jakalth

Part 3a: Ring type fusion reactor. This is a picture walk through of building a ring type fusion reactor. This is only an example, your design might end up looking different from this. 1: The first step in making the reactor is to lay out the basic outline of the rings. I find doing this at first, to be the easiest way to make sure you end up with the design you are looking for. Whether you build the reactor directly on the ground, or build it elevated in the air does not seem to make much of a difference other then accessibility to the bottom of the fusion reactor. This is how it looks after step 1. 2: Next step is to add magnets to the top and bottom of the rings to contain the plasma. Note that the top of the rings uses only regular Electromagnets. The bottom side of the rings can be either regular electromagnets or electromagnet glass. This is how it looks after step 2. 3: Third step is to add an area to hold water against the outside edge of your reactor. This can be made using any blocks you want to use. Cobblestone is just an example. This is done because the outside edge is a viable area to generate steam. This is how it looks after step 3. 4: Next step is to add water to the outside edge of your reactor. The water needs to be standing water since flowing water doesn't produce as much steam. This is how it looks after step 4. 5: In this step, you add your first layer of steam funnels, starting with placing them over the water around the outside edge of your reactor. Once these funnels are in place, you can add water to the next level of your reactor. This is also a good time to think about how you'll power your reactor. I find feeding power in from the top to be the most conveniant. That is why I add in a couple redstone energy conduits to supply it with power. This also makes it a little easier later on in the build. This is how it looks after step 5. 6: In this step, you add steam funnels to over the water on the second level of your reactor. This will use several more funnels then step 5, and you'll want to be sure to add a funnel to over the center of each of the rings. With these funnels in place, you can add water to the third level of your reactor. This is how it looks after step 6. 7: Now it's time to add steam funnels to over the water on the third level of your reactor. You'll want to stack a second funnel over the center of the rings to bring that up to the same height as your third level funnels. Otherwise you won't be able to supply a redstone signal to recieve steam from that funnel. Note: steam funnels can be stacked without loss. This is how is looks after step 7. 8: For this step, you'll be adding liquaducts to the top of your lowest level of steam funnels. Be sure to right click on each of the liquaducts to set them to extract mode or this will not work. Alternately, you can use BC waterproof pipes instead. They also work, but their behavior is different then liquaducts so your steam flow will not be the same. I have never actually used waterproof pipes myself so I don't have any useful info on them to give you. This is how it looks after step 8. 9: Now you can simply add the rest of the liquaducts(or BC waterproof pipes) to the top of all the rest of the steam funnels. You'll want to add sections of pipe to connect each level together with the lower levels. Just remember, you do not want to connect an upper level to a lower level over an inside corner since the inside corner can only be supplied redstone signals from above. Any other location will work though. This is how it looks after step 9. 10: In this step, start adding a redstone signal to the top of any lower level liquaduct. This can be done in several ways. My example is using redstone blocks, but you can use Rednet cable instead for example. This is how it looks after step 10. 11: Now you can add redstone signals to the rest of your liquaducts. You only need to supply a signal once to each liquaduct so look at your reactor and place the signal blocks only over those liquaducts that do not have a signal yet. You will also want to add a signal to the side of the liquaducts that you've connected each level together at. Note: If you spend more iron to make the steam funnels, you can stack more funnels on top of the lower levels of your reactor and make the top of your steam funnels flat. Doing this makes piping and applying redstone signals far easier. This is how it looks after step 11. 12: Now that your reactor is piped up and redstone signals applied, it's time to work on what to do with your steam. You can either use Liquid Tesseracts to move the steam to your turbines, or you can pipe the steam directly to your turbines using liquaducts. For the turbine array, this reactor can run 25 Large Turbines, each made from converting 9 small turbines into a large one using a wrench. The array can be made in any fashion you desire. For my example, I'm going with a 5x5 grid. Since each large turbine only needs a single pipe inputting steam, having a single liquaduct going up to the turbine, from your grid, is a simple way to reduce steam loss. This is how it looks after step 12. 13: For the second to last step, adding the turbines to the top of your array of liquaducts. How you do this will varry, but the end resault should be that you have 9 turbines over each liquaduct, that you right click in the center with a wrench, and convert into a single large turbine. Then just setup so you have 1 large turbine over each of the liquaducts coming up from your grid. This is how it looks after step 13. 14: Lastly, you add in all the energy conduits to connect all of the turbines to your power grid. Right clicking on the conduit connected to the turbines is optional but is a good habit to have. Also, add a single redstone energy cell to the line of conduits coming up from your reactor core. This is where adding in the conduits earlier makes it a lot easier. For this energy cell, have the input set to 100, but the output set to somewhere between 50 and 65. This will regulate the power going into your reactor core making it more efficient. This is how it looks after step 14. The last thing you need to do is setup a way to keep the Redstone Energy cell connected to your reactor core topped off. You also have several options in front of you. Setup a large energy storage block for your reactor to output into or just use the power on demand? Have a liquid buffer system setup to hold the excess steam produced by your reactor, or add a few more turbines so you have no excess steam? Finally, do you want to feed the reactor deuterium cells manually, or do you want to setup an automated way to feed it cells? I hope you found this example helpful.

You can actually input steam into a turbine from the top, using liquaducts? The tests I have done only showed inputting from the bottom as viable. Hmmm, I'll have to correct that yet again if that is true.

I'll correct that. Thanks.

That's the thing, not all the info I've gathered here is 100% accurate, I might have a few mistakes. I'm sure there are some tips I am missing as well. I still need to add in sample designs, which I have pictures of, just need to upload them and link them. I also haven't covered Fission reactors yet...

Only way to output from one manager to another is to use piping or liquaducts to transfer between them, I'm afraid... Since each one needs it's own input and output to move steam. But if you stack them, and run the liquaduct from your reactor up one side, and the output to your turbines up the other side, you can get the stack to act similar to a single larger tank.

yes, I am sure on number 8. Just not on the exact volume they move. My creative tests could never move enough through a single channel to feed the turbine array, but on 5 different channels, it all went smoothly. Seems to be a bug that causes some people to have issues with running that much through one channel, while for others it works just fine.

Part 2: Fusion reactor tips.(builds will be in part 3) The fusion reactor is a marvel of power generation, or a headache when the mod refuses to cooperate. It takes deuterium cells, which are created by running water through a chemical extractor. You'll need a supply of empty cells for the extractor to put the deuterium into. A fusion reactor comes in many shapes and sizes. Each can have a single fusion core, or many fusion cores. There are many things to think about when trying to design your own fusion reactor setup. 1: Do I have enough built up resources? Fusion reactors are expensive to build. They require a lot of electromagnets and reactor turbines, as well as a good supply of deuterium cells. They are not an early game power system. But are viable mid to late game for powering many of the higher demand machines. 2: Do I have enough room in X location? Fusion reactors take up a lot of room as well. They can range in size from as small as 7x7 to 21x21 or more, for a single core setup. Multiple core setups can become vast monsters that require chunk loaders just to keep the other side of the reactor loaded while your standing next to it. 3: How big is big enough? Trick question. You can never go too big as long as your computer/server can handle it. But a rule of thumb is, Plasma can only travel up to 7 blocks from it's source. Making something where plasma has to travel more then 7 blocks means parts of your reactor are doing nothing. 4: What type of reactor do I want to make? There are basicly two type of reactors. Ring type reactors and flood type reactors. 4a: Ring type reactors have a loop or several loops for the plasma to flow through. In general, they seem to have more consistent power generation over flood types, but do not produce as much total power. Ring types also average out to be a bit cheaper to make then comparable flood type reactors since they have more confined areas for the plasma. So all told, ring type reactors tend to be cheaper to build and have a more consistent power generation from one cell to the next. 4b: Flood type reactors have a large open area for the plasma to flow into. In general they seem to be less consistent when generating power, but overall produce more power then comparable ring types. Flood types tend to be more expensive to build, requiring more electromagnets and turbines to operate. So all told, they are a little more expensive and less consistant, but can produce far more average power then a ring type reactor. 5: Building your reactor in a Pocket dimension or a Mystcraft age can help improve lag/framerates around your base. You can even split the reactor and turbines into different ones if using tesseracts to transfer steam. This only helps by moving the cause of the reduced performance of your computer to another location by not having to render everything all the time. Using chunk loaders or dimensional anchors keeps your reactor running while your not in said dimension. Now when actually building your reactor these tips can help a lot: 1: Never use Electromagnet Glass on the top of your reactor. Since it produces no steam, it reduces the effectiveness of your reactor. You can use electromagnet glass on the bottom of the reactor with no problems, if you want to view the plasma. 2: Anyplace you can have water touching an electromagnet that also can contact plasma, you can generate steam. So use every available surface on the top and sides of your reactor setup to do so.(minus the top of the fusion reactor core which can be used to supply it with power or deuterium cells.) 3: Turbines are nice, but Steam Funnels are where it's at. Using steam funnels to collect the steam and then piping that steam to your turbines gives you many times the power generation of using turbines alone. Just remember, steam funnels need to have the steam pumped out of them when using liquaducts. Easiest option is a liquaduct set to pump mode and supplied with a redstone signal from above. Steam can only be extracted from the top of a steam funnel. 4: Always use Large turbines where available. Large turbines are made by placing a square of 9 turbines, then right clicking on the center one with a BC compatible wrench.(prototype omniwrench doesn't work) They are a bit more efficient giving you a little more power from your steam. 5: Steam can only be inserted into a turbine from below. Also, you only need one input into a large turbine when piping the steam. Always use the center of the turbine is for steam input as well. It does not matter where under the turbine you input the steam. Steam can be inserted into a large turbine from any side, using liquaducts, tesseracts, or waterproof pipes. Otherwise it will draw steam from below if placed directly above water heated by a reactor. 6: Power can only be output from the top center of any turbine. The turbine will not output from any other location. 7: When you can, direct connect your turbines to your steam funnels using pipes or liquaducts. 8: If space is limited, Tesserect your steam away. Just note that Tesseracts have a limited steam transfer rate so you will need several on different channels to move all the steam to your turbines.( EDIT: This seems to be more of a bug since others have gotten a single Tesseract channel to work just fine for their whole reactor.) 1 pair of Tesseract, with a single input and output, will safely run 5 large turbines. Adding more inputs and/or input tesseracts, will increase how many a single output tesseract can operate. 9: There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. If you have too many turbines hooked up to your reactor setup, you can loose potential power generation. The turbines have a minimum steam flow rate that they need to generate power. If this flow rate gets too low, they will keep consuming steam, but generate no power. Always use the minimum number of turbines needed to use all the steam your reactor can output. It's easier to add more turbines later if they are needed, then to figure out why your reactor's power output is lacking. 10: Automating the insertion of deuterium cells into your reactor is a must. Fusion reactors are notoriously hungry. They can burn through cells at a furious rate. Not all reactors are as efficient with their deuterium as others. The reasons for this are not really known yet. But a reactor will keep producing steam long after the deuterium cell is used up. The duration of steam production varies greatly due to not all cells producing the same amount of plasma. But as a general rule, a reactors steam production starts dropping off within a minute of the plasma generation ending. This isn't the end of the world though. It can keep producing enough steam to turn your turbines for up to 9 minutes after plasma has been generated. Most cases though, the time is between 3 and 6 minutes. 11: Powering your Fusion core. A fusion reactor wants a lot of power to run. But giving it more power seems to actually reduce its effectiveness. Limit your reactor core's power intake. This is easily done by using a Redstone energy cell as a buffer. Just leave the REC's input at 100 and set it's output to 55 or something similar. Your reactor setup will be more efficient this way.

This is a compilation of info figured out by several different people on the forums. I'll try to update any errors I might have made. The Original thread that started all this can be found: HERE. It still has a lot of useful information and examples. Lets start out with a collection of tips and tricks for generating power using atomic science in Tekkit. Part 1: Overview and block info. Atomic science is not for the feint of heart, or the lacking of resources. Many things in atomic science require rather large amounts of resources. But, for those patient enough and/or wealthy enough, it can be a worthwhile investment. Main power generation comes in the form of 2 reactors and a rather novelty block: Fission reactor. This block creates heat using atomic fission from Fissile Fuel Cells. It's a pocket sized nuclear reactor. Beware though, if it gets too hot, it will explode dumping radiation about and destroying a fairly large area. But help arrives in the form of the thermometer block and control rod. These two, when used with the fission reactor, help control the reactors heat, preventing an explosion. To generate power with this reactor, you need to place it in the middle of a 1 block high area of water. The reactor will heat water that is two blocks away from it in a square shape. So a 5x5 area of water. Remember this when making a fission reactor setup. The thermometer only monitors the reactors temperature if placed in contact with the reactor it's self. The control rod acts to slow down the reactor, but only when it is touching the side of the reactor. below or above does not slow down the reactor. Fusion reactor. This blocks creates plasma from Deuterium Cells. The plasma can destroy anything other then the electromagnets included in the mod, and one or two other blocks, even destroying the reactor if it isn't shielded with magnets. The plasma needs to be channeled through electromagnets to generate heat to heat up water for steam. Since the plasma is a liquid, the area it flows in should be created accordingly, with a 1 block high area for the plasma to flow through. Other then the plasma being extremely dangerous, this reactor is much simpler to operate, but a LOT more expensive to build. Fulmination Chamber. This block is more of an explosives toy then a true power generator. These blocks turn the force of an explosion into power. all designs need to have water in the bottom of them to prevent the wiring attached to them from being destroyed. The larger the build, the more power you get from a given explosion, up to about a 9x9x9 box. Note: the amount of energy generated from the fulmination generator does not equal the energy and resources used to create the explosives. One exception is the creeper spawner powered generator, which just needs a way to get the creepers to explode. There are a couple blocks of not here as well: Electromagnet. When directly exposed to plasma, it will heat a block of water touching any of its sides. The heated water generates steam that can be collected to generate power. Electromagnet Glass. When exposed to plasma, it does nothing. All it does is give you a viewing area to see the plasma inside a reactor setup. Reactor Turbine. Generates power from steam. It can accept steam only from the bottom and only outputs power from the top. The steam can come from placing the turbine directly over a heated steam generating water source, or by piping steam in via liquaduct or waterproof pipes. By default, reactor turbines can not be stacked. Steam Funnel. Collects steam from directly below it, and moves it strait up. Steam funnels can be stacked as high as you like. They can only output steam into waterproof pipes, liquaducts, or another steam funnel. The liquaducts need to be set to extract mode and activated with a redstone signal making a build using steam funnels a little more complex. When hooked up to liquaducts, and probably also to waterproof pipes, steam funnels seem to have a nearly limitless internal buffer allowing them to store the surplus steam generated by the reactor until it can be transferred into the liquaduct.

Ok got some pictures of what my server reactor looks like. There is a lot of stuff crammed into a small area so it is kind of hard to see everything. I'll start from the bottom. With an underside view of the reactor it's self. Underbelly of the core. Next we have the space between the core and the turbines. The area where all the steam is collected and buffered. Steam chamber. And lastly, the top of the reactor. Turbines a plenty. 45 Turbine array. The whole reactor uses 45 large turbines, 244 electromagnets, over 125 steam funnels, 32 liquid managers, countless stacks of liquiducts and redstone energy conduits, 40 REC's for temp storage, 8 energy tesseracts, and a single fusion reactor fed deuterium cells from a computercraft computer hooked up to an autarchic gate. Total output varies a bit since plasma generation is being fiddley... :EDIT: Ok, finally got some tests under the reactors belt. Power output is a lot more random then my 4 torus design, but also much higher. It all depends on how well the plasma generation decides to cooperate. After several tests and a little tweaking of liquaducts and conduits this is the results: When you don't get the best plasma generation, the reactor can output steam for about 8 minutes. After the full 8 minutes have passed, it ends up generating roughly 9.5 million MJ of power. This is measured by starting with 40 empty rec's and checking how full they all were when the turbines stopped spinning. Every one had about 237500Mj. When you Do get good plasma generation, the reactor fills the liquaducts and buffer, and runs for about 10 minutes. After the full 10 minutes have passed, it ends up generating roughly 14 million Mj of power. This is measured the same way as before. Every rec had about 351000Mj. Each test was done by inserting 2 deuterium cells into the reactor after it had cooled off. And each time the measurements were done when the last turbine completely stopped spinning.

Making a mob farm with an auto spawner. Works, but you'll still need plenty of mob essence to feed it. That being said. Best way to run it is with a way to swap out the safari net(reusable one works, single use one does not). So either access below it if your using a grinder, or have a 1 block high access hole at ground level so you can reach it from outside the spawn room. I also suggest making the room at least 6 blocks high(inside) to make spawning ghasts easier. They can be a bit finicky to get to spawn properly.

I have had the output of a fully powered reactor setup transfered to an array for 25 large turbines, buy a SINGLE line of liquaduct. it was enough to keep all the turbines maxed out for the test run. It seems the limit of a liquaduct is more the input/output rate then the flow rate through the tube it's self. That being said, I always try to have redundancy. Even with the reactor direct piped to the turbine array, I try for at least 4 feed lines just in case. The test reactor is not one of my bigger ones, but a smaller one I use for short duration testing of ideas. It's relatively low output. Daemon_Eleuel: Your design looks right, but is a little bigger then what the plasma can flood out. Shrinking it's total radius by 1 block would be minimum for catching all the steam available. 2 blocks if you want to save on some resources. Your's currently has a flood radius of 8, 7 is the max plasma will spread out, 6 is a bit more efficient material wise. But yeah, that design should be a large output reactor.

As was said, in a round about way. Once the quarry runs out of power, they "might" seize up. But redstone energy conduits are smart and might bleed off the extra power instead, preventing them from seizing up.... So you might have to add something of your own to turn them off. Can you make a redstone pipe(BC pipe)? If so, you can have the input from your quarry run through a few lengths of pipe, with one of them being a redstone pipe. It will give off a redstone signal when there are items going through them. So as long as you only use cobblestone or stone pipes from your quarry past this redstone pipe, you will have a reliable(mostly) way to tell the engines to turn off when the quarry runs out. Just use redstone dust to make a line from the redstone pipe to each of your engines. Somewhere in the middle of the line add an inverter(block of dirt or cobblestone with a redstone torch on the side) so the signal is switched. This should make sure the magmatic engines turn off when the quarry is done. Might also turn it off if it hits a gap or cave... but that's easy to fix with an over ride lever.

I am using 35 turbines with the design, would take a massive buffer to hold the amount of extra steam this thing can dump out. I have found that the reactor can dump out steam for somewhere between 8 and 9 minutes using default configuration settings. After that it's all buffer, so about another 30 seconds, maybe. For at least 7 minutes, the turbines are running at max output. So the 10.5 Million is over ~9 minutes time. Also, it doesn't seem to run at full efficiency unless I place 2 cells into the reactor. That is when starting it up from a completely cold state. Not sure about if I keep it running warm. Haven't gotten the reactor dialed in yet. But it seems to be pointing towards an 8 minute delay between deuterium cells. I won't know for sure about that until I can let it run for an hour at least. Might have to turn the delay back down to 7 minutes like with my 4 ring design. Current results from setting up one on a server are 8.2 million with only 25 LT's and 32 liquid managers as buffers. There is a lot of wasted steam since the buffers are full within the first 2-3 minutes, and the 25 turbines can not use all the steam produced, even with the buffer. I'll be adding another 10 LT's to this setup as well and I can give better readings once this is done. :Edit: Tested it with 35 LT's and the 32 liquid managers as buffers. Still filled the buffers within the first 2 minutes. Still used 2 deuterium cells to make sure it primed the whole reactor properly. This time got 14,040,000 Mj after 10 minute run time on those two cells. Looks like I'll have to add 10 more again, and make it 45 LT's on the reactor. Almost scared to see how much power it'll produce after doing that. O_o

Ok, found two things here, my atomic science config file got corrupted so the setting were all wrong... so the numbers I have been giving are also all wrong. and the diamond reactor is still far more effective then I first though, as well as my big reactor being as bad as I thought. firstly, my big reactor was not actually getting 85% increase per reactor core, it was only getting about 50%... so instead of 25-31 Million, the numbers should be 17 - 21 million Mj. far less then I said earlier. it DOES scale as badly as I thought. Secondly, after fixing the config file, I was still getting approximately 10,500,000 Mj per cell out of the single core diamond shaped reactor. compaired to the 6,300,000 Mj I get from my 4 torus design. about 60% more. Used 35 large turbines to handle all the steam as well, as apposed to only 25.

Hmmm. interesting results here people. Made a diamond shaped reactor like Digdug83 has been using. tested it with 1 deuterium cell and 25 large turbines(needs more then just 25...). 8,300,000 Mj approximately off just the 1 cell. Ok, I have to admit, that is a bit more power then my 4 torus design can output. O_o 2 million more. I'll see what numbers I can get from a multi core reactor using this design and test the single core design with the correct amount of large turbines. the reactor layout has the outside of the diamond being 6 blocks away from the reactor core. It is a flood type, and the area between the outer diamond and the central core is a 1 block high cavity with magnets above and below.

Just wondering if you'd get a better power output increase if you added more reactor cores and upsized the diamond to go with it. Mainly, would it increase by more then 85% for each additional reactor added when making the reactor larger? I might have to try this out myself though, now that I have a better mental image of how you've made your reactor.

ok... Here I thought the 4 torus design did not scale well. I scaled up the design a bit. Increased the size of the center rings from 3x3 to 5x5 and added a fusion reactor to the connecting corners of the rings.(the 4 outside corners). Also added two 3x3 rings to each of those added reactors. Ended up with 12 total rings and 5 reactors. Piped all this using steam funnels and liquiducts into 105 large turbines. Yep, that is a lot of turbines. And stored the power in 60 empty redstone energy cells. After 5 tests I found that 1: a steam buffer does not work with this design, lost 30% of the reactor's output to the buffer for some reason, when I added one... 2: When you add deuterium cells to the 5 reactors, it creates so much lag that for several seconds, nothing else can be done in game and it nearly causes the game to run out of memory.(memory usage peaked at 117%... not even possible, but that's how bad the lag got) 3: It has the capability to output a total of about 2,300Mj/tick 4: After 10 minutes running on a single cell in each reactor, yeah it's crazy I know... it output between 25,000,000 and 31,000,000 Mj after running 4 non-buffered tests. 5: it is not completely efficient. it was still producing steam for 3 minutes longer, but not enough to generate power out of the turbines. The single reactor core design with just the 4 rings, was outputting 6,300,000 Mj after 8 minutes run time consistently. So the scaling is not smooth, but a lot better then I thought it would do. between 5-6 million per core... about an 85% power scaling? How well does your reactor scale Digdug? CharlieChop? Trying to see if the type of reactor you two use really does scale up better. I have a feeling it should...

All the foci do is increase the probability of those ores. Without them, the chance is the same for any of the ores, with them, the ore that foci is tied to has a higher chance of being chosen. It's all a matter of probability. And, you can have all of the foci slots with the same color. The foci chances are added together.

Outputting power to the laser drill seems to be a bit hit ad miss at times as well. Even with constant power input they vary quite a bit in power transfer. Probably due to how quickly they are trying to move the power around through their gui.

when transferring steam around, yes, they seem to ignore steam direction limitations. I believe it is more that turbines only accept steam vertically. You can add and remove steam from tanks from any side the tanks will accept/output from.

26 seconds? sounds about right to me. Dumping 518Mj/tick into a laser drill setup, through tesseracts, and that's about all the time it takes for each cycle to finish. Using 5 tesseracts to send the power into the prechargers, on 5 separate tesseract frequencies.

Well, here is the key, in the current version of atomic science in Tekkit. You only need to feed 50+Mj/tick to the reactor core to get it operating effectively. It WANTS 200, but only needs 50+ to operate. That is where a single REC comes into play, it acts as a power regulator for the reactor core. This way, you can add, up to, another 150Mj/tick to your usable output without loosing functionality. Simple tricks like this are usually not mentioned in videos. Also, using magnetic glass on the top of the reactor is another common mistake that many video makers make. Magnetic glass produces no steam, hence no power when next to or under water. TokiWartooth brought this to my attention so I try to share it as well.

For 1, your piping system and duct work is spot on. Looks to be a good setup for catching and using all the steam produced by your current reactor design. Increasing the output of your reactors will require an increase in the number of ducts needed to move the steam from the reactor. Liquaducts running in parallel will help a lot for this. you have 2 primary options here. More efficient looped reactor, or a flood type reactor. Both types of reactors work slightly better for different uses. Flood types seem to work better for constant running reactors and scale up better with more reactor cores. Ring types seem more efficient as single core reactors that run in pulses, not continually. Flood type: Placing your reactors in the same configuration you have them now, with the same distances between them, is a start. Have a single electromagnet touching each face of the reactor cores 4 sides. Now make a single open cavity, with a layer of electro magnets. This cavity can be up to 7 blocks out from the side of each reactor, but with spacing between the reactors, you can shrink this down to only 5 blocks out for efficiency, but the larger the area, the more potential steam can be created. and line the outside of the reactor with electromagnets as well, to keep the plasma inside. It should look like a giant sandwich when done. Note: Diamond shape seems to be one of the better simple shapes to use with this design. with the sides of the plasma containment area having diagonal walls. It matches how the plasma flows this way. Look at DigDug's design for an example of a large design. Improved ring type: Placing a single reactor core in the middle, make 4 rings around it. Start out with the reactor. Wrap the reactor in a 3x3 ring of electromagnets. Now from each corner, extend a single line of 4 electromagnets, like 4 spokes on a wheel. turn 90 degrees and add 4 more electromagnets to the end of each of these spokes. At the end of these, turn 90 degrees again and add 4 more, then turning 90 again, add enough to connect each ring to the one next to it. This gives you the outer dimensions of the 4 rings for the design. Finishing it off is done the same as building the single ring around your current design. An example can be found Here: Note: the magnetic glass and center cobblestone are only to make it easier to see the parts of the layout. Do not use magnetic glass on the top of the operational rings, they produce no steam. Simple things first. Buffer is not completely necessary if you have a way to use 100% of the reactors output on demand. otherwise, it does help. But does not need to be very big. One of the best things to use for the buffer, size wise, are the Liquid managers. Each one holds as much liquid(steam) as 16 BC tanks. But each one needs it's own input and output to work. As for the liquaducts, decreasing piping will only limit how much steam can be moved at any given time. They are rather smart pipes and manage the liquid they are moving quite well. Don't have much of an answer for this. but it does seem like the turbines do not always share the steam evenly. This all depends on the output of your whole setup more then on a per reactor basis. If the liquaducts are always 100% full, you might want to add more large turbines so no steam goes to waste, or use the buffer to balance out steam usage preventing steam waste. Buffering only really works well with a pulse running reactor. A continually running reactor will just fill the buffer if you can't use all the steam right away, wasting the rest. Yes. There is a ramp-up time on a fusion reactor. It can be as short as 2 seconds, or as long as 6, from a stone cold reactor to full steam output. So Ramp-up time is normally not much of a concern when a single cell can keep the whole thing warm for 7+ minutes. warm = producing steam I have never had issues with heat buildup under or around my reactor. But I always build my reactor so I can walk under them to add cells manually when needed. As a note, I have a reactor I built on a server that has been running 24/7 for 2 weeks strait now. I have never had any issues with it over heating or having any kind of malfunctions at all. It runs on a 7 minute timer, being fed deuterium cells out of an endermen chest who's matched pair is hooked up to my AE network. A precision export bus keeps the chest full of cells and auto crafts them when they run out in the network. I use an autarchic gate on a wooden pipe to pull the cells out of the chest and feed them into the reactor. This gate only runs(energy pulsar) when a redstone signal is given to it by a computercraft computer. The computer has a repeater program set to output a redstone signal for 1 second, every 420 seconds. Each pulse from the computer causes the autarchic gate to pull 2 cells. To fix this I have the cells pass through a distribution pipe. This sends 1 cell into the reactor and the other is send to an item tesseract that goes back to my AE network. Not the most powerful way to run it, but it is highly reliable, efficient, and I can keep up with the tin supply using either a single quarry or a MFR laser drill.

Toxicity: only partly implemented. Has to do with how much radiation and waste material(the bad kind) is stored in the reactor. Temperature: reactor temp is far more accurate. thermometer is quite fiddly and sometimes unreliable. Steam emission: Not really sure, doesn't take into account how much water your using... Time left: not really sure what to say about this. supposed to say how long you can run that cell for, but using a control rod changes this dramatically. 5x5 area of water seems to be the most it can consistently heat. If steam funnels are used, it can power 35 Large turbines consistently, sometimes more. I've tested a full rod and gotten a total output of 26,000,000 Mj, or was it 36,000,000... didn't really write that down... Anyways, this was using the steam funnel method. You get a LOT more steam, per funnel, from a fission reactor. It also runs a lot longer per cell. Like fusion, fission reactors use up the cell when it runs out, so a way to remove the cells before this happens is good when your using a breeder setup. Keep your reactor from getting too hot. doesn't seem to be as big of an issue with a 5x5 area of water around it, but the control rod is still a good idea. The hotter the reactor, the more steam it produces. But, if your reactor gets above 1800, you start running the risk of it failing. If it reaches 2000, it will instantly explode. Yeah, steam funnels do not have a limit to how many you can stack on top of each other. They also loose no steam when stacked. But, they can only move steam strait up. If you want to see how much power each turbine is putting out, you'll need a multimeter. Run a power conduit from the turbine to a storage device(redstone energy cell, makeshift battery, or a machine). Right click on the spot where the conduit connects to the storage device and it will say how much power is being inserted into the device. This is how much power the turbine is outputting. 1 large turbine "Should" output more then 9 small turbines. The large turbine is at least far easier to work with. So, compared to Fusion here is the resaults: Power output: Both seem to output about the same power per tick using steam funnels. But fission reactors win on total output of a single reactor. Build cost: Fission reactor is far cheaper to setup(even if you count the difference in turbines) Operating cost: Fusion is cheaper to operate. Easier to find and refine water then uraninite. But it goes through cells far faster. Which is truly better?? Both. It is all down to preference at this point.

lots of little tips here in the forums as well. My suggestions, try Direwolf20's videos to get you started. He's pretty good with videos. Otherwise there are a few video's made by Tekkit forum regulars in the lets play section that might help you out.