Problems with Fusion Reaction on single play mode

[Silmenume]

Hello,

I've been reading the thread called Atomic Science Fuel Life Config? and have been using to help with my design on a Tekkit server. It works in that the reactor comes online, animates plasma, generates steams, etc. I am playing via the Technic launcher so I am playing the latest stable version.

However, I wanted to play with some design in a single player creative arrangement so I can experiment with designs etc. I've built a flood reactor this time but when I feed it deuterium fuel strange things happen/don't happen. It consumes the fuel at the appropriate rate, it uses energy at the appropriate rate (monitoring via REC) but there is no plasma animation and no steam generation.

I'm not sure what means I can use to take screen shots to show the set up, but I will diagram as best I can.

F = Fusion reactor

G = Electromagnetic glass

M = electroMagnet

From the bottom most layer - (I apologize for the formatting but this BB doesn't like leading blank spaces - its basically a diamond shape)

M

MGM

MGGGM

MGGGGGM

MGGGGGGGM

MGGGGGGGGGM

MGGGGMMMGGGGM

MGGGGGMFMGGGGGM

MGGGGMMMGGGGM

MGGGGGGGGGM

MGGGGGGGM

MGGGGGM

MGGGM

MGM

M

This set alone should be sufficient to generate a plasma field as long as I supply power and deuterium cells - but there's more!

Above every Electromagnetic Glass is another Electromagnet.

Above every Electromagnet is a still water, above every water is a Steam Collector, above every Steam Collector is Liquiduct (which is set to extract), all the Liquiducts are connected to each other and collect to 4 extraction pipes which lead to a 5x5 array of Large Turbines and every Liquiduct extracting steam is topped a Redstone Block.

Each LT is fed by one Liquiduct from the center bottom and the power is drawn off the top by Redstone Energy Conduits which collect the power from all 25 LT's and feed it into 5 Redstone Energy Cells.

Again - no energy is created, no steam is created, no plasma is created - but the Fusion Reactor is consuming Deuterium and Energy.

Any ideas? I'm running on the same Tekkit as I do when I am on a server except I am in single player. (Yes the Fusion Reactor does work on the Server)

Thank you.

[TonyVS]

i found this out the hard way too the each liquiduct needs its own redstone signal, I just put a redstone block over every ducts that was set to extract, like so......it does seem to work with ony a couple but you are seriously limiting your steam output, is it possible for you to post a picture would help determine the issue

[Silmenume]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. (Beautiful layout you have!) Here are 2 pics that I hope are enlightening. Let me know if you need any other views.

[jakalth]

You have no air gap between the electromagnetic glass and the above electromagnets. So there is no place, currently, for plasma to spawn.

At least the second picture makes it look that way. the magnetic glass can distort how it looks.

[TonyVS]

Steam is only capable of traveling up 2 blocks (unless you have changed it in your config) you have stacks of three steam funnels also that Redstone energy cell underneath needs to be charged does it have a charge in it? I have mine set to a 100 in and a 100 out until the reactor is running then I set it to 100 in and 50 out. it takes a lot of juice to start but minimal to keep running. Make sure you have some energy travelling back into the cell underneath. also how are you feeding the deuterium into the reactor (I am not familiar with the cable on top but the corner looks like the universal electricity symbol) so at glance it looks like you are feeding energy in from the top and the bottom and no input for cells

[Silmenume]

Hello,

Jakalth - You are correct - I left no gap for the plasma! Thank you for that observation!

TonyVS - I didn't know that steam traveled only 2 blocks! I must have misread the earlier thread that I had referenced above. I will change that. Right now the design I posted was just a mock up and is not yet set up to be self-sustaining. The REC is/was charged to full and as for feeding the reactor I just hand fed the Deuterium cells by hand. The cable you do see entering the top is a ME Covered Cable that connect to a ME Precision Export Bus. In time I am looking to use that as part of a steam sensing network to automatically feed the reactor. Right now I am just trying to get it running!

After I make the air gap I will post my results.

Thank you both for your responses!

[TonyVS]

me ahh ok, never used that seem way to complicated for what it provides, I just use a logistics system and a supplier pipe that keeps a stack of 64 in the reactor at all times, it requests only when it needs them. I thought the glass was flush but dissmissed it as bad camera angle, good eye

[Silmenume]

I'm still working on getting my reactor going, but I had wanted and forgotten to mention what a terrific job you guys did in sussing out the particulars of the Fusion Reactor system - especially given how limited the diagnositic tools are in game. A hearty "well done" to all those who did the research and posted!

(As an aside what methods do you use to make screen grabs?)

Best,

Jay

[TonyVS]

f2 in minecraft then I just upload the .png to my webserver, I have a screenshots dir I call from (f1 to turn off the gui in minecraft if you want)

[TonyVS]

and credit for my reactors has to go to jakalth I just expanded on one of his awesome posts about flood type reactors

[jakalth]

And I just rewrote info posted by quite a few different forum regulars, as well as my own findings. I'm terrible with names though... :\

Sadly, atomic science has a lot of quirks with it. I've seen many designs that should work just fine, end up falling short of what it should do. And then the same design, setup by someone else, end up running perfectly. It does seem to act differently for each person... Just don't get discouraged if it doesn't work right strait off the bat. A little tweaking and adjusting of shape/design should give you the results your looking for.

[Silmenume]

Hello,

I got it working! With 4 Liquid Managers acting as a buffer, I got 2.16m MJ's with 25 Large Turbines in about 3.5 minutes with one Deuterium cell! This is a very workable amount of energy given the Tin resources.

Much rejoicing! Thank you jakalth, TonyVS and all those who posted who have posted on this topic.

Best,

Jay

[Silmenume]

Hello,

Thank you Tony for the notes on how to take screen shots.

jakalth - I am running my reactor in "pulse mode" - some of the higher numbers I've determined have been upwards of 7,200,000 mj's per single Deuterium fuel rod. Is this in the neighborhood of expected?

Best,

Jay

[jakalth]

yeah, that's in the ball park. Might get it to push upwards of 12,000,000 but only with perfect plasma spawning, which doesn't happen very often.

Running it in pulse mode, you might end up wanting to feed it two deuterium at a time. With large flood types, it seems to perform more predictably that way. I've also found that having a 2-4 second delay between the two cells being inserted helps as well. If your using BC pipes to feed it, this is easily done using a distribution pipe feeding the first cell strait in, then the second cell on a round about path before also going in.

[Silmenume]

Hello,

My numbers do seem to vary quite widely between high 2's and low 8's at the extremes.

I don't know if this has been discussed, but I did discover that both the duration and volume of steam created vary per run. I have yet to establish if the two values are correlated or not - i.e., that a long production of steam will always result in a greater volume of steam produced per tick or not.

In my experiments I am using Liquid Managers for storage as don't have enough turbines to burn the steam as fast as its created. (In my online game 1. I don't have the copper 2. I don't need 500mj/t ... yet). Even in this experimental set up 25 LT's are not sufficient to prevent back up in the pipes.

In one particularly wimpy run the reactor was not able to keep up with the turbines at all - the meter indicated very low to empty pipe during the run. On the largest run yet, I came close to filling up more than 75% of my 32 Liquid Managers while running all 25 LT's. Even in this case the Liquiducts from the reactor to the Liquid Managers never reached capacity but were very close to full.

As my rate of consumption did not change in either case I can only assume that the rate of production changed from case to case.

Is this news to any one? Does it matter in the long run?

Another question I have is is it worth the trouble to save excess energy and then cue the reactor to run when the electrical storage runs low? To me this would seem to be the best way to determine when to run the reactor. Is there a way to monitor battery levels?

Best,

Jay

[jakalth]

Plasma generation is highly random in atomic science. The amount of steam generated is directly tied to how much plasma is generated since the steam only generates when plasma actually touches the electromagnets. If not a lot of plasma is spawned, it will not touch all the magnets in your reactor, so the steam production will be low.

Buffering/storing steam has been found to be basicly useless due to the sheer volume of steam a reactor can produce on a good run. But worry not, the steam funnel its self can store that extra steam until it is needed. At least in the version of atomic science in tekkit it does.

There is a fine line between keeping your reactor running and using all your steam, though. Each setup will be different. Also, adding two cells per cycling, in a flood type reactor, helps a lot to average out plasma generation. having a delay between the insertion of the two cells also seems to help for some reason.

controlling your reactor using a large power buffer seems to be more reliable then monitoring steam, as well. Or just doing some single run tests, run till cold, to find out how long it can keep the turbines spinning. Then using a delay that is about 80-90% of this time, between feedings, to keep it running as efficient as possible without it shutting down.

[Silmenume]

Hello,

As suggested I've set up my system to watch the power buffer to cue the insertion of Deuterium cells. I'm using autarchic gates to monitor to energy levels and send a redstone signal to another gate on an advanced wooden pipe attached to a chest. (When the concept proves out I'll switch to paired Ender Chests). The Autarchic Gate on the wooden pipe is set to "Single Pulse" when receiving a redstone signal. This works - once and only once. Right now in the simplest possible configuration I am using a lever to provided the Redstone signal so I can turn it on and off at my choosing. After working once I can't get the Autarchic gate to work again. Is there a "cool down period" whereby the Redstone signal needs to be off a minimum amount of time before the Autarchic gate will single pulse again?

Help?! This is the last bit I need to make my system autonomous!

Thank you!

Best,

Jay

[jakalth]

ah yes... autarchic gate in single pulse mode is a bit buggered... it only pulses once... ever... for some people it works fine, for others it does this.

solution I know of, is to use the autarchic gate in pulser mode and only use a short redstone pulse when you want it to send out items. For every second of redstone signal, the gate will pull out 2 deuterium cells. you can use a distrubution pipe to split the cells so only one goes to the reactor while the rest goes back to storage. If your using me system, send it back to the me and use an export bus to keep the ender chest full(or only one row full with the rest filled with dirt/cobble as a filler).

I had the same problem when trying to setup my own reactor. ended up using a redstone pulse program on a computercraft computer. had it output for 1 second, then delay for 10 minutes with my reactor going cold between each cell sent. worked for me due to low energy demand vs high output reactor.

[Silmenume]

Hello,

Would it be possible to post the program, please? Finding any sort of in depth tutorials on programming the computers had proven difficult. If you know of a good site regarding programming those computers I would deeply appreciate that as well!

Thank you so much for all the time of yours that you've graciously given me.

Best,

Jay

[jakalth]

good site to find programs is found on the computercraft wiki. lots of programs that I don't understand in the least.

Copied this from a post I made in the atomic science tips and tricks topic:

Place down a computercraft computer 1 block away from the artarchic gate and connect the computer to the gate using a piece of redstone dust. In the computer, type in "edit startup". Now type in the following program(this is a simple redstone pulse program) You will have to use just the keyboard for everything, the mouse does not work inside a computercraft computer:

s = 0

repeat

redstone.SetOutput("back",true)

sleep (1)

redstone.SetOutput("back",false)

sleep (360)

until s == 1

Then click the left (Ctrl) key and select the save option. Click the left (Ctrl) key again and select exit to leave the program. Your program should now be running.

To edit your program, open the computer and hold down (Ctrl) and (T) for longer then a second. Change the (360) to whatever delay you want, it is in seconds, so for example 360 = 6 minutes. This will give a 1 second long pulse, every 6 minutes to the autarchic gate. The autarchic gate will output 2 deuterium cells during the 1 second pulse so the distribution pipe will direct 1 of those cells to the reactor and 1 back to storage.

If you want to put in more then 1 cell at a time, then you can change little things to make this work.

For 1 cell, use the setup I said.

For 2 cells, replace the distribution pipe with a regular pipe.

For 3 cells, change the first sleep in the program from (1) too (2) and set the distribution to send 3 to the reactor and 1 back to storage.

For 4 cells, change the first sleep in the program from (1) too (2) and replace the distribution pipe with a regular pipe.

etc...

Haven't figured out how to link this with a second redstone signal to act as an interupter signal... Not that good with coding...

[Silmenume]

Follow up...

With invaluable help of TonyVS, jakalth (and all those from whom he gleaned valuable insights!) I have completed my fusion reactor setup. In short --

1. Flood Reactor - 5 opens spaces along the axis - 3 wide instead of 1 wide at the ends.
   
2. 2 columns of 8 high by 8 Liquid Managers to capture the generated steam - total 128. To date I have not gone over about 65%-70% capacity so I think I'm at a good number.
   
3. 40 Large Turbines
   
4. Power collected and distributed to Redstone Energy Cells by Redstone Energy Conduits.
   
5. 6 groups of 3 Redstone Energy Cells (18 in total) all on the main energy line from the LT's. They are all set to 100 input 100 output
   
6. These 18 REC's then feed a bank of 5 REC's which feed power to whatever needs it. They are set to 100 input and 80 output. The purpose of the small hold back is to make sure these REC's charge 1st when the Reactor is generating power. When the 5 REC's are fully charged then the bottom 18 REC's then begin to build a charge. When the Liquid Managers run out of steam it is the 18 REC's that provide power 1st before the 5 REC's drain.
   
7. Each Redstone Energy Cell (REC) is monitored by a Diamond And Gate which is set to monitor for Empty Energy and to send a signal down a Pipe Wire. They are in groups of 3 with Pipe Wire linking each of the three Gates to a 4th Diamond And Gate. This 4th gate monitors the 3 wires of the groups and sends a signal down the 4th color when all 3 wires are on (all three batteries are empty). The 3 "4th gates" each send their respective signals to another Diamond And Gate whose purpose is send a signal down a colored wire to another (and final) Diamond And Gate. What this does is monitor 9 REC's and when all 9 are empty send a signal to the final Diamond And Gate. This final Diamond And Gate is fed by an identical arrangement that monitors the other 9 REC's which means it is watching all 18 REC's to see when they all go empty. When final Diamond And Gate gets a signal from the 2 Pipe Wires (representing 9 REC's each) it then sends a Redstone Energy Signal to ComputerCraft Computer via a RedNet cable.
   
8. The ComputerCraft Computer is set to monitor for a RedStone signal which indicates that all 18 REC's are empty and that the energy system is now drawing exclusively from the top 5 REC's - it is now time to feed a Deuterium Cell into the Fusion Reactor. The ComputerCraft Computer now sends a 1/2 second RedStone Signal out and then goes to sleep for 6 minutes. NOTE - The ComputerCraft Computer ONLY recognizes or output signal onto Redstone Dust - so if one is using RedNet Cable, as I am, it must first be converted to Redstone Dust. Same for output - the ComputerCraft Computer will ONLY output to Redstone dust which can then be converted back to RedNet Cable if needed. I did in my case as for some reason I could not get the Autarchic gate to acknowledge a Redstone signal from Redstone Dust.
   
9. The 1/2 second Redstone signal from the ComputerCraft computer travels via redstone dust to a RedNet Cable which then leads to an Autarichic Gate Set upon an Advanced Wooden Extraction Pipe set to extract only Deuterium Cells from an Ender Chest. The Gate is set to turn on its Energy Pulser (not the Single Energy Pulse - which doesn't work - which is why I have to use a ComputerCraft Computer - to create the short Redstone signal pulse) - long enough to withdraw only 1 Deuterium Cell and then feed it to a Gold Transport Pipe which the feeds the Cell to the Fusion Reactor which then start generating energy again.
   
10. The EnderChest is completely full of filler with exception for one stack which is reserved for Deuterium Cells. The reason for this is...
    
11. ... The matching EnderChest is monitored by the Precision Export Bus which is set to manufacture replacement items when there is space in the EnderChest and to only export Deuterium Cells. Which is why the EnderChest is full of filler except for one stack - otherwise it would be completely filled by Deuterium cells. This is kept full by a...
    
12. ...Chemical Extractor which is connected to an ME Interface. The ME Interface contains a ME Pattern with an Empty Cell as the input and a full Deuterium Cell as the end product. The output of the Chemical Extractor is withdrawn from the machine by an ME Import Bus. Because of this arrangement when the EnderChest has an empty space the ME Export Bus puts out a request to build a Deuterium Cell which is then filled by the Aqueous Accumulator. The Chemical Extractor is kept full of water through the efforts of an attached Aqueous Accumulator.
    

I think that covers it all.

The purpose of this particular arrangement is to extract every possible MJ from each Deuterium Cell. No steam is lost from over generation because of the Liquid Managers. No power is lost to over generation because the system stores the excess power in REC's and only starts generating power again when those REC's are empty.

There is ONE bug in this mix. On a single player game the .5 second pulse for the Autarchic Gate works just fine to pull only one Deuterium cell. On the server I'm on it varies from 3-4. I'll have to monitor it further to see what I want to do to resolve this problem.

The program I use in the ComputerCraft Computer is as follows (thanks to jakalth for posting it for me!) -

s = 0

repeat

if redstone.getInput("left") == true then

redstone.setOutput("right",true)

sleep (.5)

redstone.setOutput("right",false)

sleep (360)

else

sleep (5)

end

until s == 1

The capitalizations are very important! I've pooped out here but the sleep (5) step is very important in preventing the computer from crashing with something like a Threadlock error (that is probably not the exact name but beware of it - you can't have long running loops without the occasional break outs - like the sleep() command.

Thanks everyone!