When I first got into researching reactors, I was very confused with all the missing and conflicting information on reactors, so I decided I wouldanalyze the game code and document it as best as I could for others to come. With the info I learned, I built this beast I like to call a CLRR (Coolant-Limited Research Reactor).
But to get there, let's clarify some key points about reactors first so we're all on the same page:
- Fuel consumption is constant:No matter how hot or cold your reactor is, the fuel consumption will always be the same while it's running.
- Coolant absorbs fuel heat:Heat exchange happens between the fuel and its coolant. The greater the difference, the greater the heat transfer.
- More fuel = more heat:The reactor increases the temperature of the entire stack of fuel, no matter the mass. This means a reactor with 60 kg of fuel is producing 6 times more heat than a reactor with10 kg.
- Less coolant = more heat:Nuclear waste is created at the current temperature of the fuel. Having less coolant means the fuel can rise to a higher temperature. More on that later.
- Meltdown at 3000 °K:(~2727 °C or ~4940 °F) Reactors expelcoolant when it reaches >400 °C, which means the fuel barely reaches above that much and so reactors are way safer than one might expect at first.
For more details on the numbers, I advise looking them up on the wiki page. I've made sure to update the page with all the details I could figure out.
So with these key points, let's get onto the 3 main types of research reactors there are:
Type A: Standard Research Reactors
Basic reactor setup. Supports 8-10 steam turbines for ~7.5 kW or so. Simple to build. Somewhat inefficient.I won't cover those here sinceFrancis John has a fairly decent tutorial on them.
Type B: Fuel-Limited Research Reactors (FLRR)
Or "economy class" reactor, FLRRs let you lower reactor output in case you don't have the resources or space available for a standard reactor. You can control the fuel intake with a thermo sensor and let the reactor regulate itself without wasting energy on steam turbine heat runoff or running too cold. This tutorial won't cover those, but let me know if you'd be interested in it.
Side note:One thing I noticed people misunderstand (including in Francis John's tutorial) about FLRRs is when the fuel falls under 10kgit should spike upand thencompletelystopin order to save fuel. That's because reactors will use up 10 kg/cycle of fuel anyways, so feeding a reactor 10 times 1 kg a day to keep it at a constant 5 kg, for example, is worse than giving it 10 kg at the start of the day and letting it die at night.But a 10 kg fuel reactor is barely enough for 2 max steam turbines so I'm not sure why anyone would bother anyways...
Type C: Coolant-Limited Research Reactors (CLRR)
Now this is where the real fun starts. As mentioned before, nuclear waste is created at the same temperature as its fuel, but with 744 times moreheat energy. This means that if you limit coolant intake to inch slowly towards a meltdown, you're also producing MUCH more heat. The higher the heat rises, the quicker the heat exchange with coolant, until we reach this "sweet spot" where temperature stabilizes inside the reactor.
Typically, a normal reactor hovers around 300 °C (around 3,720 kDTU/s), but in a CLRR, heat can safely reach2000 °C (around 24,800 kDTU/s).
This build produces a stable28.7 kW and outputs 1000 kg/cycle of nuclear waste at around 99 °C.
Important note: The following build depends on theRotate Everythingmod. It's definitely possible to build without the mod, but it looks much cleaner this way.
The final build:
Plumbing overlay:
- The coolant feed valve is the most important part of this build and what splits the CLRR apart from other reactors. Because of the weird nature of heat exchange,you must set the flow rate to something your game can support. Start with a safe flow rate and gradually lower the rate until the fuel stabilizes around 2000 °C while on fast speed(make sure the reserve of coolant in the reactor is empty if the temperature is staying below 400 °C). Increasing gamespeed increases coolant demand.
- Steam turbine coolant loops:
- Coolants can be any liquid, but I recommend starting with water and replacing it with nuclear waste as the reactor runs. Nuclear waste has amazing TC and SHC, only beaten by super coolant so you'll spend less power running ATs and need less space for them.
- Nuclear waste as coolant requires about 1 AT per 11 ST, water/p.water requires 1 AT per 6 ST and SC requires 1 AT per 14 ST.
- The radiant pipescan be any metal and you honestly don't need as many as shown. Experiment to save on resources or just spam it like I did to be safe.
- The coolant loop in the center is NOT optional. I found tempshifts plates are not enough to pull the heat out of the nuclear waste. Aluminum radiant pipes is a good way to pull the heat from the waste and into the steam chamber.
- User Abynthe found that steel conveyor bridges placed vertically sitting in the nuclear waste act as a good conductor. I have not tested it myself but the weird properties of bridges might be able to have the same effect as a radiant loop.
- The heat reclamation in the lower chamber uses aluminum pipes. This is to pull out as much heat from the waste and into the turbines. Using ATs to coolit lower than 99 °C won't be net positive on energy unless you use Tune-ups on turbines along nuclear waste or super coolant.
- The reason the reactor coolant feed comes from the bottom row is for safety. During construction(or if something goes wrong), we don't want the reactor to stop getting coolant, and the lower turbines are the first to get enough steam.
Aquatuners bypass:
Power overlay:
Automation overlay:
- The coolant is set to 80 °C to minimize heat exchange between the gas and insulated tiles.
- The middle basin should always have some amount of nuclear waste to have the super heated waste merge with. If that tile goes over 1000 kg and a new layer starts, dumped waste has a very high chance of melting pipes and creating nuclear fallout and we obviously don't want that.
- The heat reclamation is fine tuned to work with 2000-2200 °C internal fuel temperature and the pump should always have access to waste under 210 °C a few seconds after it's ejected from the reactor. If something went wrong or if your reactor is working harder, you'll have to increase this threshold.
Elements:
- Insulated tiles and pipes in contact with hot steam should be made of ceramic or insulation.
- The aquatuners are bathed in liquid in order to prevent them from getting leaking nuclear waste and getting corrosive damage. I found that while liquid shutoff stopped the damage, they would still leak a bit, but leaks can be prevented if the lowertiles of the aquatuner have1000 kg or more of mass. Obviously, if you aren't using nuclear waste as coolant, you don't need the metal tiles and liquid chambers.
- Everything inside the steam chambershould be made of steel or better, obviously.
- Lower chamber counter-flow:
- If the turbines are overheating, it could be a number of factors but usually it's because the heat buffer is too low. Adding more steam or spacing out the turbines from the coldest/hottest points helps with this.
- I'm not sure if the oil on the SCST is required, but I added it when I was having issues with overheating. Probably depends on the gas used.
Construction tips:
- You should start the reactor as a regular reactor, while feeling the coolant loops with water and maybe even having a secondary pipe dump in more water into the chamber.
- Once you have a basin above 800 kg of nuclear waste, you can start limiting coolant and let the temperatures rise. As you add more water to the chamber, the steam should be able to reach further out and into more turbines. Stop adding water once the middle area is pressurized at 100 kg/tile (the upper chamber can reach as low as 20 kg/tile and the lower chamber as high as 160 kg/tile).
- Note that nuclear waste freezes at 27 °C and can damage your radiant pipes if they aren't warmed up enough. I'd suggest passing water through them first, especially in the lower chamber if part of it is still sitting in a vacuum.
- You might prefer passing the nuclear waste through the heat reclamation chamber before inserting it into the loop, unlike the piping shown above. It would save up a little bit of power while the system is still powering up.
Other minor details:
- Liquid vents are slightly to the left to cool the waste as much as possible before it is reclaimed by the pump (and also apparently to avoid a heat-deletion bug..?).
- I know waste output is 1667 g/s, but the reclamation valve is set to 2000 anyways for when large influx come along. As long as you have something set so it doesn't come into packets of 10 kg.
- It's possible to have dupes deliver uranium instead of auto-sweepers, but you'd end up with a longer time with lower amounts of uranium, limiting your output.
- You could easily make it so each aquatuner is its own loop. I just find it easier to fill up if it's in a mega loop like this.
- I think the main chamber has 1 extra turbine that isn't needed... but without it, temperatures become unstable and might reach over 200 °C in some areas.
I tried doing the math for the exact output, but I just gave up before converting the game code equation into an integral because of how much the results varie with game speed. If you have a way to properly calculate the heat output produced by the nuclear waste, please let me know.
Bonus:Because CLRR have such a massive energy output, they can actually replace volcanoes in petroleum boiler setups
Edits:
- 24/01/2022: Added missing steam quantity in the element picture forthe lower chamber counter-flow and added tips if those turbines keepoverheating.
- 30/12/2021: Added mention to how many ATs to use in case water is used as coolant.
- 26/12/2021: Thermo sensor should've been set to below not above and added bridges conductor tip, thanks to Abynthe. Also added savefile.
CLRR.sav
