that a bad shape?) with the center hollowed out and filled with some kind of coolant (is resonant ender the coolant you would want there? Or cryotheum? Or what?), with gelid cryotheum (don't blocks of enderium work as well?) filling the rest to conduct heat to the casing.
I've always played with this mod on the default configs, so pretty much any reactor produced buttloads of power and consumed zero yellorium. Now that I've tweaked my fuel use to 8x, my passive-power gen to 0.5x, and my turbine-gen to 0.75x, I think the efficiency boost from using a turbine is worth it. On the other hand, that won't help if I have a crappy reactor to begin with; so, I'm asking here.

 

[rhn]

Ok good, just checking. In practice, I have yet to see an actively-cooled reactor that gives me the best fuel efficiency at or near 1000C

Oh and ofc, the compromise balance between the "temperature fuel efficiency penalty" vs. "Fuel efficiency increase from radiation of fuel cores" is also greatly dependant on how your particular cores are lined up with each other and the distance between them. If you cannot take advantage of the radiation properly with the setup, then surely the optimal temperature would shift down.

This is probably largely at work with smaller reactors where you have so few fuel rods to irradiate each other. This combined with the cooling bonus is probably why we mostly end up with optimums at 600-800 for smaller active reactors.

 

[rhn]

I was confused, because I used to always fill my reactors with water, which is also a terrible conductor. So, would this (generalized) description of a reactor be good-ish?
A 3x3 of fuel rods (or is that a bad shape?) with the center hollowed out and filled with some kind of coolant (is resonant ender the coolant you would want there? Or cryotheum? Or what?), with gelid cryotheum (don't blocks of enderium work as well?) filling the rest to conduct heat to the casing.

You can have a look at this list:
http://ftbwiki.org/Big_Reactors#Reactor_Coolants
There are several other stats that play a role in addition to conductivity.

• Absorption stops a part of slow radiation that enters the block and turns it into Heat(which is then turned into Steam/RF).
• Moderation turns fast radiation into slow radiation. Fast radiation is useless if not moderated.
• Heat efficiency is a baseline multiplier to the Heat output.

IMO the only two things you want to worry about for Active reactors(if you have them) is Cryotheum and Fuel rods. The best thing to place next to a Fuel rod is another Fuel rod in general. This is because they will irradiate each other and increase efficiency. But you will need to fit in some Conductive materials here and there. The balance of the two is the challenge.

This is your friend for solving that:
http://br.sidoh.org/